The Orland Elementary School District 135 board voted by a narrow margin this week to keep a controversial tape recording of a closed session private, at least for now.
“Because we discussed specific employees of the district during the meeting, it is necessary to maintain the recording as confidential,” Board Secretary Nancy Sutherland said.
The board went into closed session Jan. 30 to discuss its search for a superintendent, even though board members Kathleen Svabek and Suzanne Cachey refused to participate, expressing concern that the meeting was improper under the Open Meetings Act. That fear was confirmed when Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan’s office ruled it illegal in March.
Both abstained from Monday’s 3-2 vote.
Minutes from the session have been made public, but officials conceded that part of the meeting was not recorded due to what they said was a malfunction of the recording device.
Madigan aide Terry Mutchler has told board members they should figure out how the malfunction happened and “make public the facts surrounding this matter.”The school district’s attorney, Patty Whitten, said the board is trying to reconstruct the portion of the meeting that is missing from the tape in order to amend the written minutes.
“They are going to try to put more words in verbatim, but this will be from their memories basically,” Whitten said.
School Board President John Paul said the board isn’t hiding anything.
“We made everything public that we talked about at that meeting. We said we decided not to use a search firm and said that we would be posting the job online. There were no secrets. We discussed all the steps taken,” Paul said.