Conway School District Superintendent Jeff Collum

You may remember my recent story about an illegal, secret meeting the Conway School Board had minutes before a regularly scheduled, perfectly legal though contentious meeting took place.

In short, I reported that the board gave board President Andre Acklin the OK on a set of open-forum guidelines he later announced to the audience, several of whom were  stunned at the rudeness of the guidelines and the board. While I’d like to take credit for great research that led to this disclosure, the truth is that board member Linda Hargis spilled the beans on conservative podcaster Jimmie Cavin‘s Facebook page. Further, as Acklin ended his lecture, he said, “This is not Andre. … That’s this board. They told me they want me to pull your coattails,” if these rules aren’t followed.

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Now, Superintendent Jeff Collum is complaining to board members, Cavin, school district attorney Jay Bequette and me that there was no secret meeting.

“There was no ‘meeting before the meeting’ and no vote taken on anything outside of the public meeting,” Collum wrote earlier this week in an email addressed “To whom it may concern.”

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He added: “I wrote the expectations or ‘guidelines’ and asked for input from each board member individually. Again, no vote was taken. There was no ‘illegal’ meeting.”

Collum said the guidelines were read aloud during the regular meeting “to help support this engagement [of the public] in a professional and respectful manner.”

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Collum concluded, “I am hopeful this factual information clears up any confusion or misunderstandings that have been put out there. I was not any part of, nor did I witness any other interaction from the board prior to the regular meeting that has been mentioned.”

I then asked Collum: “Why couldn’t this discussion with individual board members have occurred after the start of the formal meeting rather than polling members one by one outside it?”

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He replied, “Me talking to individual board members is never a meeting. At least that’s my understanding.”

The law is not that simple. Sometimes he can talk with them with absolutely no problem. At other times, he cannot legally do so. Rather than interpret anything, I’ll just quote from the 2022 Arkansas  Freedom of Information Handbook, which is posted on the Arkansas attorney general’s website:

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“Q. Can a superintendent hold a series of individual discussions with school board members to poll members and thereby arrive at a board decision before a public meeting? A. No. Op. Att’y Gen. 2000-111.”

You can read the entire handbook. I wish all public officials would do so.

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Finally, here’s the part of the Facebook exchange that led to my earlier article:

Board member Bill Milburn said Collum doesn’t establish guidelines. “The board does.”

Hargis then said Milburn was correct, to which Cavin said, “Question is when, where and how did you all make this agreement.”

“Right before the meeting,” Hargis replied. “It was sincerely an attempt to just keep things civil.”

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