BERNE — At its Monday night meeting, the Berne-Knox-Westerlo Board of Education voted, 4 to 1, to have an attorney review its board handbook, after the board discussed whether a member should have contacted the press.

The board president, Matthew Tedeschi, had initially made a motion to do away with the handbook altogether, citing an incident in which board member Helen Lounsbury called The Enterprise about a social-media post the district described as a threat that led to police coming to the school.

The handbook had previously been a point of contention between Lounsbury and Tedeschi as Lounsbury pushed to follow policies on job postings.

Lounsbury told the board on Monday that she first heard about the student’s post on Wednesday, April 25, the morning after the student posted angrily on Instagram about the school. She said that she was being contacted by community members about it and so reached out to The Enterprise to suggest calling the district for further information. (See related letter to the editor.)

Lounsbury said that board members later, through email discussions, criticized her contacting The Enterprise and suggested that the board handbook be taken out of use because she had gone against a handbook rule that the board president act as the voice of the board. The Enterprise has filed a Freedom of Information Law request, asking for copies of electronic exchanges among school board members and administrators from the day before the incident, April 24, to April 30.

The FOIL officer responded that a response is anticipated on May 30 “due to the volume of the records requested and the fact that any responsive documents likely require review and redaction.”

Lounsbury told the board that she spoke with Robert Freeman, executive director of the state’s Committee on Open Government, and said Freeman told her that she had acted properly. Rather than no longer use the handbook, Lounsbury suggested the handbook committee clarify items in it.

Freeman confirmed that he had spoken with Lounsbury on May 2. He said that a board member has every right to speak to the press and that a policy restricting that is contrary to the First Amendment.

Tedeschi said at Monday’s meeting that what Lounsbury described was accurate; there had been an emailed conversation among board members critical of Lounsbury calling The Enterprise and supporting doing away with the handbook. But Tedeschi said that Lounsbury was going against past practices, which he said she has encouraged the board to follow.

“If we’re going to live and die by the handbook, then we should live and die by the handbook,” he later added.

Tedeschi said later at the meeting, if the board has Freeman as a source, along with the New York State School Boards Association and other resources, the handbook should not be needed.

“So let’s just get rid of the handbook,” he said. “Because we don’t need it. It’s one less committee we have.”

Lillian Sisson-Chrysler and Kimberly Lovell both attended the early morning school board meeting on April 25 along with Lounsbury, where they had first heard about the Instagram post.

Sisson-Chrysler, who is running for re-election next week, said that she had first contacted the superintendent upon hearing the news.

“Everything was taken care of immediately,” she said.

Lovell added that the board members did not know all the details about the situation at that point.

Tedeschi said that he was concerned that, while the administration was trying to deal with the situation on April 25 and contacting the community, school leaders would then have to be concerned with fielding questions from a reporter. He said even the board president should not be responding to the situation, but instead the administration should be dealing with it.

“The last thing that our team needs to be worried about is getting back to a reporter,” Tedeschi said.

“So who made the call?” Lounsbury later asked Tedeschi, after he said that the administration was responsible for communication about the particular matter.

“Well they didn’t have to,” said Tedeschi.

Nathan Elble said that the school had information about the incident in an email as well as a post on the Facebook page and the school website.

“The article that was in there solved absolutely nothing,” he said.

Elble later said that he thought Lounsbury, while she had a legal right to call the paper, had done the district “an injustice” because he said the story made it appear as though the board didn’t know what had been going on.

Lounsbury said it appeared as though voting to review the handbook was a reaction to her doing something the board didn’t agree with.

“The question was: Is it appropriate for me to make that call? And the answer is: yes,” she said.

Tedeschi made a motion to disband the board of education handbook, asking what the purpose of it is. Lounsbury said that the handbook offers guidelines for new board members. Tedeschi amended the motion to ask the district’s lawyer to review the appropriateness of the handbook.

Sisson-Chrysler said she didn’t want to do away from the handbook, but said she felt it needed to be reviewed. Lovell said at the end of the meeting that she voted “yes” because she lacks expertise in this area, and wants to have the attorney make a determination on the handbook before moving forward.

Lounsbury alone voted against having an attorney review the handbook; she said she thought it was a waste of money to review the book when much of the language comes from the New York State School Boards Association.

Tedeschi told The Enterprise on Tuesday that he was not sure how long the handbook has been in place.

“It hasn’t really been used until this year,” he said. He said it was recently updated this year.

Tedeschi said that he does not believe the handbook, which will be reviewed in its entirety, will take much time for the attorney to go over, adding that the cost would be less than what was charged for the attorney to review an Enterprise Freedom of Information Law request.

He also said that, if the guidelines from the handbook are to be in place, all board members should follow them.

Corrected on May 14, 2018: The caption for the picture of the valedictorian and salutatorian had been a duplicate of the caption from the other picture. It was replaced with the correct caption.