LEBANON — Plans to fill a soon-to-be vacant seat on the Lebanon School Board have some former officials worried the public will be shut out of the decision-making process.

Board members early this month proposed deliberating on candidates for the position in nonpublic session, saying a private meeting would allow them to speak freely and away from the public eye.

Under state law, the School Board itself has the power to appoint a replacement to fill a vacancy until the next election.

Critics say the public has a right to know why one candidate is selected over another, and argue the nine-member body should be more transparent in its selection.

“If you go into nonpublic, you’re hiding something. Plain and simple,” former School Board member Al Patterson said last week. “The public elects these people into their positions and there is no reason for anything other than transparency.”

Board member Erin Madory submitted her letter of resignation on May 1, saying she intends to move overseas before the coming school year. And school officials hope to choose a replacement two weeks before the resignation takes effect on July 1.

However, it’s not yet decided how they’ll do that.

To fill past vacancies, it appears the School Board sometimes met in private under a provision of the state’s Right-to-Know law meant to protect someone’s reputation, School Board Chairwoman Wendy Hall said during a May 8 meeting.

Other times — such as when the board replaced former member Robert McCarthy in 2017 — it discussed candidates in open session. Formal votes and the questioning of candidates must be done publicly, SAU 88 Superintendent Joanne Roberts said in a CATV recording of the meeting.

“The problem that we had last time was that not only did we have to have the vote in public but we were counseled that we needed to have our deliberations in public, which was extraordinarily awkward,” School Board member Richard Milius said in the recording.

The ideal situation, he added, would be to come out a nonpublic meeting with one candidate in mind.

Hall, who declined a request for a phone interview, wrote in an email to the Valley News last week that the plan is now to hold interviews and discussions in open session.

“(But) should an issue come up that requires a non-public meeting per NH regulations, the Board would have to decide how to best proceed,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, Patterson, a retired police officer, said the notion of holding a nonpublic meeting is one of several examples of the School Board failing to be transparent.

The school district was called out early this year for not posting meeting minutes on its website, and the School Board was criticized in March for leaving board vote tallies off the city ballot, he said.

“For them to be elected and them to get paid, I have a right to know how they vote so I can hold them accountable,” Patterson said. “If you’re not willing to be held accountable, then you shouldn’t be in that position.”

Former School Board Chairman Jeff Peavey also critiqued the board for performing little public outreach while crafting its $29.4 million modernization project, which was voted down at the polls in March.

“The transparency piece to me is not great,” said Peavey, a cobbler in West Lebanon who now lives in Enfield, last week. “Board members always say ‘How come we don’t get much community participation?’ You’re not being transparent, and how can the community come out and communicate things when you don’t let them know.”

However, board members counter that communication has improved.

Meeting minutes, agendas and packets are posted online in a timely manner, and every School Board meeting is broadcast on CATV, said School Board member Tammy Begin.

“I think we’re pretty transparent on what we need to do and how we do it,” she said in a phone interview.

Messages left last week for School Board members Mary Davidson, Tom Harkins and Milius were not returned. Board members Jenica Nelan and Madory declined interview requests and referred a reporter to Hall, the chairwoman, or the superintendent.

Nelan had planned to speak with a reporter on Thursday but canceled 30 minutes beforehand, saying the superintendent already responded to questions.

“I believe that the Board continues to act in a transparent manner in making meeting information available to the public,” she wrote.

Individual board members have declined to comment on several controversial topics over the past three years, citing a district policy that designates the board’s chair as its spokesperson.

That policy, which was enacted in 2013, is meant to prevent an individual board member either providing inaccurate information or distorting the full board’s position on an issue, said School Board Vice Chairman Adam Nemeroff, who also served as chairman from March 2018 to 2019.

While board members each have their own thoughts, expressing them can be “challenging” because the School Board ultimately acts as a single body after voting, Nemeroff said. That’s largely why the group often attempts to speak with a single voice, he added.

“Ultimately, in no way does a board member, once they become a public official, give up their underlying rights as an individual,” Nemeroff said.

Meanwhile, Hall said there’s nothing in the board’s policies “that precludes an individual Board member from exercising their 1st amendment rights.”

While it isn’t unusual for the chair of an elected body to serve as its spokesperson, only a few boards in the Upper Valley discourage members who are not the chair from speaking to the press.

The Thetford Selectboard is one.

The Hartford School Board is another; it has had a policy for more than a decade that says board members should not “speak for the board except to repeat explicitly stated board decisions,” and that board members should also “support the legitimacy and authority of the final determination of the board on any matter, irrespective of the member’s personal position on the issue.”

It’s different at the Lebanon City Council. While the mayor is the City Council’s “chief spokesperson,” a role that falls on the assistant mayor when the mayor is absent, a media policy adopted in 2012 also encourages individual councilors to comment on “events and issues of personal interest to them.”

“Certainly we’re all elected individually and we’re allowed to express our opinions to the press individually,” Mayor Tim McNamara said on Monday.

Patterson, who now sits on the city’s Zoning Board, said he hopes the School Board will align its policies more closely with the City Council. People don’t need to always agree on issues, he said, but the public needs to know what its elected representatives think.

The School Board is accepting applications for the open seat until Friday, May 31. People can find out more at www.sau88.net.

Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.