When attendees describe school board meetings in Gilroy, one
word often comes to mind: long.
When attendees describe school board meetings in Gilroy, one word often comes to mind: long.
Droopy eyes and stifled yawns often interrupt discussions of the Gilroy Unified School District’s Board of Education as the clock’s hands creep toward midnight. Until recently, the last line of the agenda read “the president will adjourn the meeting no later than 10 p.m. unless the board takes action to extend the meeting.”
Out of the two dozen regularly scheduled school board meetings in the last year, only two ended before 10 p.m., a time this year’s outgoing board president Javier Aguirre set as a goal at the beginning of his tenure. Those two meetings were in January. About half of the board’s meetings went beyond 11 p.m.
“When we get into that late of an hour, I have to question the efficiency of the decisions we’re making,” said current board president Francisco Dominguez.
Closed session typically begins at 5 p.m. and is followed by open session at 7 p.m. At the Aug. 20 board meeting – a particularly late meeting that didn’t adjourn until 11:47 p.m. – trustees didn’t emerge from closed session until close to 8 p.m.
About 10:30 p.m., one of the assistant superintendents packed up her belongings and left, and several board members hid large yawns. At 10:48 p.m., trustee Mark Good pointed to the adjournment notice and said he wanted to remove it “because it’s not true.”
At that point, the board still had about five major items to cover. Only a couple people who weren’t district staff still sat in the audience. Trustees commented on how they could be confused about a particular item because of the late hour.
When meetings run until midnight, it’s like working almost another full work day, trustees pointed out.
“Shorter meetings?” board vice president Denise Apuzzo said last week. “I’d love them.”
With school-aged children, Apuzzo said she and Dominguez are both aware of the need to conduct succinct meetings. After a recent meeting that ran particularly long, Apuzzo still had to go home to make baked goods for her children’s bake sale. Shorter meetings would be nice, she said, but not at the risk of glossing over important issues.
“We have a very proactive school board,” Apuzzo said. “There’s a lot of back and forth. I like the way we are. It’s not like we sit there and don’t say anything. We all give input.”
But with 28 years of sitting on councils and boards under his belt, Santa Clara County Supervisor and former Gilroy Mayor Don Gage said too much talk can unnecessarily prolong meetings.
“One of the biggest problems is that people like to hear themselves talk,” Gage said of public meetings in general. “When one talks, they all got to talk. They want to make sure people think they know about the issue. There’s a lot of ego in politics.”
On several occasions, trustees have stated they don’t want to repeat the remarks of their colleagues in the interest of time, then effectively went on to repeat the remarks of their colleagues.
Another way to cut back on time is by making sure to ask necessary questions of staff before the meeting, Gage said.
Trustees often pull items off the consent agenda and ask for more explanation from staff – a practice that can typically be cleared up before meetings to avoid surprising staff with questions, Gage said.
Doing just that allows the Gavilan Joint Community College District Board of Trustees to wrap up their meetings within an hour or two, trustee Tom Breen said.
“We don’t have surprises popping up at meetings,” Breen said. “The administration keeps us advised, which helps.”
The board president can also control the length of meetings by enforcing strict time constraints on public comment, Gage said. During lengthier meetings, Aguirre was known to limit speakers’ time to only one minute.
The GUSD board had had many important issues to deal with this year, including the closure of its only charter school, improving academics at several schools with lagging test scores and the disbursement of a $150 million bond, Aguirre said. These weighty issues contribute to the long meetings, he said. In a growing district, the board has myriad issues to discuss that many other boards aren’t bothered with, like building new facilities, which often takes up a large part of the agenda.
“Part of the problem is that we’ve got so much going on,” Apuzzo said. Still, “I do want shorter meetings.”
