It looks like love, laughter and friends are only welcome when they're spending money at your chain of arts and crafts stores.
The AP has learned the Mustang School Board and its superintendent had secretive, back channel meetings with Hobby Lobby's Steve Green just hours before approving the school district's new controversial bible curriculum.
Since the meetings were about the curriculum – and not private tutorials on how to make ugly wreaths – they seem to have violated the state's open meeting laws.
From an AP story that doesn't appear anywhere in The Oklahoman:
A school board that approved a Bible-based curriculum for pupils next fall broke into small groups and met privately with the program’s chief backer, the president of the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts store chain, to get around an Oklahoma law that requires government bodies to be open to the public, according to emails obtained by The Associated Press.
The April 14 meetings with Steve Green and other members of the Museum of the Bible curriculum team occurred just hours before the Mustang School Board approved the course as an elective for the fall. The Mustang superintendent acknowledged insisting on separate presentations so the public wouldn’t have to be invited, and did so at the direction of Green and his public relations representatives.
“I want to emphasize again that per my conversation with Ashleigh and the decision to break into two groups, that this will not be a public meeting,” Superintendent Sean McDaniel wrote in one of the emails obtained under an Open Records Act request, referring to a woman at the Saxum public relations company, which represents Hobby Lobby and helped set up the meetings.
The Oklahoma County prosecutor said the move — which involved the board leaving its base in Canadian County and traveling to Oklahoma City — could create a potential violation if it is proven to be a deliberate attempt to go around laws that require government bodies to meet openly.