A group of parents in Cobb County say four members of the school board have been evading the public by holding backroom conversations on private email accounts.
The school system says the accused board members have done nothing wrong, but the Georgia attorney general has yet to weigh in on the matter.
The issue, connected with a feud over the ever-changing school calendar, prompted board member David Banks, who apparently was not in on the emails, to complain publicly this week about "a very dark cloud over this school board."
Banks' comment came during Thursday night's school board meeting, after parent Mike Sansone told the board about a complaint he filed with Attorney General Sam Olens.
Sansone contends that four board members withheld emails he sought in an open records request. More disturbing to some: One of the emails that a board member did release contained a spreadsheet with the names of people, including teachers and their salaries, who had stated their opposition to beginning school on Aug. 15 instead of Aug. 1.
Previously, before an election changed the composition of the board, the start date was moved from the traditional Aug. 15. The Aug. 1 calendar, in effect last year, sprinkled two weeks of vacation around the rest of the year. A vocal group of parents didn't like the idea, and they may have played a role in the election of the new members last year, including Alison Bartlett, who became the board's chairwoman.
Bartlett and the three others named in the complaints voted 4-3 in February to change the calendar back.
Their critics, including one who spoke Thursday night, contend that the list of names was a "black list." But they've produced no evidence of any harm.
"There've been a lot of accusations out there," Bartlett said in an interview after the meeting. The school board attorney wrote to Olens' office that no open records or open meetings laws were broken.
"We have responded," Bartlett said. "We just have to wait and see what the attorney general says."
Tricia Knor, a parent who prefers the Aug. 1 calendar, filed a complaint that alleges board members broke open meetings law. She said that, based upon some of the emails that Bartlett and three other board members -- Scott Sweeney, Tim Stultz and Kathleen Angelucci -- turned over to Sansone, it's apparent "they were deciding board business in a private venue."
Knor called it a "at least a violation of the spirit of the law" and is leaving it up to Olens to judge -- and possibly to sanction.
Lauren Kane, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office, said there was no deadline for issuing a judgment. She said that, because of the mountain of complaints each year, the office prefers to mediate between complainants and the accused.
"We get like 400 a year," she said, "so obviously we can't prosecute every one of these."
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