From the Hotline

By Teri Henning
Pennsylvania Newspaper Association

Q: Our School Board recently held a special meeting. In its published notice of the meeting, the Board stated that it would be discussing construction issues relating to the new high school. At the meeting, the Board also discussed and voted upon an unrelated tax issue. Did they violate the Sunshine Act?

A: There are certainly arguments to be made that the Board violated the Sunshine Act by printing this misleading and incomplete meeting notice. Although the Sunshine Act does not specifically require an agency to disclose the “reasons” for holding a particular meeting, in our view, any such listing of issues should be accurate and complete. 

Note also that there are more specific statutes, such as the Second Class Township Code, that expressly require certain agencies to include the reason for holding a special meeting in a meeting notice.      

School Code Requirements

Although the School Code contains notice requirements relating to special meetings, those requirements appear to apply only to the notice sent to Board members. Section 4-423 provides that "[n]o business shall be transacted at any special meeting except that named in the call sent to the members for such special meeting: Provided, That special meetings may be called for general purposes." As a result, any notice of a special meeting that is sent to Board members must state the specific business to be discussed, or, alternatively, can state that the meeting is being called for general purposes.

Sunshine Act Notice Requirements

The Sunshine Act requires agencies to publish notice of any special meeting at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting. Agencies must also post the meeting notice on the agency’s office or the building where the meeting will be held, and must mail notice to any person who has previously requested such notice and has provided the agency with a self-addressed stamped envelope. The Sunshine Act requires an agency’s notice to include the date, time and place of the meeting. It does not expressly require an agency to list the matters that will be discussed or voted upon at the meeting.

Although the Sunshine Act does not require a School Board’s notice to include the specific issues that the Board plans to discuss, where the Board does list individual issues in a notice, that list should be accurate and complete. By listing only one issue in its public notice, the Board here certainly gave the impression that that would be the only topic of discussion at the meeting. Some people may have chosen not to attend on the basis of that notice. Others may have made the decision that they would not prepare or make public comments at the meeting. School Boards must have a duty to be open and candid with their taxpayers and residents

The stated purpose of the Sunshine Act is to Ensure the right of Pennsylvania citizens to have notice of and to witness the deliberation, policy formation and decision making of public agencies. In order for this to have any meaning, the public notices required under the Act must convey accurate information to the public about scheduled meetings. Although a school board could say that a meeting was going to be held for "general purposes," or could even decline to list the issues to be discussed, it should not be able to identify one specific issue in a notice and then take up unrelated, unadvertised issues. It is our view that advertising in this way violates the spirit, and possibly the letter, of the Sunshine Act.

Other State Law Notice Requirements

As mentioned above, there are other statutes that require more specific notice of special meetings. For example, the Second Class Township Code requires that the township advertise “the nature of the business to be conducted at the meeting” in its published notice of a special meeting. As a result, it seems clear that a Board of Supervisors could not advertise in the manner described above. 

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