The Collier County School Board has gone to the Florida Supreme Court in a dispute about whether it violated the state's Sunshine Law in the handling of meetings of committees that evaluated and ranked textbooks.

The school board filed a notice Wednesday that is a first step in asking the Supreme Court to take up the case.

A three-judge panel of the Second District Court of Appeal in September ruled that the school board violated the open-government law because the public was shut out of meetings of the committees. The nonprofit Florida Citizens Alliance and three individual plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in 2017 alleging violations.

Under a school board policy, the district superintendent was required to establish committees that evaluated textbooks and submitted reports that the board used in approving instructional materials.

Also, the school board could not "select a textbook on its own if it disagrees with a textbook committee's evaluation," the appeals court said. "Therefore, we conclude that the textbook committees have been delegated decision-making authority, that the Sunshine Law applies to meetings of the textbook committees, and that those meetings must be open to the public with reasonable notice provided."

Wednesday's filing, as is common, does not detail arguments that the school board will make at the Supreme Court.

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