While the state’s education reform law has changed school committees’ role in personnel investigations and actions, there are some cases where the line blurs and school commmittees seek more information. They no longer have an automatic right to it and in most cases, it becomes a don’t ask, don’t tell scenario.

“By and large the school committee is frozen out in those kind of things,” said the district’s legal counsel James Toomey in a presentation to the W-H School Committee Feb. 15.

But when information concerning a case is made public, the School Committee may be  entitled to know that, he said. A one-way e-mail message from the school district, containing only notice that an issue exists and is being dealt with, is as much as they can expect to receive. One-way e-mails, which do not allow discussion that could be seen as deliberation, are not a violation of the open meeting law. Committee members may only be apprised of decisions regarding such cases after the fact.

“I don’t want to see you in the uncomfortable position of walking down the aisle in the supermarket and hearing about something that everybody in the town knows about and you have not been informed about it,” Toomey said. “A balance may be struck if there is some public information it would be appropriate to give the committee a heads-up on.”

A great deal concerning what a school committee may be told depends on how much information is out in the public realm.

The appearance of a group of parents and residents at the Feb. 8 School Committee’s open discussion period was an example of the difficult position in which school committee members now find themselves.

Toomey suggested a better way to have handled the Feb. 8 situation would have been to accept their letters for forwarding to the school administration.

Before education reform, students facing expulsions and teachers who might be suspended could only receive those consequences by votes of a school committee, according to Toomey. Such votes would come long after a lenghty hearing process was followed.

“That all changed in 1992 in a couple of ways,” he said. Personnel decisions were shifted to a collaboration between school principal and the superintendent on staffing matters. For student issues outside of criminal offenses, the superintendent has the authority to suspend. In both areas where decisions rest with administrators, the matters are considered confidential.

“The School Committee ends up in a role just like the public,” Toomey said. “So, many times it ends up in a frustrating situation where there may be some scuttlebutt around town and you don’t have any more information than they do and you want to ask some questions … and you’re handicapped.”

It does put school committees in a difficult position, he granted.

Committee member Robert Trotta asked if an executive session would be an acceptable forum in which the committee could be briefed on the facts of an issue alone.

“The answer is no,” Toomey said. “Even if it was appropriate to come before the School Committee, in a circumstance like you had the other day where the investigation is still ongoing, it would not be appropriate from a strategy perpective.”

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Ruth Gilbert-Whitner said there is frustration for both the administration and School Committee in such cases.

“But there’s also Mass. General Law and there’s confidentiality,” she said. “In a situation such as the one last week, this was sonething that was changing on a daily basis. … I do think our administration has worked hard to keep people in the loop when things are going on.”