September 7, 2007
School board changes meeting format
According to the P-I: 1) The public is now limited to speaking in relation to information contained in Section 4 of the agenda, “information items”, 2) Public comments will be limited to three minutes, 3) Each person may speak only once, and 4) Residents must submit a letter to the superintendent or to the chairman of the board to have an issue raised at a School Board meeting. The rationale given for these changes:
“This is a business meeting and we want to do things appropriately and in order,” Pritchett [Board Chairman] said.
In addition to submitting a letter to the superintendent or to the chairman of the board to have an issue raised at a school board meeting, a citizen can join the superintendent as he creates a new public group. Join him in October. See article here at PPN
Akin is referring to this article.
I invite members of the community that submit letters to Victory and/or Pritchett requesting that a particular issue be raised at a board meeting do so in the form of an open letter, forwarding a copy of the letter to this site so that the community can follow the concerns that are raised. This could add to the record of communications, mitigate potential redundancy in requests, and increase opportunities for community discussion between the time when a concern is first raised and later addressed.
Im my experience, restricting public comment in any way is a typical action of a government body that has something to hide. Either public comment is eliminated completely, which is what the Hospital Authority did, or as the School Board has done, so many hurdles are placed in the way of public comment that it is just too onerous for the public to participate in the meeting at all.
[...] some teeth-gnashing among the public in response to the school board’s earlier decision to do away with the public comment period, per the P-I last night the school board decided to reinstate public commenting. Posted at 1:17PM [...]