The following editorial appeared Tuesday in the News Tribune of Tacoma.

This is not merely a “told-you-so” editorial about the Puyallup School District’s ill-advised decision to close a meeting that should have been open to the public.

The public’s right to know is so important, and it so clearly forms the heart of the state’s Open Public Meetings Act, that all school districts – and all local governments, for that matter – should take note.

Last week the state attorney general’s office sided with the News Tribune in contending that Puyallup school officials erred by closing a Nov. 15 hearing on a challenge to “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.”

The hearing was held by the district’s instructional materials committee on a challenge from several teachers. The teachers argued the book wasn’t age-appropriate required reading for eighth-graders.

Although the News Tribune objected to closing the meeting to the public, the district did so anyway. It was obvious at the time that the administration feared a public meeting would draw contentious partisans on both sides of the argument and further inflame the controversy over the book.

The district’s attorney, Cliff Foster, confirmed that reading of the situation last week when he told the News Tribune that the district was worried that TV crews would show up and disrupt the meeting. That’s no reason not to follow the law.

Foster had previously advised the district that the open-meetings law didn’t apply to the IMC meeting. His arguments were bogus, our editors thought. Greg Overstreet, the attorney general’s ombudsman for public access, sided with the newspaper in a letter last week.

One key point is that state law requires all school districts to have IMCs, thus they are official bodies. Another is that such committees make final decisions on curricula, unless the decisions are appealed to school boards; thus they are decision-making bodies. Finally, IMCs take testimony on issues, as the Puyallup committee did last month.

The Puyallup district got bad advice. Regardless, Puyallup school officials should know that the spirit of the open meetings act is to look for reasons to keep meetings open, not for reasons to keep them closed.

The district’s stance was absurd. The possibility that members of the media – which represent the public – might show up at a public meeting is no reason to turn it into a secret conclave.