Lawsuit says Sacramento school district made teacher layoff decision behind closed doors

The city teachers union filed a lawsuit against the Sacramento City Unified School District on Monday, claiming the district unlawfully engaged in discussions regarding budget cuts in closed session meetings in recent months.

The Sacramento City Teachers Association lawsuit claims the financially-troubled district violated California’s open meeting law, which details the provisions of when and how the public can be excluded from closed session meetings, and what can be discussed during those meetings.

The teachers union said the district had closed session meetings in February and March, and then adopted resolutions for layoffs that relied on discussions around budgetary matters. The district issued 109 lay off notices to teachers in recent weeks in an effort to identify a $35 million budget gap and prevent a state takeover.

The provisions in the Ralph M. Brown Act allow for closed session meetings, but mandates discussion of “general budgetary matters in open session so that the board’s deliberations are open to the public and available for public scrutiny and input,” according to the lawsuit filed in Sacramento Superior Court.

The district denies the union’s allegations and said the focus should be on saving the district of 48,000 students from a state takeover.

“Although the district does not believe it has violated the Brown Act, we take these allegations seriously and will provide an appropriate response through the legal process,” read a statement from the district. “In the meantime, we will continue encouraging SCTA leaders to come to the table and commence negotiations that are focused on saving our schools.”

The union said the decision to lay off teachers should be “null and void.”

“If the district is to be believed, the school board is making huge decisions that will impact the lives of our students with virtually no discussion and without any debate,” said SCTA Vice President Nikki Milevsky.

Among the grievances, the lawsuit states the board violated the Brown Act at its Feb. 21 meeting, stating that questions about the general budget “should have been made in open session where the public could hear the Board’s thoughts and concerns and could have addressed those thoughts and concerns prior to the board voting to eliminate over 150 teacher positions.”

“They need to explain the decisions they are making publicly, and give community an opportunity to respond and make a case,” said SCTA president David Fisher. “There was no analysis, no questions over why this was needed.”

The lawsuit also claims that the board violated the Brown Act on March 7, when the district read an adopted resolution in open session “indicating that the board had at some point outside of open session reached a consensus to adopt and read the resolution.”

According to the lawsuit, two separate unnamed witnesses who had been in the board’s closed sessions and regularly interact with board members informed SCTA officials that the board was “engaging in closed session general budget discussions.”

The teachers union has repeatedly gone after the district in recent months, claiming it lacks proper management and transparency. The teachers union asked California Superintendent of Schools Tony Thurmond and the California Department of Education to audit the district amid the ongoing budget crisis.

This story was originally published March 27, 2019 at 12:14 PM.