TJCA's History of Unusual and Off-Campus Public Meetings Raises Questions About Public Accessibility

Mortellus

Apr 25, 2025

From restaurants and resort clubs to privately operated conference facilities, TJCA's own meeting records document years of unconventional meeting locations, raising concerns about public access, adequate notice, and compliance with North Carolina's Open Meetings Law.

What happened: Between 2020 and 2025, Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy scheduled multiple meetings of its governing Board and committees at locations outside the Academy's campuses in Rutherford County, North Carolina.

According to TJCA's own publicly maintained meeting archive, these locations included Pleasant City Wood Fired Grille in Shelby, the Legends Club at Tryon International Equestrian Center, and Overmountain Lodge & Conference Center, a privately operated hospitality facility within the same equestrian resort.

Several meetings were scheduled at venues outside Rutherford County, including locations traditionally associated with private dining, hospitality, recreation, and restricted-access events rather than the ordinary conduct of public business.

Although North Carolina law permits public bodies to meet at privately owned facilities, it does not exempt those meetings from public-access requirements. Under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 115C-218.25, North Carolina charter-school governing boards are expressly subject to the state's Open Meetings Law. Section 143-318.10 provides that official meetings must be open to the public, subject to limited statutory exceptions.

The use of privately operated commercial venues therefore raises questions beyond the mere publication of a meeting notice. The public must have a meaningful opportunity to attend the open portions of an official meeting, locate the proceedings, and observe the public body's business without improper barriers to entry.

The Academy's historical notices provide limited information about the specific rooms, entrances, or arrangements for public access at several of these locations.

The concern is not simply that meetings occurred away from school property. It is whether TJCA selected and arranged its meeting spaces in a manner consistent with the public's statutory right to observe its governing Board and committees.

What was established: TJCA's official Past Meetings archive documents a recurring practice of scheduling Board and committee business at off-campus commercial facilities between 2020 and 2025.

The following meetings are identifiable in the Academy's own published records.

January 30, 2020 — Public Relations Committee

Scheduled time: 4:30 p.m.

Location: Pleasant City Wood Fired Grille, Shelby, North Carolina.

TJCA scheduled its Public Relations Committee to meet at a commercial restaurant in downtown Shelby, outside Rutherford County and away from the Academy's regular meeting facilities.

The published notice identified the restaurant but did not specify whether the committee would occupy a private dining room, a designated meeting area, or an ordinary section of the restaurant.

The distinction is relevant because attendance at an official public meeting should not depend on purchasing food or beverages, obtaining a restaurant reservation, or receiving permission to enter a space otherwise reserved for private customers.

The notice also raises practical questions about whether members of the public could identify the committee's location and hear its proceedings in an active restaurant environment.

February 29, 2020 — Personnel and Policy Committee

Scheduled time: 12:00 p.m.

Location: Legends Club, Tryon International Equestrian Center, Mill Spring, North Carolina.

TJCA scheduled a Saturday meeting of its Personnel and Policy Committee at the Legends Club, a hospitality and event facility at Tryon International Equestrian Center. The venue's history is especially relevant to questions of public access. Early promotional materials for Tryon International described the Legends Club as a private, membership-based facility, with memberships available for purchase. However, a June 2019 program published by the resort subsequently advertised the Legends Club as open to the public without a membership requirement. These different descriptions demonstrate that access policies changed or varied over time. They do not independently establish the rules applicable to TJCA's February 2020 meeting. Nevertheless, the Academy's notice did not explain whether the committee had reserved an area open to all attendees, whether interested members of the public could enter without making arrangements, or how visitors should locate the meeting within the resort.

The use of a hospitality venue with a history of membership restrictions makes the actual arrangements for public attendance a legitimate subject of inquiry.

November 18, 2021 — Executive Committee

Scheduled time: 6:00 p.m.

Location: 641 South Broadway Street, Forest City, North Carolina.

TJCA scheduled an Executive Committee meeting at a street address rather than identifying a school facility or named public meeting venue. The published notice did not explain the nature of the property, identify a meeting room, or provide additional instructions for public attendance.

A street address may satisfy the location-identification function of a notice in some circumstances. However, where the nature of the property and the appropriate entrance are not apparent, additional information may be necessary to make public attendance practical. The property and access arrangements used for this meeting have not yet been independently documented for this archive.

April 21, 2022 — Board of Directors Closed Session

Scheduled time: 11:00 a.m.

Location: Tryon International Equestrian Center.

One of the more significant entries in TJCA's historical archive identifies an April 21, 2022 meeting specifically as a Board of Directors Closed Session at Tryon International Equestrian Center.

Unlike an ordinary public meeting that may subsequently enter closed session, this notice characterized the scheduled meeting itself as a closed session. North Carolina law allows qualifying confidential business to be discussed in closed session, including certain personnel matters and privileged legal consultations. However, § 143-318.11(c) requires a motion to enter closed session to be made and adopted during an open meeting, with the permissible statutory purpose identified. Consequently, advertising a meeting as a closed session does not eliminate the requirement to conduct the necessary opening proceedings publicly. The Academy's historical listing does not explain where the required open-session proceedings were scheduled to take place, whether the Board publicly adopted the required motion, or how an interested member of the public could attend that portion of the meeting. The actual meeting minutes and any contemporaneous records of the proceedings are necessary to determine how the Board complied with those requirements.

April 21, 2022 — Strategic Planning Meeting

Scheduled time: 1:00 p.m.

Location: Tryon International Equestrian Center.

Two hours after the scheduled Board closed session, TJCA advertised a separate strategic planning meeting at the same resort. The Academy's notice did not identify a particular building, conference room, or entrance for this meeting. The close scheduling of the two proceedings raises additional questions about their relationship, including whether they involved overlapping participants, shared meeting facilities, or related Board business. The listing alone does not establish the scope of the strategic planning meeting or whether its proceedings were subject to any lawful exceptions to public attendance.

May 31, 2022 — Board of Directors Meeting

Scheduled time: 6:00 p.m.

Location: Tryon Equestrian Center.

TJCA again scheduled a full Board of Directors meeting at the equestrian resort.

Unlike the April closed-session listing, this meeting was publicly designated as a general Board meeting.

The historical notice identified Tryon Equestrian Center but did not specify the particular building or room within the large resort complex where the Board would assemble.

Given the size of the property and the presence of multiple hospitality, recreational, and event facilities, the lack of a specific room designation raises practical questions about how members of the public were expected to locate the meeting.

April 14 and April 25, 2025 — Executive Committee Meetings

Scheduled times: 8:00 a.m. on both dates.

Location: Overmountain Lodge, Tryon International Equestrian Center.

TJCA scheduled two Executive Committee meetings at Overmountain Lodge, a hotel and conference facility at Tryon International Equestrian Center. Neither historical listing identified a particular meeting room, entrance, or arrangement for public attendance. Overmountain Lodge advertises private meeting and media rooms that can be reserved for conferences and events. General access to the broader resort does not necessarily establish that members of the public could freely enter every meeting space within the lodge. These meetings also involved a documented institutional relationship between TJCA's governing Board and the resort operator.

Doug Grondahl, who chaired TJCA's Executive Committee, also served as Chief Operating Officer of Tryon International Equestrian Center.

The meetings occurred during a concentrated period of Executive Committee activity and immediately before and after the Academy's April 21, 2025 announcement concerning a change in executive leadership. The timing, the Board member's professional relationship with the venue operator, and the meetings' off-campus location warrant a separate examination of venue selection, public accessibility, and the transparency of executive decision-making. These circumstances are addressed in the companion investigation, TJCA Executive Committee Met at Board Member's Employer During Leadership Transition.

The recurring public-access question

Across these meetings, TJCA's records establish a pattern of selecting commercial and resort facilities for official Board or committee business. The venues differed in their ordinary purposes and access arrangements, but they shared an important characteristic: unlike a publicly identified school auditorium or meeting room, their use for public governance potentially depended upon arrangements with private operators. The essential question is whether a member of the public, with no personal connection to the Board or venue operator, could attend the open portions of each meeting without encountering barriers unrelated to lawful meeting security or administration. This question cannot be answered solely by establishing that the resort grounds, restaurant, or hotel lobby was ordinarily open to customers. Access to the actual proceedings is what matters.

North Carolina's applicable legal requirements

The Academy's obligations arise from several provisions of North Carolina law:

N.C. Gen. Stat. § 115C-218.25 — Charter-School Transparency: Subjects charter schools and their governing boards to the North Carolina Open Meetings Law and Public Records Act.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 143-318.10 — Open Public Meetings: Establishes the public's right to attend official meetings and defines the public bodies and proceedings covered by the statute.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 143-318.11 — Closed Sessions: Identifies the limited purposes for which the public may be excluded and requires closed sessions to be authorized by a motion adopted during an open meeting.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 143-318.12 — Public Notice: Establishes requirements for identifying meeting times and locations, maintaining regular schedules, and providing notice of qualifying special meetings.

Under § 143-318.12, public bodies generally must give at least 48 hours' notice of nonemergency meetings held outside their established regular meeting schedules, with the required notice distributed and posted as specified by law. The presence of a meeting in a historical online archive does not by itself establish when the original notice was published or whether the required notice procedures were followed. Likewise, publication of a location does not necessarily resolve whether members of the public could actually enter and observe the proceedings. For charter-school governing bodies, compliance with the Open Meetings Law is not discretionary simply because the institution operates through a private nonprofit corporation.

What was not established: The identified records do not conclusively establish whether members of the public were admitted to each off-campus meeting, what specific access arrangements existed, or whether all required open-session and notice procedures were followed.

They also do not establish that any particular attendee was required to purchase food, pay an admission fee, hold a membership, or obtain private permission to attend. However, the absence of a documented complaint or judicial ruling is not evidence that the meetings complied with the law. The published notices leave substantive questions about accessibility unanswered. Those questions are particularly important for the April 21, 2022 meeting advertised as a closed session and the 2025 Executive Committee meetings held at Overmountain Lodge. No judicial determination concerning the legality of these specific meetings has been identified for this archive. The available records establish the unusual locations and provide grounds for further examination of the Academy's attendance and notice practices.

Original evidence:

The Academy's meeting archive provides the primary evidence of the advertised dates, times, and locations. The resort's published materials provide information about venue operations, including the differing historical descriptions of Legends Club access. The historical records necessary to establish attendance conditions at individual meetings, original notice-publication dates, and compliance with closed-session procedures have not yet been fully assembled.

Subsequent developments: Although TJCA continued to hold most regular Board meetings at school facilities, its historical records document repeated use of private commercial and resort venues between 2020 and April 2025. The most recent examples identified in this investigation are the April 14 and 25, 2025 Executive Committee meetings at Overmountain Lodge, a facility operated by Tryon International Equestrian Center. These meetings are particularly noteworthy because Doug Grondahl, who chaired TJCA's Executive Committee, also served as Chief Operating Officer of the resort. The meetings also coincided with a significant leadership transition. On April 21, between the two meetings, TJCA announced that Jason Cole would resign as Executive Director and remain High School Principal through the end of the academic year, while Jodi Isaacs would assume executive leadership responsibilities. The timing, institutional relationships, and circumstances surrounding these meetings are examined in a separate TJCA Truth investigation concerning the April 2025 Executive Committee proceedings.

Questions about public accessibility extend beyond those two meetings. TJCA's April 21, 2022 meeting notice, for example, advertised a Board closed session at Tryon International Equestrian Center without explaining where members of the public could observe the required open-session proceedings. The recurring concern is whether TJCA made adequate arrangements for public attendance when conducting official business at privately operated facilities. Publishing a meeting location is only part of ensuring that members of the public can actually attend.

TJCA Truth welcomes original meeting notices, agendas, minutes, venue reservations, room assignments, access instructions, correspondence, and other historical materials documenting how the Academy arranged these off-campus meetings. Records concerning the opening proceedings of the April 21, 2022 closed session, as well as any financial arrangements with private venues, would be particularly valuable.

Report from the community: TJCA Truth has received firsthand concerns regarding restricted access to portions of Overmountain Lodge and the difficulties members of the public may encounter when attempting to reach meeting spaces within privately operated hospitality facilities. These concerns provide important context for examining TJCA's use of the lodge for public meetings. No separate firsthand accounts from individuals who attended or attempted to attend the April 14 or 25, 2025 Executive Committee meetings have yet been obtained for this archive. TJCA Truth welcomes experiences from anyone who attended, attempted to attend, or sought information about the Academy's off-campus Board and committee meetings between 2020 and 2025. Of particular interest are accounts describing whether meeting rooms were clearly identified, whether visitors encountered locked doors or restricted entrances, whether venue personnel required permission or reservations, and whether attendees could observe proceedings without purchasing services or satisfying private membership requirements. Experiences from individuals who successfully attended these meetings are equally valuable, as they may help document the arrangements TJCA made to accommodate the public. Public meetings belong to the public, regardless of where a governing Board chooses to hold them. Firsthand accounts can help establish whether that principle was reflected in TJCA's actual meeting practices. Contributors may request anonymity, and private correspondence will not be published without permission.