Prince George's County Board of Education votes to close Oct. 7 special meeting to hear appeals

Chairman Brandon Jackson opened the Prince George's County Board of Education’s Oct. 7, 2025 virtual special meeting and said the purpose was to review board appeals. He read the board’s internet-meeting rules and the legal justification for closing the public session, saying: “The meeting will be closed under the following provisions, all form general provisions, articles 3 dash 3 0 5, citations 1, 2, 7, 8, and 12.”

Jackson told members that discussing employees’ identities and ongoing or anticipated legal disputes in public could cause financial losses, reputation harm, or legal consequences, and then asked whether the board should close the Oct. 7 meeting for those purposes. The clerk conducted a roll-call vote; the board’s recorded responses were affirmative and the chair announced, “The motion to close the 10/07/2025 Prince George County Board of Education meeting is adopted.”

Before closing the public session, Jackson reviewed virtual-meeting procedures: members must remain on camera, mute until recognized, use the raise-hand icon, and are limited to two two-minute speaking turns per motion. He instructed members to exit the public link and reenter via a special-session link; board staff would admit members from a waiting room.

The move sends the board into a closed (executive) session to consider appeals and personnel- or litigation-related matters. No public votes or deliberations on substance were held in the public portion of the meeting; the board’s stated legal citations were read into the record as the basis for the closure.

The board did not state the identities of individual employees or the details of any appeals during the public session. The board scheduled no further public action in the publicly posted portion of the meeting; its next public-facing steps were not specified in the record.