If I could pick one thing that trips up more charter school governing boards than anything else, it'd be not being able to communicate with each other via email.
I wrote this "Top 10 Mistakes Charter School Governing Boards Make" a couple of years ago. It's based on things I've seen happen repeatedly over the years by board members who often didn't know any better. Charter school board members can often be characterized as "the well-intentioned in full pursuit of the irrelevant." They're very well-meaning people who simply don't know that there are laws that affect what they're trying to do.
A charter school board member can send an email to the entire board as an FYI. The key is that individual board members receiving the email cannot hit "reply all" and respond. That "reply all" action makes it a "discussion" and public bodies cannot conduct or discuss business outside of a properly noticed meeting. Further, any email concerning school business, even if it's on the home computer of an individual board member, is subject to an Open Records request.
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