Dad sues Shawnee Mission district over ‘troubling pattern’ of closed-door meetings

A father is suing the Shawnee Mission school district, alleging that it violated Kansas open meetings law by excluding the public from work group sessions studying boundary changes for his child’s school.

On Monday, the school board unanimously approved new attendance boundaries for Briarwood Elementary School, near 86th Street and Nall Avenue in Prairie Village, which officials say is over capacity.

As part of his lawsuit in Johnson County District Court, Briarwood father Matthew Moeder requested a temporary restraining order to bar the board from voting on the new map, which will take effect in the 2025-26 school year. A judge denied the request, said Max Kautsch, Moeder’s attorney.

Moeder continues to seek a ruling that finds Shawnee Mission in violation of the Kansas Open Meetings Act for conducting certain meetings behind closed doors, and an order prohibiting future district work groups from meeting in private.

The work group was made up of 26 administrators, teachers and parents — no elected school board members.

“The issue here is why has the administration set up these working groups? And the answer is to avoid public scrutiny,” Kautsch said.

Shawnee Mission denies the allegations, which spokesman David Smith said in an email to The Star “are totally unsupported by the law.” The district argues that the work group was not subject to the Kansas Open Meetings Act’s requirements because it was created by the superintendent, not the school board, was “merely advisory” and had “no decision-making authority.”

He added that “the District has been highly transparent with the community throughout the process. Obviously, the plaintiff disagrees with the decision made by the Board of Education. Having families who disagree with a boundary change is the unavoidable result of any boundary change process.”

Moeder, who is an attorney himself, said he has three children, including one who is now attending Briarwood and one who will start in the district next year. His family lives about a half-mile, within walking distance, of their school, and can hear the bell ring or children playing at recess from their yard, he said.

For months, the Shawnee Mission district has been discussing changing the boundaries for both Briarwood and Tomahawk elementary schools. Superintendent Michelle Hubbard formed a work group to study a school enrollment analysis, review the rules for boundary changes, analyze public input, and make recommendations for a new map. Hubbard then presented the recommended map to the school board, which approved it on Monday.

The group conducted most of this work behind closed doors. The district also held public input sessions on the issue. And administrators presented an update on the process to the school board during a September meeting.

By being shut out of the work group meetings, Moeder argued that he missed out on discussions regarding, “enrollment projections, data and information that the school district has, the clear objectives of elected school board members and administrators, and what factors they were looking at in drawing these boundaries.”

“I believe any outreach to the public has really been a facade,” Moeder told The Star. “I think the whole process and every major decision was done by a select few and behind closed doors. This process should have been transparent. It should have been done in the open, and it should have allowed as many parents and families to become involved in the process as possible.”

In his lawsuit, he argues that the boundary change work group qualifies as a “subordinate group” under Kansas law, making it subject to the requirements of the open meetings act.

Moeder’s petition points to a previous court ruling deciding that even a work group that is “merely advisory” is still subject to open meetings law when “it can be shown that a public body has intentionally, and for the purpose of avoiding the light of public scrutiny,” appointed a group to “determine for the elected board what course should be pursued.”

But Smith argued that, “A work group formed by the administration to study an issue and to make an advisory recommendation to the administration could never be a ‘subordinate group’ of our Board of Education.”

This isn’t the first time in recent years that the issue of whether Shawnee Mission work groups are required to follow Kansas open meetings law has come up.

In 2019, then-superintendent Mike Fulton formed a work group to study a technology initiative that provided every student with an iPad or Macbook. Local news outlet the Shawnee Mission Post said it was barred from attending a meeting of the task force, and noted that the dates and times of the meetings were not made public.

The outlet said it was its “strongly held belief … that the meeting was subject to the Kansas Open Meetings Act and should have been open to the press and public.” It filed a complaint against the district with the Kansas Attorney General’s Office.

The AG’s office, in a March 2020 letter, decided that the task force was not a “subordinate group” under Kansas open meetings law because it was created by the superintendent, not a public body. It said the group was “merely advisory” in nature and had “no governmental decision-making authority.”

Moeder’s lawsuit disagrees with that decision, arguing that it failed to consider whether the work group met behind closed doors in order to avoid public scrutiny.

“I think it’s a troubling pattern in the Shawnee Mission school district to appoint working groups that are meeting behind closed doors and outside the public light, making decisions that are very consequential,” Moeder said. “The digital task force before, and now the boundary group, both are going to change the day-to-day life of hundreds of children.”

The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment.

The district, Smith said, follows its policy recognizing the open meetings requirement for subordinate groups. Under the policy, if the school board establishes a group tasked with making recommendations, then the meetings of that group would be open to the public.

Smith said examples of subordinate groups would include the Policy Review Committee and the Finance and Facilities Committee established by the school board. The boundary work group, he argued, is not such a group.

Moeder’s lawsuit states that other parents have asked the district to make the boundary work group meetings public. Earlier this month, he sent a letter to the district asking that the work group’s final meeting on Nov. 3 be open to the public. The district said the meeting would remain closed.

In his lawsuit, Moeder asks for a ruling that would prohibit Shawnee Mission from forming such work groups that meet out of public view, or alternatively make any work group meetings open to the public in the future.

Includes reporting by The Star’s Jenna Thompson.