Shoreline Unified School District’s administrators and trustees gathered last Wednesday for a workshop on California’s Brown Act and conflict-of-interest rules presented by Patrick Wilson, a lawyer with School and College Legal Services of California. The Brown Act is California’s open-meeting law that dictates what elected officials can and cannot do in both regular and closed meetings. The workshop had originally been scheduled for September, after Shoreline’s board allegedly violated the act last spring, when the board decided not to renew Superintendent Tom Stubbs’s contract. (The meeting was postponed until last week due to immediate budget challenges the board began facing in the fall.) At the time, the Light reported that board members appeared to have violated the Brown Act by discussing Mr. Stubbs’s resignation and subsequent search for a new superintendent in a closed session at trustee Jill Manning-Sartori’s house, and by improperly describing the item on the agenda. “Contracts involving staff should be [discussed] at a regular meeting,” said Mr. Wilson, citing government code. Mr. Wilson advised Secretary Jeannie Moody to be as descriptive as possible when listing brief item summaries on agendas. A willful violation of the Brown Act, he said, could result in misdemeanor charges. He also identified how a series of communications, or a “serial” meeting, between board members outside of an announced, regular meeting could constitute a Brown Act violation. The law depends on whether a quorum (or majority) of board members communicate by phone, email or in person about subjects related to official business; if so, this communication is a Brown Act violation. Even chatting at social functions could constitute a “serial” meeting in violation of the law. “It’s not a good practice for a majority of the board to sit together [at a school play],” Mr. Wilson said. He went on to clarify the rules for publicly posting agendas (posting must take place 72 hours before a regular meeting, or 24 hours before a special meeting), what constitutes a legal committee meeting and topics related to conflicts-of-interest, such as gift acceptance and contracts that affect outside interests. “The typical remedy for a conflict-of-interest is to abstain [from action],” Mr. Wilson said. “You need to know that you’re on thin ice, and you need some advice.” Trustees and administrators asked more questions on conflict-of-interest rules than they did on the Brown Act, including whether trustees living in a particular sewer district would be in conflict if that district has a contract with the school district. Mr. Wilson did not know the answer to that question immediately, though he noted conflicts of interest involving contracts between districts in small jurisdictions is common. He promised to follow-up on any unanswered questions after the meeting’s end.