It wasn’t revealed until the Alamance-Burlington school board held a special-called meeting Monday afternoon to announce the name of the new superintendent that candidates had been interviewed at an undisclosed location on Elon University’s campus.
During brief remarks that bookended the board’s 6-1 vote to hire Harnett County superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming to lead ABSS, school board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves publicly thanked Elon Univeristy officials for loaning the board space to interview candidates.
In a brief subsequent phone interview later Monday afternoon, Ellington-Graves told The Alamance News that the board convened each of approximately six special-called meetings, held to evaluate applicant materials, at the board’s usual meeting room at the ABSS Central Office before voting to enter into closed session – apparently, in an adjacent room, where closed-session discussions are normally held – to consider confidential personnel information.
However, school board members then traveled to the location on Elon University’s campus, conducted interviews, and traveled back to the Central Office in Burlington, where they reconvened in open session and voted to adjourn, Ellington-Graves said Monday when asked for specifics about how the offsite interviews had been handled.
“We didn’t want to parade [the candidates] down the hallway at Central Office,” where their identities could be learned and potentially leaked to the community and/or press, the school board’s chairman said.
Mike Tadych, attorney for the North Carolina Press Association, confirmed this for The Alamance News that the state’s Open Meetings Law requires the location of any offsite, official meetings of public bodies to be listed on the meeting notification – regardless of whether the purpose is to consider confidential personnel matters.
For her part, Ellington-Graves said that the board’s use of space at Elon University to conduct interviews had been sanctioned by school board attorney Adam Mitchell, of the Tharrington-Smith law firm in Raleigh. She added that superintendent candidates had been interviewed offsite during the previous search in 2022 that led to the hiring of now-former superintendent Dr. Dain Butler.
The new superintendent, Dr. Aaron Fleming, succeeds Butler, who resigned after 22 months, as well as interim superintendent Dr. Bill Harrison.
Fleming is scheduled to begin work with ABSS on September 18.
Read the newspaper’s editorial page views on the school board’s chicanery: https://alamancenews.com/wouldnt-it-be-nice-even-refreshing-if-school-board-members-could-read-or-even-better-comprehend-and-follow-the-n-c-open-meetings-law/
