A Simple Suggestion for More Productive School Board Meetings

School board meetings in North East are held twice monthly and begin at 6:30PM. Once per month, or every other meeting, the superintendent passes out a number of student awards for various reasons at the beginning of the meeting, a process that can easily consume 20 or 30 minutes.

When members of the public come to address the board or hear more about important school business, they first have to sit through this student award ceremony, often in the small school board meeting room now packed with students and their parents, who usually leave as soon as the awards have been passed out because they are there for the awards and nothing else.

There are two separate groups of attendees, one is the parents and students there to see the awards and the other, members of the public interested in school board business.

Two separate sequential meetings

How about splitting the groups apart with two separate meetings? Once per month, hold the award ceremony 30 minutes earlier at 6PM. Then hold the board meeting at the regular time of 6:30PM. The two groups can now schedule their attendance for the ceremony or meeting they wish to attend. The board members are already there so their schedule does not have to change, perhaps arriving a few minutes earlier than they otherwise would and members of the public can attend the regular board meeting at the regular time. Anyone can attend both if they wish. The 6:00PM time is not too early for meetings, the borough council meets at 6 without issue.

Keep board meetings focused on school business

This takes care of everyone, parents and students get their awards and board meetings can focus on school business as they should without so much of the time being diverted to non-school board issues, especially in those cases where there is a lot to be discussed. No one is inconvenienced and board meetings become more productive and efficient.

The school district is facing growing challenges and needs to make changes to adapt. This one small step would be a great place to start.