South Carolina district releases lawsuit settlement between the district and former principal
The Beaufort County School District in South Carolina has released a lawsuit settlement between the district and former principal LaVerne Davis after the state’s chief law officer said it was illegal to keep such agreements secret. In a response to the school board's request for an opinion last month, the S.C. Attorney General's Office said settlement agreements involving a public body such as a school district are public information. The opinion ends a nearly five-month debate between the district and state press advocates over the release of the settlement. In essence, the office's response condemns a confidentiality clause within the cash settlement agreement signed in May by the district and Ms. Davis. Though a district can redact certain kinds of information within an agreement, a public body cannot consider an agreement purely confidential, the opinion said. The district, Ms. Davis, state press advocates, and the Beaufort Gazette have debated the confidentiality clause's legality since a Gazette reporter sent the district a written request for a copy of the settlement in June. The request was denied for a number of reasons, all criticized by the S.C. Press Association. Last month, the district's attorney, Ken Childs, admitted the reasons supplied for the denial were "boilerplate" responses meant to deter the Gazette and end the issue.
Board members said they never knew about the details of the settlement, and school board chairman Fred Washington Jr. said all agreements will now come before the board for approval. The board passed a public disclosure policy in August in response to questions about district secrecy, urging the district and the board to release information to the public with some exceptions. The policy also says it might keep information secret if it had the option under the S.C. Freedom of Information Act and it was financially beneficial, according to the superintendent, to conceal it, among other exceptions. Superintendent Valerie Truesdale said she believed the attorney general's opinion reiterated what the board has already agreed to. The opinion, however, does not carry any immediate legal weight, and it wouldn't necessarily stop the district from signing such an agreement again, said Jay Bender, an attorney for the S.C. Press Association. Details of the settlement were agreed to without district officials' and board members' knowledge, Mr. Washington said in a recent letter to the Gazette. Kassi Sandifer, a Columbia attorney representing the S.C. School Boards Insurance Trust, the district's insurer, negotiated the settlement. Alan Smith, a school district attorney in Columbia, said because the agreement was signed without the district's knowledge, "the school district was in a difficult situation." The board and the district didn't want to risk a lawsuit from Ms. Davis for violating what essentially is an illegal agreement. One school board member, Jim Bequette, and Mr. Childs have also voiced concerns that the ruling deeming confidentiality agreements illegal could drive up the costs of settlements and, consequently, the cost of insurance for school districts. Paul Krohne, executive director of the S.C. School Boards Association, which oversees the insurance trust, reacted negatively to the opinion. Although the opinion carries little legal weight, he said he was concerned that the end result could be the abolishment of confidentiality agreements, which he said are common. "It's really ridiculous that somehow the Beaufort board and other bodies are being accused of trying to hide things," he said. "It's simply a tool that is used in negotiation of settlements at the lowest possible cost."
Beaufort Gazette By Jonathan Cribbs