YOUNGSTOWN — A new filing in the open meetings lawsuit filed by a Lowellville couple suggests the Lowellville Board of Education committed another violation.

It also asks the 7th District Court of Appeals to overturn a board decision last summer to switch to a remote-only education plan for the school district for the first nine weeks of the school year.

Christopher and Gina Crilley, parents of two Lowellville students, also want the appeals court to order the school board to pay for their attorney fees since the litigation began.

The 40-page filing, written by attorney Robert T. McDowall of Austintown, outlines the dispute between the Crilleys and the school district. The school board’s attorneys have not yet filed a response.

A new detail, they claim, is that when the school district approved its superintendent’s decision at an Aug. 10 board meeting to switch to remote-only learning, it did so after a 2.5-hour closed-door session that the Crilleys believe also contained an Ohio Open Meetings Act violation.

The meeting’s stated purpose was to discuss personnel matters involving a single cafeteria employee. But when the board convened publicly afterward, it held a three-minute meeting attended by two members of the public and voted to approve four resolutions, the last of which was to “approve the remote start for the first nine weeks.”

The school district did not indicate that the school reopening plan was an agenda item for the Aug. 10, 2020, special meeting. Also, the board did not indicate that the executive session — held without the public being allowed to attend — would include discussion of the remote-learning plan, the filing states.

The board “obviously” discussed the remote-learning plan during the executive session. Superintendent Eugene Thomas said he discussed the remote plan during the closed-door meeting, the filing states: “Any executive session discussion of the reopening plan (or revisions) — which obviously occurred here — would have been an open meetings act violation itself regardless of whether the board of education thereafter took ‘official action.'”

The Crilleys maintain that the superintendent never publicly discussed his reasons for moving the school district to a remote-only learning model until after they filed their lawsuit Aug. 20.

The superintendent “claims to have investigated” whether the school district should switch to remote-only learning from July 28 until the special Aug. 10 meeting and then “fundamentally” changed the reopening plan to remote only. But he “never disclosed the sources of information upon which he made that decision, (never) held a noticed public meeting concerning revising the reopening plan or solicited any public or board-of-education input for his decision,” the filing states.

The school district has argued in its filings that the board’s Aug. 10 decision to switch to remote-only learning was “symbolic” only because the superintendent had sole discretion to decide whether to switch to remote only learning. That was granted to him by Ohio House Bill 164, which provides guidance to school districts regarding in-person and remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ruling in the lawsuit by Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court and his magistrate, Tim Welsh, stated that the school board violated the open meetings act by failing to tell the public through the news media the reason for the Aug. 10, 2020, meeting and failing to have a proper policy for notifying the public.

It stated that the meeting was held “in violation of the open meetings act” and the court would “under ordinary circumstances” declare the board’s action in approving the superintendent’s remote learning plan invalid.

But because the board action was symbolic and not required, the court was not permitted to overturn a “vain and useless thing.”

As a result, Krichbaum refused to overturn the reopening plan.

erunyan@tribtoday.com