School board of management procedure

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Bubbly Scot

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I'm seeking opinions and/or clarity on what can be seen as a bit of a grey area. A schools Board of Management need to call an emergency meeting. The constitution states that this can be called by the principle with the approval of the chairperson. The meeting is to be held as soon as possible "after notification of such meeting has been conveyed to all available members" (quoted from the constitution). The usual quorum shall be required.

My question is, should the principle/chariperson only contact and recieve confirmation of attendance from as many as required to form the quorum or should every member be notified of this meeting? The phrasing in the constitution appears a little vague but I take it to mean ALL members should be notified.

I believe a call to the department of science and education may well be required but I'd be interested in opinions meantime.
 
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Hi there,
I used to be on the BOM of a primary school, when an emergency/ urgent meet was required our principal or chairperson would phone every member of the board and each time the quorum was reached.. Usually all members would attend...I dont have our constitution handy to read through but I'm nearly sure that all members must be informed..

Good luck
 
As far as I am aware the requirements for Emergency meetings are:

The Principal (with the approval of the Chairperson) shall have power to convene an emergency special meeting of the Board of Management should the need arise; such a meeting shall be held as soon as possible after notification of such meeting has been conveyed to all available members and the normal quorum shall be required.

The word "available" certainly clouds things a little - how does the principal determine if a person is available or not without informing them of the meeting? Perhaps the word was include so that in situations where it is known that a board member is abroad and cannot be contacted, then it is acceptable to just inform the members who are contactable. I would personally take it that each board member should be informed unless it is known in advance that a member is not in a position to be contacted.

The governments education website probably has information (education.ie).
 
The exact situation is that the principal should endeavour to contact all members of the board. The conveying of the notice is a separate issue and is dependent on the person being available/contactable. The requirement to use best efforts to contact all members of the board stands at all times and is not diminshed by the nature of a meeting, emergency or not. A wise principal would note how/when he/she attempted to contact all members of board, particularly where an emergency meeting is being called and he/she should have the minutes of said meeting reflect this.

Should you, attending the meeting, have knowledge that board members were not contacted when they may have been or that best efforts were not made to contact them then you should raise this point as suppression of this information could, dependent on the nature of matter being considered and its ramifications, cause to be called into question your own actions if decisions arising from the meeting are set aside because of procedural irregualities in the calling of the meeting and you did not raise these at the time.
 
TreeTiger said:
The word "available" certainly clouds things a little - how does the principal determine if a person is available or not without informing them of the meeting? Perhaps the word was include so that in situations where it is known that a board member is abroad and cannot be contacted, then it is acceptable to just inform the members who are contactable. I would personally take it that each board member should be informed unless it is known in advance that a member is not in a position to be contacted.
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Thanks Inspector, as the board of management is a corporate body I felt that the rules would be something akin to those that determine procedures for limited companies, which I'm well versed in. I was somewhat surprised to see the constitution was at best..pretty vague.

Treetiger, it was the use of the word "available" that I found to be ambigious. To my way of thinking, if a board member hadn't advised of their unavailability then unless repeated, unsuccessfull attempts were made to reach them, they would be classed as "available".

Thanks for the link, I had looked there earlier but not found anything.
 
Orga said:
The exact situation is that the principal should endeavour to contact all members of the board. The conveying of the notice is a separate issue and is dependent on the person being available/contactable. The requirement to use best efforts to contact all members of the board stands at all times and is not diminshed by the nature of a meeting, emergency or not. A wise principal would note how/when he/she attempted to contact all members of board, particularly where an emergency meeting is being called and he/she should have the minutes of said meeting reflect this.
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Our posts crossed, hence the double posting. Thanks for that, it's as I thought.

This part, quoted below has not shown up on your original post, only when I hit "quote" for my reply did I see it...very curious.

Should you, attending the meeting, have knowledge that board members were not contacted when they may have been or that best efforts were not made to contact them then you should raise this point as suppression of this information could, dependent on the nature of matter being considered and its ramifications, cause to be called into question your own actions if decisions arising from the meeting are set aside because of procedural irregualities in the calling of the meeting and you did not raise these at the time.
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My understanding from what you're saying is that the matter MUST be dealt with at the next meeting. The reason the emergency meeting was called for has been dealt with, the absent/uninformed board members were only told afterwards. One has lodged a complaint with the chairperson, the other is checking things out so as to go in as informed as possible.
 
The issue in question is whether reasonable efforts were made to contact the persons who were absent. If reasonable efforts were made then the meeting was correctly called and all decisions flowing from the meeting were validly made. If not then you have a very different kettle of turbot. After that, everything depends on the "complaint" - I use inverted commas as it is unclear to me what is meant by complaint in your post.

There is a big difference between being absent and no efforts having been made to inform the board member.
 
Just to clarify, three out of eight board members were not informed about the meeting. Two were told that the quorum was reached so they didn't bother contacting the rest as they had to pull the meeting together quickly. I won't post the ins and outs here but basically two board members are well vexed that such a major decision was taken without them. One is also concerned that they weren't notified for two days, leaving the board members exposed- a board decision was taken but members of the board know nothing of it. There was a slight risk of retaliation by a parent (in my opinion).

So all in all, we were told that no effort was made to contact the three absent members. Two of them find this unacceptable and aim to put a stop to the practise if possible.
 
TreeTiger said:
Perhaps the word was include so that in situations where it is known that a board member is abroad and cannot be contacted, then it is acceptable to just inform the members who are contactable. I would personally take it that each board member should be informed unless it is known in advance that a member is not in a position to be contacted.
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With the enormous use of mobile phones every member should be relatively easy to contact. Whether they are available to attend is another matter.
 
Bubbly Scot said:
So all in all, we were told that no effort was made to contact the three absent members. Two of them find this unacceptable and aim to put a stop to the practise if possible.
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Have found a section that spells it out: http://www.education.ie/servlet/blobservlet/padmin_bom_procedures.pdf?language=EN

Under Section 13 (Procedure for Board Meetings) ; Section C (Ordinary Meetings), sub section ii, there is a paragraph, part of which states: "It should be clear that all members of the Board are entitled to be notified of all meetings"

I am very surprised that any Principal or Board Chairperson would think it's acceptable to hold a meeting when all members have not been notified, and personally feel that any decisions made at such a meeting should be invalid.
 
As an ex principal in my experience while a principal may call an emergency meeting of BOM,it was our BOM practice to notify the secretary of BOM who in turn notified all members.The question of quorum never arose until available members showed up at time and date requested.As its usual practice for secretary to draw up agenda of meeting in consultation with chairperson and principal it was felt that secretary should notify members as they are required to circulate agenda to members.
 
In a nutshell that practice should desist and properly speaking the meeting should be reconvened as it was improperly convened originally and the decision taken should be set aside - the real life story is it depends on whether one and all can live with the decision taken by the board. Sounds like someone wants to tug the principal's ear and say, "I'm a member of the board, you are obliged to contact me too."
 
Thanks, Orga. that's exactly what I plan to do.I've written to the relevant department because I want to be absolutely sure of my facts. The comments here were very useful as well. Even if they were acting legally, which I doubt, I think ethically ALL members should have been notified and given the opportunity to attend. Aside from everything else it was a major decision that was taken with a risk of reprecution from the people it was taken against and some board members were left in the dark for three days. I actually learnt more about it "on the street" than I did from the board I am a member of!

Thanks again to everyone for their comments.
 
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