When parents or teachers go to a school district board of
trustees meeting, they better be prepared to sit.
Gilroy – When parents or teachers go to a school district board of trustees meeting, they better be prepared to sit.
“If your item is one of the last ones to get discussed, it’s pretty laborious to get through that agenda,” trustee Pat Midtgaard said.
Gilroy Unified School District board meetings regularly run for more than three hours, exceed the allotted agenda time by about 40 minutes and end near 11pm, according to data compiled by the Dispatch from January through July. Trustees acknowledge inefficiency in the meetings and plan to discuss ways to speed them up at a board retreat later this month.
“I’ve talked to board members from other districts,” trustee Javier Aguirre said. “They’re surprised to hear we have three- to four-hour meetings.”
The San Jose Unified School District board of education averaged two hours and five minutes per meeting and typically ended at about 8pm, according to minutes from eight meetings since January 2007.
Tangential commentary, overly specific staff information and unnecessary reiteration of trustee opinions are the main drivers of longer meetings, trustees said.
These factors were at play during a debate over a resolution to purchase computers for eight schools, Midtgaard said. The debate, which resulted twice in split votes by the board, consumed nearly four hours and comprised the bulk of discussion at both June 21 and July 5 meetings.
“We’d already discussed it and none of us had moved from our positions, but we still managed to eke two more hours of discussion out of it,” Midtgaard said.
In the end, trustees voted 5 to 1 to purchase the requested amount of computers for seven schools and to buy a reduced amount of computers – about four per classroom – for the eighth school. The total savings gained through this reduction was about $69,000. However, it was worth the time as the debate also set district policy on the number of computers per classroom, trustee Denise Apuzzo said.
Trustees have been trying to funnel more items to the consent agenda, which trustees pass at the end of the meeting without debate, she said. However, discussions about purchases that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, such as for computers, are important for the public to hear, she said.
Board meetings rarely draw more than 40 people, many of whom are administrators, teachers or professionals working with the district.
“If we run really good, solid meetings I think we might be inviting more folks to join our meetings,” said Aguirre, who works with the Santa Clara County government and witnesses a variety of department meetings.
While the board should publicly discuss large purchases and district test results, they can reduce discussion time by reading agenda packets beforehand, taking notes and asking staff questions by e-mail before the meeting, Aguirre said. The three-hour meetings are typical of school districts, but Gilroy could focus more on reaching a consensus by limiting tangential comments and steering conversations toward compromise, said trustee Francisco Dominguez, who has been a trustee with two other school districts.
Trustees will attempt to fine tune the way they schedule and conduct meetings at a board retreat with Superintendent Deborah Flores later this month.
Neither district staff nor trustees get paid overtime for board meetings. That means that the 17 special meetings trustees have convened during the past six months plus the hours they spent with staff in study and closed sessions before and after regular board meetings come at no charge to taxpayers or the district.
However, as increased hours do not necessarily mean increased accomplishment, the board should still aim to reduce the time it spends behind the dais, Apuzzo said.
“Nobody’s effective if they’ve been sitting in a meeting for five to six hours.”
