Brown Act Smoke, Governance Fire
What California’s open-meeting law is actually supposed to protect and a look into the questions Laguna Beach parents keep asking
If you have spent more than five minutes watching a California school board meeting, you have probably heard someone say “Brown Act” with the confidence of a person holding either a law degree or a Facebook comment box.
Sometimes it is used correctly, but at other times it is used like a magic spell. Public officials like to use “Brown Act” as if it means “you are not allowed to ask what we are doing,” which is convenient but not exactly the point of open government.
So let’s make this easy to understand.
The Brown Act is California’s open meeting law, and it applies to local government bodies, including school boards. The whole idea is that public business should be conducted in public, unless a specific legal exception allows otherwise. The law itself says public agencies exist to conduct the people’s business, that their actions should be taken openly, and that their deliberations should be conducted openly.
In regular speaking terms, the school board is not a private club, and the public does not lose its right to understand the process just because the topic is uncomfortable.
The Brown Act does not mean every conversation a board member has is illegal, or that trustees cannot talk to the public. It does not mean that every closed session is automatically suspicious, or that every bad governance decision is a legal violation.
The Brown Act is simple in theory and maddening in practice, especially in school districts, where parents are trying to understand decisions about their children, teachers, the superintendent, facilities, tax dollars, and the district’s overall direction. At the same time, everyone in power keeps performing the world’s least enjoyable governance ballet.
For a regular meeting, the agenda must be posted at least 72 hours in advance and include a brief description of each item to be discussed or acted on, including closed-session items. The board generally cannot discuss or act on anything not on the posted agenda, except under narrow exceptions.
This means the agenda is not just a list but an official public notice.
If you’re wondering why agenda language makes people nervous, it’s because words like “governance,” “district leadership,” and “legal update” may be legitimate in the right context, but it is not exactly calming anyone down. It makes people wonder what is being hidden behind the curtain, especially when the meeting arrives, and the board suddenly seems ready to move as if the real discussion had already happened somewhere else.
In a closed session, the ballet gets even stranger.
Closed session is legal, and a school board can meet privately for certain issues, including specific personnel matters, legal issues, labor negotiations, and other topics where privacy or legal exposure is mandated by law. A superintendent’s employment can often fall into that category, which is why “closed session” and “superintendent” often show up together during periods of district chaos.
However, a closed session is not supposed to be a second private board meeting where the real governing takes place, with the public meeting serving as a ceremonial reenactment.
When people hear “we can’t discuss closed session,” that may be true, but it is not the same thing as “nothing from closed session ever has to be reported.” Certain actions taken in closed session have to be publicly reported, including the vote or abstention of every member present. The public is not supposed to be left with “trust us” as the sole basis for governance.
Then there is the issue that makes everyone’s eyes twitch: serial meetings.
On a five-member board, two trustees can talk to each other without automatically creating a Brown Act violation because two is not a majority. This is because a majority (or three trustees for LBUSD) cannot use a series of communications, directly or through intermediaries, to discuss, deliberate, or take action on district business outside a properly noticed meeting.
A serial meeting is not always five people sneaking into a room with matching folders and villain lighting. It can be a chain. One trustee talks to another, who talks to another. One person becomes the hub and separately communicates with enough people to build agreement. An intermediary carries messages. Social media makes something feel casual when, legally and ethically, it may not be.
Then there is the harder governance problem, which may not always be easy to prove as a legal violation: sometimes two people appear to be steering the direction, and a third person may not need to be fully looped in because they reliably vote with them anyway.
This does not usually give anyone a clean smoking gun. However, it can still be a serious governance problem because the public meeting stops functioning as the place where ideas are meaningfully tested, debated, and explained, and instead becomes the place where a decision that already feels made is finally performed out loud.
These concerns have already surfaced in Laguna Beach.
To note, I have not found a public court ruling, an OC District Attorney finding, or a disclosed enforcement action stating that the LBUSD Board violated the Brown Act since 2016, which is an important distinction because saying “Brown Act violation” is easy, while proving one is a completely different exercise.
What does exist is a record of accusations, warnings, formal concerns, denials, and unanswered questions during the current board’s tenure.
In January 2025, current and former LBUSD board members raised concerns about possible Brown Act violations arising from the new board majority’s effort to install an interim superintendent. Former board members questioned whether discussions or decisions had happened outside public meetings, the board majority denied violating the law, and the candidate ultimately withdrew.
Then came the 2026 graduation vote, where a formal curative demand reportedly alleged a hub-and-spoke serial meeting through an intermediary before the board voted to move graduation to the Irvine Bowl.
And just this month, where President Sheri Morgan shared a press release announcing Dr. Austin’s appointment two days after the board approved a mutual separation agreement with Dr. Glass. That timing does not prove a Brown Act violation, but it absolutely explains why some community members are asking governance questions at board meetings.
A few of the questions I have are:
How did a superintendent’s separation happen?
When did the board decide it was moving in that direction?
When did conversations with Austin begin?
What was discussed in the months of consecutive closed sessions? Why was it not considered reportable?
Why the public meeting not the place where the decision was made, but the place where the decision finally became visible?
These are not conspiracy questions; they are governance ones.
Oakland Unified offers a useful example of why this type of superintendent transition can quickly become a major public trust crisis.
Just last year, Oakland Unified’s board approved a voluntary separation agreement with its superintendent after closed-session discussions. The decision came after weeks of concern that the board was moving privately to push out a superintendent whose contract had recently been extended, and the public meeting was where a major leadership change was announced without the kind of explanation many families expected.
Sound familiar? The reason Oakland resonates is not that every fact is identical to Laguna Beach, but because the public trust problem is the pattern.
A superintendent is suddenly on the way out. A board majority appears to have been working through a process the public could not see. People ask when the decision was actually made. The board points to the closed session. Critics point to the Brown Act. Everyone starts trying to reverse-engineer the process from agenda language, report-outs, votes, timelines, public statements, and the behavior of elected officials who somehow seem surprised by the public’s reaction.
This is why the Brown Act gets thrown around so much: it is one of the few tools the public has when it feels like the real meeting happened before the meeting.
But it also has limits.
The Brown Act does not require trustees to make everyone happy, agree with parents, or hold every difficult conversation in public. It does not turn bad judgment into an automatic legal violation. It sets the floor for open government, not the ceiling for ethical leadership.
The floor is a notice and reporting out only a vote if it happened. The floor is not using private chains, intermediaries, social media, or closed sessions to conduct public business outside public view.
I believe good governance should be higher than the floor.
So, going into next week’s board meeting, the public does not need to chase every rumor or become legal experts overnight, but people should understand what transparency is supposed to look like.
Watch the agenda and for vague language around major decisions. Watch what is listed for the closed session and for what gets reported out. Watch whether trustees explain their votes in public or whether the meeting feels like actual deliberation or like a decision that arrived already gift-wrapped.
Because the public can understand where there is smoke, there is likely a fire.
Sources:
Thank you for breaking this down, you have really captured how I as a parent have been feeling about LBUSD board behavior. I hope they understand why we feel this way and take strides to ensure the community is considered and involved in the running of the district. They are elected to do just that, so this should be no surprise that the community will hold them accountable if they don’t uphold that part of their role. It should be transparency and process over personal agenda everytime.