NORTHAMPTON — The School Committee has taken its first steps toward addressing its backlog of minutes, following a ruling by the state attorney general’s office that the committee violated the state’s Open Meeting Law.

The AG’s office and its Division of Open Government ruled last month following a complaint filed by Jonathan Gerhardson, a reporter with the publication The Shoestring, who said he emailed Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra requesting the minutes of all School Committee and ad hoc School Committee meetings from January 2020 to what was then the present day on Oct. 9, 2022.

Having failed to receive any minutes, Gerhardson concluded that the minutes did not exist and filed the complaint, according to the report by the AG’s office.

The resulting investigation found that the School Committee, along with its various ad hoc committees and subcommittees, had either unwritten or unapproved minutes going back at least a year. It also found that the minutes the committee did supply following the complaint showed a lack of sufficient summaries of the meetings.

The committee cited a lack of proper staffing as the reason behind the backlog.

At the committee’s April 13 meeting, members voted to take several steps to come into compliance with the Open Meeting Law, such as requiring subcommittees to take their own minutes and setting a deadline of July 31 for drafting all minutes in the backlog, to be voted on at the committee’s August meeting.

Layla Taylor, an attorney with the firm Sullivan, Hayes & Quinn who has represented the city in the AG’s investigation, told the committee during the meeting that the measures are meant to convey that the committee acknowledges the backlog and is taking the proper steps to rectify the situation.

“This is a years-long issue that’s developed, and there’s a sincere desire and effort to find a way to remedy this,” she said. “It’s going to take, in my opinion, a real collective effort to get it fixed.”

In addition, the committee voted to have the mayor appoint a School Committee member as a liaison to the superintendent’s office who will provide progress updates of the drafting of the minutes.

The committee voted 9-1 in favor of the steps, with committee member Michael Stein voting no. Stein said it was his opinion that the superintendent should be the person tasked with com ing up with a plan to fix the backlog of minutes.

“The superintendent is the one who oversees the central office and is in the best position to align the workloads in the central office and manage the day-to-day carrying out of this work,” Stein said. “I still believe the most appropriate way for us to move forward on a plan is for our superintendent to develop it based on their understanding of the central office’s workload.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.

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