Absolute Foolishness

A special school board meeting has been called for Tuesday, August 6, 2019. The meeting will start with an Executive (private) Session at 5:30PM.

Two items are on the Agenda for the Executive Session. The board will discuss in private 1) a contractual matter regarding the superintendent's contract and 2) a diploma petition.

The starting time for the Open (Public) Session was omitted from the Agenda. It could be 6:00PM or later, depending on how long the board takes to discuss the "contractual matter". Or the Open session could begin as early as 5:35PM. If you don't want to miss the beginning of the open session, you might plan to arrive at 5:30PM.

Under Old Business (No Action Requested), four items are listed on the Agenda.

Here's the kicker! Under New Business (No Action Requested) there are THIRTY-TWO (32) Board Policies submitted for consideration and revision. Normally, the Policies to be revised are shown on the Agenda and can be viewed through attachments.

For the August 6 Special Called Board Meeting, the attachments are not included, which means the public has no idea what the board is being asked to consider. The board members receive the proposed revisions before the meeting, sometimes not very far before the meeting. At least one board member publicly asked for revisions to be sent to board members much earlier, so they'd have time to study them.

Swamping board members with THIRTY-TWO Policy Revisions at a Special Meeting is nuts. The Board should direct the Superintendent to present them with a small number at each meeting, perhaps five. There are matters of much greater importance than nitpicking board policies.

Perhaps a board member will make a motion to limit the number of revisions to be presented at any one meeting, and perhaps a second board member will second. And perhaps at least two other board members will be brave enough to hop aboard and support the first two.

There will be no Public Participation segment at the August 6th meeting.