04/29/2012
In Aitken v. Lambton Kent District School Board, [2002] O.J. No. 3026, the Divisional Court set aside the Lambton Kent District School Board’s resolution approving the closing of Chatham Collegiate Institute because the senior staff and trustees held a secret meeting prior to making this resolution. The court set aside the resolution because "the heart of the decision-making was conducted out of public view".
In this case, the School Board held public meetings relating to the closing of Chatham Collegiate Institute and produced financial information showing the economic need to close the school. The School Board also held a meeting where the public was not given notice of the meeting (i.e., not advertised in the newspaper). At that meeting, which was attended by 7 of the 10 trustees, various reports relating to the closing of Chatham Collegiate Institute were presented and discussed but no minutes of the meeting were kept. Subsequently, the School Board at a public meeting passed a resolution approving the closing of the school. At these public meetings, the applicants to this judicial review disputed the financial information that was put forward and claimed that annual projected savings if the school was closed were significantly overstated. The applicants brought an application for judicial review of the School Board’s decision and for orders quashing or setting aside the closure resolution and prohibiting the closing of the school.
The court reviewed section 207(1) of the Education Act which provides that all school board meetings must be open to the public. The court determined that the secret meeting was held without the knowledge of the applicants and it excluded the applicants and the public contrary to section 207 of the Education Act. The court concluded that the School Board "deprived the applicants of a level playing field to such a degree that the applicants have been deprived procedural fairness and the appearance of procedural fairness has been irretrievably compromised". The court came to this conclusion, in part, because there were no minutes of the secret meeting and there was no affidavit indicating that the applicants had not been negatively affected by the secret meeting.
