By Camila Acharya

During a public meeting last September, officials at the small Naco Elementary School District on the Arizona-Mexico border spent nearly 10 minutes discussing in the open some major financial problems.

The business manager revealed a bleak reality for the single-school district of 271 students: Naco was failing a state financial compliance review, under a corrective action plan, and having 30% of its state aid withheld. The audit flagged 25 specific deficiencies, including:

• A lack of basic security checks and balances on cash handling and IT systems.
• Inconsistent insurance deductions, meaning the district accidentally paid 100% of health coverage for some employees.
• A looming $17,491 IRS penalty because the previous administration failed to file its taxes.

Official public minutes for the meeting do not make it clear that any of this happened. The in-depth discussion about the district’s financial crisis and federal penalties was reduced to just three vague words:

“Business Report-Report.”

Reporters at The Beam discovered the discussion only after reviewing an audio recording of the school board meeting, which became public following a formal records request.

Listen

“Business Report–Report”

Naco district officials did not respond to The Beam’s request for comment.

The bigger picture

Naco is far from alone. The Beam found several instances across Arizona where school boards sanitize their public minutes in a way that makes it nearly impossible for local residents to know what their elected officials are actually saying.

While sanitizing minutes doesn’t necessarily violate the letter of the law — Arizona’s Open Meeting Law only requires a basic summary or recording within three working days — it leaves those who didn’t attend the meeting in the dark. Across multiple districts, The Beam found that official minutes can omit or obscure critical discussions involving taxpayer money, regulatory penalties and controversial staff remarks.

In Arizona, nearly 40% of school districts post recordings of their board meetings online. About half of Arizona districts post only minutes, through a combination of not recording their meetings at all; recording meetings but only providing files via records requests; recording meetings and then deleting the files; and livestreaming meetings then deleting the files.

The Beam investigation focused on districts that record their board meetings but keep the audio files private. Reporters obtained audio files from four districts through public records requests and compared them to meeting minutes. In each of these districts, official meeting minutes are the only public-facing record of the school board meeting. The investigation found at least one instance in each district where, in the last year, the official minutes made available online to the public were sanitized compared to the audio recordings.

Arizona’s Open Meeting Law requires that meeting minutes capture basic information, such as the date, time, present and absent board members, how each member votes and the names of members who propose each motion and the names of people who make statements during the public comment period. The law says minutes must include “an accurate description of all legal actions proposed, discussed or taken” and “a general description of the matters considered.”

Nick Bacon, a staff attorney at Arizona’s Office of Ombudsman-Citizens’ Aide, the state agency that helps resolve residents’ complaints about Arizona government actions, wrote in an email to The Beam that while “Arizona case law has not squarely addressed what is meant by ‘accurate,’” the purpose of the Open Meeting Law is straightforward. “The OML requires that a public body’s minutes accurately describe the legal action and any details from the meeting that would help the public understand the legal action taken,” Bacon wrote. “Beyond that, the OML does not require more details, even if they are noteworthy.”

‘School and Department Updates’

In an October 2025 school board meeting for Altar Valley School District in Pima County, board members and staff discussed new international teachers from the Philippines. One speaker said that Filipino teachers are used to “compliant” students in their home country who “don’t ask questions.” But American students are “independent thinkers” who “question authority.”

Then, an unidentified attendee asked if Filipino teachers are allowed to “smack” their students, suggesting that such discipline would explain why Filipino students are so obedient. The room broke into laughter.

One person said that he wanted to use corporal punishment on students for years. He added that he wanted to spank a boy in the school lobby in front of parents because the child disobeyed.

The meeting minutes, however, summarize this nearly eight-minute conversation about Filipino teachers and corporal punishment with four vague words: “School and Department Updates.”

Listen

“School and Department Updates”

The Altar Valley School District did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Not intended to capture every comment or discussion’

Littlefield Unified School District, located in Mohave County, has two schools and 347 students.

In an August 2025 meeting, Superintendent Troy Heaton brought up a $700 fine following a repeat violation on a food audit report. The food service department “wasn’t serving enough vegetables and fruits” and failed to measure proportions correctly, someone else added. It was noted that this was the second violation.

“In my world,” someone said, that “would have been a reprimand.”  

The minutes do not mention the fine or the frustration, simply stating “Summer Food Audit” in a list of matters Heaton discussed.

About an hour later in the meeting, Heaton discussed the district’s financial audit from the previous school year.

He said that the district “didn’t do so well” and that previous employees “really did drop the ball on a lot of these issues.”

The minutes portray Heaton’s comment in a neutral, even positive, light. They state that “the district recently completed its audit and noted a number of findings,” adding that Board Secretary Sean Hogan “commented that the district has a strong team and that the audit results will ultimately be positive for the school district.”

The Beam presented the district with the discrepancy and asked whether the minutes from the August meeting accurately and sufficiently reflected what occurred.

Sheree Goessman, Littlefield’s human resources director, wrote in an email to The Beam, “The purpose of the minutes is to provide a summary of the business conducted, official board actions taken, motions, votes, and agenda items considered by the Board. They are not intended to capture every comment or discussion that occurs during a meeting.”

What’s a teacher worth?

Tonto Basin Elementary School District in Gila County has 73 students.

The recording from the district’s April 2026 meeting reveals a lack of organization in  teacher recordkeeping.

Board members said that teacher Tamara Johnson was earning a salary of $55,000, but that was an underpayment. Her file had not included the fact that she had over 20 years of teaching experience and a master’s degree, qualifications that warranted a higher salary.

When the board discussed correcting Johnson’s salary to $78,417, someone pushed back, saying, “I know other teachers do volunteer things like the coaching or the student council. But for that amount of money, I would like to see more involvement.”

Someone else said that it would be difficult to volunteer while being underpaid.

The minutes accurately depict the discussion of the “authorization to issue 2026-27 teaching contract to Tamara K Johnson in the amount of $78,417.00,” but they omit the fact that Johnson had been underpaid and the pushback against the salary increase.

The Beam asked the Tonto Basin Elementary School District if the official minutes from the April 2026 meeting accurately reflected what occurred. The incoming superintendent, Cody Riding, told The Beam in an email, “I cannot speak for the Board to answer your first question.  However, as the District’s incoming Superintendent, I am happy to consider the way … public Board meeting minutes are written going forward.”

Why audio remains offline

The Beam asked the four districts why they do not post recordings of their board meetings publicly. Two responded.

Tonto’s incoming superintendent, Riding, wrote, “I do not know if the subject of posting the audio recordings of the meetings has been explicitly discussed by the Board or why, if it has been considered, the District chose not to do so.”

Littlefield school district’s director of human resources also weighed in.

“The district has not historically posted audio recordings of board meetings online due to storage limitations and related technology constraints,” Goessman told The Beam in an email. “The recordings are maintained in accordance with applicable record retention requirements, but the district has not maintained the capacity to host and archive those recordings publicly.”

Camila Acharya is a high school student at Phoenix Country Day School. She reported this story under the close supervision of reporters and editors at The Beam.