For most of its July meeting, a state commission drafting recommendations on teacher pay and reading instruction debated those issues in virtual rooms the public had no way to enter. At its two previous meetings, similar discussion took place in person, at tables that the public could access.
The director of a statewide open-government group says that format likely violated North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law.
The Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Education met July 27 by Zoom for three hours. The published agenda set aside nearly two of those hours for an item called “Exchange of Ideas and Development of Recommendations.” That block was conducted in three simultaneous Zoom breakout rooms that were not carried on the commission’s YouTube livestream and that required host authentication to enter. The agenda did not mention the breakout rooms.