First of all, the Board meeting started late. After five minutes of staring at the screen, the District finally splashed an informational page that the board was still in executive session. The producer of the livestream should be prepared for a delay and ready to announce the delay, rather than hoping viewers will just stand by and twiddle their fingers.
At 6:08PM the livestream began, but the meeting had already been called to order. Chair Manning called on (trustee-elect) McKie to introduce the speaker for the inspirational moment. Once again, McKie was long-winded. All she really needed to say was, "Tonight's inspirational moment will be given by ______."
How long should an inspirational moment be? Two minutes? Maybe three, at the outside limit? Not the six minutes taken by the speaker and an additional person he introduced.
When it was time to deal with the disciplinary issues that had been discussed in executive session, Mrs. Agostini made a motion to send Student No. 1 to Blythewood Academy for the balance of the year. When the Chair called for a second, you could hear a pin drop. But the pin never did drop, and Agostini's motion failed for lack of a second.
Then McKie moved for Student No. 1 to be granted "strict probations", whatever that means.
When the board moved on to Item 8.1, suspension of Board Policy BE, the world of formality and business procedure died. The motion was to suspend BE. BE is the policy that pertains to board meetings.
What Administration was trying to accomplish was to cancel the June 8th board meeting, because it falls on the same day as graduation.
The Motion, as proposed orally, was to suspend temporarily Policy BE (completely).
The Motion, shown on the monitor but not read by the person making the motion, was more detailed and explicit about applying to the June 8th board meeting.
On which motion did the board vote?
To avoid confusion, the Chair should have had the person making the motion read the exact motion.
It's really such a simple thing to follow established rules. But, with Richland 2, there are no consequences for carelessness.
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