From staff reports
Dalton Daily Citizen
DALTON —
The Whitfield County Board of Education is scheduled to hold a public hearing Thursday under the Georgia Fair Dismissal Act.
Officials would not say who requested the hearing.
Such hearings are similar to court trials. Both sides may call witnesses and present reasons the employee should or shouldn’t have been dismissed. School officials notified news media of Thursday’s 9 a.m. meeting at the central office at 7:15 a.m. on Wednesday.
School system spokesman Eric Beavers said the district’s policy prevents him from discussing matters of personnel. He declined to provide the name of the individual who requested the hearing, but he acknowledged the person’s name is contained in a public record.
“We’ve been advised by our attorneys that we don’t need to release that information right now,” he said.
Beavers said he would comply with an open records request for the information within three days as allowed by law. David E. Hudson, an attorney for the Georgia Press Association, said public agencies aren’t required to answer questions, but they must comply with open records requests.
“The three-day response time for records requests is not intended as a stall device for the agency,” Hudson said. “It is to accommodate difficulty in obtaining a record or uncertainty about whether it should be produced.”
