School Board Changes Meeting Time - May 12

The agenda for the May 12th Regular Meeting of the School Board has been published on the District's website. Go to www.Richland2.org
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     NOTE: the new starting times
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The Regular meeting will be called to order this week at 4:30PM.
The Board will immediately go into Executive Session.
The Board will re-convene in open session at 5:00PM.

This represents a 1½-hour advance in the meeting times.

The Board will not meet in public on May 12, although it could. It will meet on the Zoom video-conference platform. The agenda contains NO link to that Zoom meeting. (See below for the link.)

Now, why is the meeting so early?

At the April 28 Regular Meeting the Board blindly followed the Board Chair and the superintendent off the cliff, after the Chair and the superintendent placed an item on the agenda for a first-reading vote that would give authority to the Chair and superintendent to change the time of a Regular Meeting during a "state of emergency".

If you want to try to understand the reasoning that was given in response to questions and comments by two Board members, I invite you to watch/listen to the April 28 board meeting. The explanation made no sense at all to me. The other four board members, who normally roll over for anything the superintendent wants, just sat there like bumps on a log.

When it was time to vote, the vote was, unsurprisingly, 5-2.

The Zoom meeting may be available at www.richland2.org/livestream

Merely announcing "Zoom" on the agenda is insufficient notice to the public when to find and view the public meeting. You'd think by now the District would have figured out how to comply with South Carolina FOIA and Open Meetings requirements regarding public meetings!

On the agenda for a first-reading vote is a move that will result in Joseph Keels Elementary School's becoming a Magnet School. In the past, proposed actions have been submitted for a first reading and then followed with a vote on the proposal at a second board meeting, often two weeks later. The Chair and the superintendent have started a trend now to jam votes into the first reading, before trustees have time and resources to study and consider a matter.

On this issue, the vote should be postponed; if it isn't postponed, then the vote should be "No", so that the trustees have adequate time to do their due diligences. They are, after all, fiduciaries of the School District and are expected to make responsible decisions.