ANDERSON — According to a Hoosier State Press Association official and the Indiana Public Access Counselor, the Anderson Community Schools Board of Trustees violated the spirit of the state's Open Door Law at a Tuesday night meeting by not revealing the name of a coach the board voted to hire.
The president of the school board in a Wednesday phone interview defended the board's action.
After meeting in executive session, the board voted in the Tuesday public meeting 5-1 to hire a new Anderson High School varsity boys basketball coach, but the board did not name the coach. ACS Superintendent Terry Thompson explained that the board wanted to give the coach an opportunity to talk to the high school team he currently coaches before his new job was announced publicly.
ACS Athletic Director Steve Schindler revealed Wednesday that the new coach is former Purdue University player and Clinton Prairie coach Ryne Smith.
Steve Key, executive director and general counsel of the HSPA, said the board clearly, if perhaps unintentionally, violated the spirit of Indiana's Open Door Law.
"Having the vote on a hiring of an employee without revealing the name, I would argue, is a violation of the law, or at least a violation of the spirit of the law," Key said Wednesday. "The public at the meeting had no opportunity to know the specific decision the board made."
Indiana Public Access Counselor Luke Britt, whose job is to interpret Indiana's open meeting and open record laws for the public and government officials and employees, said he wasn't sure whether the law "necessarily addresses this type of situation."
However, Britt agreed with Key's assessment that the board's action violated the spirit, if not the letter, of public access laws. The key element at Tuesday's special school board meeting, he noted, was the name of the person hired.
Key suggested that the board could have recessed Tuesday night's public meeting, announcing to those who attended a time and date to reconvene and giving the new coach time to talk to his current team and employer about his imminent departure, pending ACS board approval.
When the meeting resumed, the board could then have revealed the coach's name when voting on his hiring.
"That doesn't seem practical or realistic," ACS board President Ben Gale said Wednesday, arguing that the idea of voting without revealing the name was based on precedent.
"There have been some times where we've seen other school systems do it similarly, out of respect for the person to notify their current employer or, in this case, the team, before it becomes public."
Britt said, however, that he'd "never heard of a case quite like this."
Gale further defended the school board's Tuesday night vote and withholding of the coach's name.
"Our school attorney was involved in discussions, and our superintendent and assistant superintendent of personnel are both very well versed in hiring practices," Gale said. "Neither of them had any concerns whatsoever."
Gale couldn't recall a specific instance, other than Tuesday's vote, where the ACS board has approved a hiring without releasing the name of the person.
When asked whether he thought the way the vote was conducted violated the public trust, Gale responded, "As the school board, we've been entrusted by the public to make decisions on personnel."
Herald Bulletin reporter Stu Hirsch contributed to this story.