At the same time, it also appears to reveal a three-month gap between when the offer was reportedly made and when the board was notified of the proposal.
A review of the recording, which became public after a proposed Southwest Rochester land deal fell through, follows a July 14 social media post by Rochester City Council member Michael Wojcik, who alleged the proposed donation of 40 acres in Northwest Rochester was hidden from the school board and public while the district sought annexation of a proposed Southwest site.
Wow, after hiding data from the public and the school board on an offer of free land the @RPS535 board offers @munoz535 an extension. I am stunned. #rochmn please elect school board members who won’t tolerate this behavior. Hey candidates where do you stand?
— Michael Wojcik (@VoteWojcik) July 15, 2020
In a July 17 email to Wojcik, the board refuted the claim, and Board Chairwoman Deborah Seelinger restated the assertion during Tuesday’s board meeting.
“The allegation that Superintendent (Michael) Muñoz hid a potential property donation from the school board or that the district hid the potential donation from the public is patently and categorically false,” she said, adding that she was disappointed in the false narrative posted by Wojcik.
The School Board appears to have been officially told about the proposed donation in a Jan. 2 written update from Muñoz, less than two weeks before the donation was made public through an email exchange between Muñoz and Rochester City Administrator Steve Rymer.
“I do have an individual who reached out to me and wanted to donate some land to the district for a middle school in the northwest part of Rochester,” the update states. “We are currently looking at the property and CRW (Architecture and Design Group) will reach out to the owner to get a better understanding on the land being offered to the district.”
Wojcik said he was made aware of the proposed donation in December and shared the information with city staff, which had already identified the site as a possible location for a middle school.
The initial proposal was made on Oct. 3, according to a Jan. 13 press release from Iowa-based developer Mark Kramer, who offered the land.
In a Jan. 7 closed meeting set to discuss renegotiation on a Southwest property, school board member Mark Schleusner indicated he was not fully aware of the proposed donation, which was for 20 acres at the time.
“Where’s the 20 acres?” he asked. “We will find out eventually, right?”
The donation was identified as being near a water tower at 50th Avenue Northwest, north of Valley High Drive.
Muñoz added that he was made aware of the offer after being introduced to Kramer by Council President Randy Staver.
Staver acknowledged arranging an initial meeting by phone, but he said he wasn’t aware of details related to the proposal until it was discussed by the council as part of the school district’s annexation request in Southwest Rochester.
While the Jan. 2 update and Jan. 7 meeting show the School Board was aware of the proposed land donation by the time it was made public, the School Board’s policy at the time kept the issue shrouded.
Prior to a Feb. 24 meeting, the board entered closed meetings regarding property discussions without identifying which parcels were being addressed.
Minnesota’s open-meeting law states “the public body must identify on the record the particular real or personal property that is the subject of the closed meeting.”
Heather Nessler, the School District’s executive director of communications, marketing and technology, said the oversight from past meetings was addressed earlier this year.
“Rochester Public Schools worked with legal counsel to review its procedures for going into closed session following the Jan. 7 meeting and adjusted its practices to ensure the Board identified the properties discussed at the Feb. 24 and April 28 closed sessions,” she said.
Nessler added that the donation wouldn’t have been listed as a discussion topic heading into the Jan. 7 closed meeting, since the primary focus was on Southwest property.
Approximately three minutes of the 33-minute closed-door meeting involved discussion of the donated site.
The School Board seemed to point to its discussion in the email to Wojcik.
“It was discussed in closed session, as policy stipulates, a number of times before the Board determined that the cost to modify this property to make it suitable for a school building was prohibitive,” the emails states.
Wojcik questioned the possible inclusion of a topic outside the intended discussion in a request to Casey Carmody of the Department of Administration’s Data Practices Office.
She indicated discussion of the donation on Jan. 7 could raise concerns.
“A closed meeting would be limited to discussions on topics as provided in its statement on the record, as required by Minn. Stat. 13D.01, subd. 3,” she wrote in a reply to Wojcik. “If other topics were discussed in a closed meeting that went beyond the topics given in its statement, then it seems likely that the board did not fully comply with the (open meeting law).”
The Feb. 24 closed-meeting recording, which is also now public due to the failed land deal, included more in-depth discussion regarding the potential donation as a backup for the Southwest property, in case annexation failed, which happened on April 20.
Prior to that meeting, two potential sites owned by Kramer, along with property owned by Annette and Scott Purrington, were announced as subjects of planned discussion.
During that meeting, the school board appeared split between the options as a backup to the Southwest site.
“I prefer the free site,” Muñoz said, adding that cost was the factor for favoring the Kramer property. ”In my opinion, they are both close enough.”
Some board members, however, cited concerns about the property’s proximity to the district’s boundary shared with the Byron School District.
Final discussions regarding the decision to purchase the Purrington land following the failure of the Southwest annexation occurred during an April 28 closed meeting, which has not been made public, since the purchase hasn’t been finalized.
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