Cancelling Regular Meetings

Dear Superintendents:

A number of you have asked about cancelling regular board meetings, which as you know are generally scheduled at the annual organizational meeting.  Some formality is required to cancel regular board meetings (remember that members of the public may plan on attending to provide comment on school-related issues).

If you have a meeting coming up before the regular meeting you want to cancel, you could simply agendize at this prior meeting the cancellation of the regular meeting and the Board can vote to approve the cancellation.

If that is not an option, another way to approach this is to use the meeting adjournment rules.  The Brown Act allows you to adjourn a meeting to another date and time by following a particular process.  One or more Board Members can adjourn the meeting if a quorum is not present, but a superintendent (acting as secretary to the Board) can do this as well by appearing at the meeting location at the appointed time, declaring the meeting adjourned to another place and time, and following certain posting requirements.  These are addressed in the attached bulletin.

Grant Herndon
General Counsel
Schools Legal Service