Rochester School Board may be considering new restrictions after trustee reveals tax proposal

Rochester Community Schools’ Board of Education could be looking to make its bylaws more restrictive, according to a trustee who was recently censured for writing a newspaper article that mentioned the board’s clandestine discussion of a proposal to hike taxes on Oakland County residents.

Carol Beth Litkouhi, a board trustee, wrote an op-ed for The Detroit News, blowing the whistle over the board’s unwillingness to make public its support for a millage increase.

Other members of the board alleged that Litkouhi violated a bylaw that prohibits trustees from sharing information publicly if doing so has not been authorized by the board. She was censured on Nov. 10 and removed from all committees. Michigan Capitol Confidential reported on the punishment.

Litkouhi told Michigan Capitol Confidential in an email that the board is planning to discuss a change proposed by Jessica Gupta, the board member who first requested that the board censure Litkouhi.

Litkouhi said that if the board made the change, individual trustees would be blocked from accessing district documents unless the majority first approves a request from that member.

The proposed language reads: “I will take no private action that might compromise the Board or administration and will not share any document or information that has not already been shared by the District, including but not limited to confidential privileged information.”

RCS Revised Policy Manual- by mcclallen

Michigans open-record law says, in part, “It is the public policy of this state that all persons ... are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and public employees.”

The president of the board told CapCon in an email that the board has no plans to change the bylaw at its next meeting, adding that Litkouhi's op-ed was “potentially fiscally harmful to the district.” The action to censure Litkouhi was based on concern about “incomplete, misleading, and harmful” information, she added.

“This censure was about breach of trust and governance integrity, not about restricting free speech,” Michelle Bueltel, president of the board, told CapCon .

Bueltel added that the proposed new language is not among the agenda items for the board’s next meeting.

“As for the Board of Education meeting scheduled for Monday, Nov. 17, 2025, there is currently nothing on the agenda to restrict the ability of trustees to share public documents,” Bueltel wrote.

Litkouhi alleges that the proposal would prevent minority trustees from conducting oversight or reviewing records independently.

She told CapCon the only way oversight works is if access to information does not require getting the majority’s permission.

“If trustees are punished for transparency, and denied access to records, the board stops being a system of checks and balances and becomes a gatekeeper structure designed to protect school leadership from the public interest,” Litkouhi said.

An attorney with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy criticized the potential change to the bylaws.

“The forthcoming attempt to deny trustees the information unless it has been approved by the board as a whole is a blatant attempt to deny citizens the information they need to make informed decisions,” Senior Attorney Derk Wilcox wrote in an email to CapCon.

It is not the school boards’ duty, Wilcox said, to police information related to education and parcel it out on what its believes is a need-to-know basis.