Complaint alleges Maryland child-abuse task force violated open-meetings law

A Greenbelt resident has filed a complaint alleging that a Prince George’s County task force created to examine the handling of child-abuse issues in schools violated the state’s open-meetings law by closing a March session to the public.

The task force was created in the aftermath of the widely publicized child-pornography case involving Deonte Carraway, 22, a school volunteer arrested in early February on suspicion of directing children as young as 9 to perform sex acts and video-recording them.

Kevin Maxwell, chief executive of the Prince George’s school system, said in an interview in March that meetings of the task force are closed to the public to allow members to “get a lot done in a very short period of time” and that the panel’s recommendations would be released publicly.

 “We don’t want folks to have distraction to their conversations and to their work,” he said. “We want to make sure that they can get the work done and that they can get the work done well, with robust conversation and lots of time studying.”...

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/complaint-alleges-maryland-child-abuse-task-force-violated-open-meeting-law/2016/04/07/84b5e140-f9e0-11e5-9140-e61d062438bb_story.html?wprss=rss_local-montgomery-social&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter