The people have a right to know what the government is doing in their name.

And how much it’s going to cost them.

Last week, the New Kensington-Arnold school board accepted the resignation of superintendent John Pallone. That was followed by a 7-0 vote to accept a severance agreement with Pallone.

If the board accepted an agreement to buy milk or toilet paper or new computers, the terms of that agreement would — or should — be immediately available. The public is paying the bill. The public gets to have that bill broken down the same way the electric bill or phone bill or water bill for their own homes would be.

Pallone’s severance agreement is no different. At least, it shouldn’t be any different.

However, the terms of that agreement were not made available to the public. Perhaps more troubling, the public was not alone in that.

Board member John DeAntonio asked when the board would see the agreement. DeAntonio was one of those yes votes. Eric Doutt was absent, but there was one abstention — Robert Pallone, the outgoing superintendent’s brother.

Other board members said they hadn’t seen it either. So why did they vote on it?

“I don’t think anybody, including me, has seen the formal written document yet,” board President John Cope said. “I know there is one.”

Board member Chelsea Stone said she had “zero concerns.”

It is bad enough the people could not have a chance to voice concerns about an agreement that involved their money and a man responsible for their children. They should have. While balancing employee privacy and public transparency is a tightrope act for government agencies, that doesn’t mean a school board can cleave to privacy because transparency is too hard.

But it is completely unacceptable that the board should vote on a severance agreement without seeing the agreement. It is a legal document that duly elected public officials should read before obligating the taxpayers to pay the bill.

Board member Steven Sorch said he “knew some of the stuff” and Tim Beckes said he was aware of “the basic tenets.”

Those are the kind of responses one might expect from someone who clicked on an internet terms of service box without actually reading the information, not from people elected to be responsible for public money.

Beckes said it had to be done because of timing. That may be because the superintendent submitted his resignation just two hours before the Tuesday meeting.

Again, that is not a defensible position. If there is time to ask the board to vote, there is time to expect the board to be adequately informed and time to make the information available to the people.

When you fill out a credit card application at a store, take your kids to a trampoline park or join a social media website, the rules and terms are spelled out for you before you agree and sign your name. That’s not a high bar to expect a school board to clear.

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