Mr. Ghysels stated "in an abundance of caution" they decided to cancel the meeting. Translation - they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar....

The Brown Act is in place for a reason, and elected officials and senior leaders [should] receive annual reminders of its boundaries. Mr. Carpenter is a good watchdog for this Act and process.

Closed meetings are Standard Operating Procedure for the MPCSD. There is at least one closed meeting a month and usually more since Superintendent Ghysels joined the district. He held more closed meetings in his first year than Ranella held in seven. The notices of those meetings normally indicate that they are either for litigation or for personnel matters. Those discussions are protected under the employees' or students'/parents' rights to privacy. But two or more personnel discussions a month for all those years is an awful lot of board-wide personnel discussions. The big difference now is that this particular meeting was less opague so it hit The Almanac's radar screen. The newspaper isn't picking on the district -- if anything, it can be faulted for not looking more closely at the legitimacy of all the other closed-door sessions over the past five years.

Note that EVERY closed door session MUST be preceded by an opportunity for public comment .

Concerned citizens, not the press, are the true safeguards of democracy.