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School board should send chairwoman a clear message

Under Dale Friedman, obfuscation is elevated to an art form

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Last week Beaufort County's top school official took a wrecking ball to the most precious thing any public body has -- its credibility. That's a charitable description of what school board chairwoman Dale Friedman did; she may well have broken the law.

Here's what happened:

• On Tuesday, Friedman had an agenda distributed listing issues the board would discuss at a meeting Friday. The agenda included this cryptic item: "9 a.m. to 10 a.m. -- Executive Session -- Personnel Matters." That raised the eyebrows of anyone who pays attention to school board affairs. For months, board members have grumbled about Superintendent Edna Crews. In fact, only one day before the agenda came out, the board had met behind closed doors to discuss a severance package for Crews.

• After looking over the agenda Thursday afternoon, an editor at The Beaufort Gazette sent a letter to Friedman saying it didn't comply with the state's Freedom of Information Act. That law says public bodies like the school board must announce in advance and in detail what will be discussed at meetings. (A case tried right here in Beaufort County in 1994 reinforced the law.) Meanwhile, reporters at the Gazette and its sister newspaper, The Island Packet, spent the rest of the day pushing for more details on exactly what "personnel matters" would be discussed the next morning.

• Friedman's response to the Gazette editor's letter was dumb and deceptive. She hastily had an "amended agenda" faxed out. But it was no more explicit than the first one. Indeed, only one word changed. Instead of "Personnel Matters," the agenda now said "Employment Matters." If Friedman understood and respected the Freedom of Information Act -- and as an elected official, she darn well should -- she'd have seen the absurdity of this. The agenda was still impossibly vague.

• After getting the new agenda, a reporter promptly called Friedman to ask her how changing a single word elucidated the matter and whether she thought the new agenda complied with the law.

Her answer: The school board's lawyer told me to do it.

Friedman can't shift the responsibility for her actions to the board's lawyer. He advises; the board decides -- at least that's the way it's supposed to work. He works for the school board, not the other way around. Over the years, we've seen the board cede its decision-making authority to the lawyer, Ken Childs of Columbia, time and time again. It's almost like they prefer that Childs make the tough calls because it gets them off the hook.

But that's an editorial for another day. Even as this one's being written late Friday afternoon, the Freedom of Information Act is taking another beating. An agenda for a school board meeting Tuesday just arrived via fax. It includes this item: "5 p.m. Executive Session -- Land Acquisition & Employment Matters."

There they go again. In no way do those words square with the decision in the 1994 court case, which was directly on point. The judge in that case said that "general statements such as 'personnel matters,' 'land acquisition,' 'contract matters,' 'real estate matters' and 'legal matters' will not satisfy the mandate of the (Freedom of Information Act)."

So how important is all of this? Isn't the wording of the agenda for a meeting a minor matter, and isn't it picking nits to criticize the chairwoman of the school board for not making sure I's are dotted and T's are crossed?

No, for several reasons.

One is that school officials, under Friedman's leadership, have made decisions that left the taxpaying public in the dark on important public business, and have continued doing so after being reminded of the law. Such behavior is unethical and arrogant.

Another reason is that in terms of credibility, the school board is on life support. Actions like Friedman's do nothing but suck out whatever credibility is left.

ust last week, at the same time questions about Crews' future surfaced, some troubling news broke. For the past eight months, the school board has conducted an audit of what Friedman calls "accounting errors," resulting from payments to several firms hired to help build new schools. "Accounting errors" is Friedman-speak for overpayments the school board believes were made to the companies. Yet only the sketchiest information about the audit has been made public. It's all being handled confidentially.

Who knows how much money is at stake -- money, mind you, that was generously approved by voters in the 2000 bond referendum. Friedman won't say. One school board member puts the amount "in the hundreds of thousands." Another told Friedman in an e-mail that the discrepancy for one of the companies alone might be $755,000. A third says $2 million is the figure he heard in one closed-door meeting.

Who knows? Friedman won't provide details.

And who knows whether this mess resulted from "accounting errors," as Friedman insists, or something else? Or whether anyone at the school district was asleep at the switch when the overpayments were made?

Nobody's saying.

When reporters started asking these questions last week, Friedman sent an e-mail to fellow board members directing them to refer all questions to her. Then she didn't answer her ringing telephone.

Even with such a sorry record of candor, Friedman now says, "Trust me." Maybe not in so many words, but that's the unmistakable message when she withholds important facts, telling taxpayers not to worry because everything's under control.

Despite its credibility problems, the school board has been fortunate in one important respect. Voters repeatedly have supported millions of dollars for desperately needed new schools, including last month's approval of $44 million for new ones in Bluffton.

Voters' support could erode, though, now that it has become clear that the school board wasn't forthcoming before last month's referendum. The board knew full-well that serious questions had arisen months earlier about the handling of money from the 2000 referendum. The board knew an audit was under way. But voters were told nothing.

All this will come home to roost -- perhaps in the November elections for new school board members, perhaps the next time voters are asked for more money for new schools.

The sooner the school board faces up to its ethical, legal and fiduciary obligations to taxpayers, the better. Then it will have to take very dramatic, very forceful action to shore up its credibility. A good start would be thorough, detailed explanations -- in writing -- of what's going on with the superintendent and with the audit of the overpayments. Beyond that, the board should consider replacing its chairwoman with someone who'll take the Freedom of Information Act seriously.

One way or the other, things have to get better fast.

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