OPEN MEETING LAW COMPLAINT — PART 2

Malden School Committee Buries Notice of the Meeting About Its Own Open Meeting Law Complaint

Days after the Attorney General rejected the Committee's request for more time, the Aug. 3 special-meeting notice is missing from the city's official posting location — and clicks deep on the district's own site.

Why hasn't the City done a better job providing notice of the upcoming Special Meeting of the Malden School Committee? That notice has yet to be posted to the cityofmalden.org website.

The key item on the School Committee's Special Meeting agenda is for an Executive Session1:

Purpose 1 - M.G.L. c. 30A, § 21(a)(1) (i.e., Purpose 1) to discuss an Open Meeting Law complaint dated June 25, 2026 filed by Bruce Friedman against the Malden School Committee. — Docket, Special Meeting of the Malden School Committee, Monday, August 3, 2026
The full action item on the Aug. 3 special-meeting docket: call to order, pledge, roll call, a single executive-session item on the Friedman complaint, and adjournment. No other business is scheduled.
The Malden Public Schools website lists the Aug. 3 special meeting under District Information > School Committee > School Committee Meetings — four clicks from the district homepage. The Agenda link is live; Minutes, Meeting Recording, and Supporting Documents are blank.

Although that page lists an area for posting supporting documents, none have been provided.

We checked the city's own Agenda Center three times over 21 hours, spanning the day before publication to the evening of. The Aug. 3 School Committee special meeting notice did not appear in any of them.

Thursday, July 30, 8:49 PM — the City's Agenda Center, School Committee section, most recent entry: June 24, 2026.
Friday, July 31, 8:54 AM — same page, same result. No Aug. 3 entry.
Friday, July 31, 6:14 PM — checked again ahead of publication. Still nothing posted for Aug. 3.

The original complaint was filed on June 25, 2026 and alleges that the violation arose on 12/7/20 and is ongoing, with the Chair, Gary Christenson, identified as the specific person alleged to have committed the violation. We're including a link to the actual Open Meeting Law complaint and a supplemental document which further describes the basis of the complaint.

  • Open Meeting Law Complaint Form, filed by Bruce Friedman, June 25, 2026
    View PDF →
  • Basis of Complaint (Exhibits A–W), supplemental filing
    View PDF →

According to the Office of the Attorney General, each public body in Massachusetts has a single, official location where it must post all meeting notices. Local public bodies of municipalities like Malden may adopt a website as the official notice posting method for all the public bodies within the municipality, and must notify the Attorney General's Office in writing of the website's address. The Attorney General's latest updated spreadsheet listing the designated websites was last updated on 7/27/26. The City of Malden lists www.cityofmalden.org — designated 7/8/2019 — as its official posting location.

The Attorney General's Division of Open Government page on official notice posting locations for public bodies, linking to the 7/27/2026 spreadsheet.
Malden's entry in that spreadsheet: www.cityofmalden.org, designated 7/8/2019 — not maldenps.org.
MunicipalityOfficial Posting LocationLast Updated with the Attorney General
Maldenwww.cityofmalden.org7/8/2019
  • Official Notice Posting Locations — Local Public Bodies, Office of the Attorney General, updated 7/27/2026
    View PDF →
Notes
  1. M.G.L. c. 30A, § 21(a)(1) permits a public body to enter executive session to discuss the reputation, character, physical condition, or mental health, rather than professional competence, of an individual. ←
A disclosure: This is partof an ongoing Civic Broadside series on the Open Meeting Law complaint against School Committee Chair and Mayor Gary Christenson. Part 1 — a recap and chronology of the complaint — is available at civicbroadside.com/school-committee-executive-session/.