On August 31, the Malden School Committee sat down for an Executive Session with seven separate items on the docket -- and by the time the week that followed was over, nearly all of them had generated paper.
Three of the seven items were litigation or collective bargaining matters: strategy in the city's ongoing case against the state's Supervisor of Public Records, contract negotiations with the Malden Education Association, and a new employment lawsuit filed against the district less than a month earlier. Two were Open Meeting Law complaints -- one filed by Malden News Network, the other by OpenCommonwealth. And two were routine approvals of prior executive session minutes, from June 24 and August 3.
An Admitted Violation
The most straightforward outcome came first. On September 2, Committee attorney Howard L. Greenspan responded to the Open Meeting Law complaint Malden News Network filed on August 3, alleging that notice of that day's Special Meeting hadn't been posted to the city's official website in time.
The Committee didn't contest it. "The Committee concedes that notice of the Special Meeting of the Committee on August 3, 2026 was not posted to the official website www.cityofmalden.org until the morning of the scheduled meeting in violation of the notice requirements of OML," Greenspan wrote.
The response calls the lapse an "inadvertent oversight," not willful or intentional, and says the district has since instructed staff to post agendas to both the city and district websites at least 48 hours ahead of every meeting. It asks the Attorney General's Division of Open Government to decline further review on the strength of that remedial step.
A Second Complaint, No Violation Acknowledged
The same day, the Committee's attorney sent a different answer to a different complainant. Open Commonwealth had filed its own Open Meeting Law complaint, and the response to it ran to 128 pages across two documents -- 62 pages in the first, 66 in the second, counting attachments. The documents are worth a look for anyone following the underlying dispute, but the bottom line the attorney offered was unambiguous: "Based on the above, the School Committee did not violate the Open Meeting Law as alleged in the complaint."
Open Commonwealth disagrees with that conclusion. And tells us they have already filed an appeal with the Attorney General's office.
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View Part 1 →Response to Open Commonwealth Complaint, Part 1 (62 pp.)
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View Part 2 →Response to Open Commonwealth Complaint, Part 2 (66 pp.)
Minutes That Don't Exist Yet
Two days later, on September 4, the same attorney answered a third request -- this one from Open Commonwealth, seeking the regular and executive session minutes from the August 31 meeting itself, the very session where all of this had been discussed.
The answer: there's nothing to hand over yet. "The regular session minutes for the August 31, 2026 Committee meeting do not yet exist in either approved or draft form," Greenspan wrote, adding that "the requested executive session minutes for the August 31, 2026 Committee meeting do not yet exist in either approved or draft form" either.
That leaves an open question for anyone trying to follow along: with seven substantive items on a single Executive Session agenda, how does a public body keep an accurate account of what it discussed and decided if no draft record exists days after the meeting ends?
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View the letter →Response on Aug. 31 Minutes (Sept. 4, 2026)
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View the agenda →August 31, 2026 School Committee Agenda
New Counsel, in a New Lawsuit
One of the three litigation items on the August 31 agenda was Annabelle Feliz v. Malden Public Schools, a contract and employment case filed in Middlesex Superior Court on August 10 -- the lawsuit Civic Broadside first reported on August 21.1 The day after the Executive Session, the district brought in outside help: Douglas I. Louison, a founding partner at Louison, Costello, Condon & Pfaff, LLP, a Boston firm that describes itself as a comprehensive defense litigation and labor and employment practice, filed a notice of appearance as private counsel for the district.
The case is on the Middlesex Superior Court's Fast Track, with a final pretrial conference tentatively due by December 2027 and judgment by August 2028 if it runs its full course. Plaintiff Annabelle Feliz is represented by Rosa Lee Klaneski of Springfield.
The Firm Named Twice
Also on September 4, the Supervisor of Records sent Malden's Records Access Officer a determination in a separate, older public-records fight -- one over years of invoices the city has paid to Murphy, Hesse, Toomey & Lehane, LLP. The requestor, Open Commonwealth, wanted to know whether the city was withholding records that the law firm itself might be holding on the city's behalf.
The Supervisor's office didn't resolve that question outright. Instead, it ordered the city to explain itself: "Based on the information provided in the City's response, it is unclear whether there is an agency relationship between the City and Murphy, Hesse, Toomey & Lehane, LLP. As such, I find the City must provide additional information regarding the relationship between it and Murphy, Hesse, Toomey & Lehane, LLP, and the scope of any such relationship." The city has ten business days to respond.
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View the determination →Supervisor of Records Determination, SPR26/3321
Murphy, Hesse, Toomey & Lehane wasn't just the subject of that determination this week -- it was also actively representing the Committee's interests elsewhere. On September 2, the same day the Open Commonwealth OML complaint was answered, MHTL attorney Felicia S. Vasudevan emailed Bruce Friedman -- who has been in litigation with the School Committee since 2021 -- to close the door on a settlement offer he'd made in a separate, older case: "Malden does not agree to your proposal."
Two State Offices, One Committee
Open Meeting Law and Public Records Law are both long-standing, statewide requirements of Massachusetts municipal governance, but they're policed by two different state offices: the Attorney General's Division of Open Government handles Open Meeting Law, while the Secretary of the Commonwealth's Public Records Division handles public records. This week, the Malden School Committee generated active matters in front of both -- an admitted OML violation, a second OML complaint resolved in the Committee's favor, an open records dispute over a third-party law firm, and, separately, a records request for minutes that don't yet exist.
Add in the new lawsuit that brought in outside counsel, and a settlement offer rejected on a fifth-year-old case, and it's a full week of paper for a body that, on paper, met exactly once.
As students settle in to a new school year, the Malden School Committee is spending real administrative and legal time, attention, and money on matters that have nothing to do with the classroom.
