Hall placing cronies above district

At the June 28 West Bonner County School Board meeting, trustee Margaret Hall proved that she places the agenda of her Priest Lake cronies (most notably Shawn Keough) above the best interests of the school district.

In the meeting, Hall misled both the board and the public about Idaho Code and the procedure for negotiation of personal service contracts for public entities. Title 59-514 of Idaho law clearly states that such contracts are to be made public within 15 days of entering into them. Hall even went so far as to tell the board and the crowd that the LPOSD negotiates their individual personal service contracts in open public meetings. They don’t. The LPOSD Board negotiates its superintendent and similar contracts in executive session, like it is supposed to.

Handling personnel issues is what executive sessions were created for. In fact, not using them to do things like negotiate personal service (employment) contracts and instead doing so in open public meetings releases what is classified as privileged information and opens the District up to risk of being sued. But Hall didn’t care about opening up the district to that risk by doing the wrong thing.

All she cared about was trying to make a circus of yet another school board meeting to protect her friends who have run the district into a sorry state with nepotism, a lack of professionalism, and a lack of financial accountability. Shame on her.

ROD VANLOON

Oldtown