New Prague School Board addressing what to do with public forum

Reorganizational meetings of city councils, county boards, school boards and the like are usually matters of routine business indicating how the elected body will go about conducting its business during the year to come. The New Prague School Board took up the task Monday, Jan. 9, and all proceeded swimmingly. Until …

The board took up what to do with its public forum – citizens’ opportunity to address the board at the beginning of meetings – at its organizational meeting.

Ultimately, the board decided to have its policy committee decide how to handle the matter and make recommendations to the board for a formal decision. The recommendation will come through the process in due time.

To the uninitiated, the board’s public forum is an opportunity for citizens to address board members on any school-related topic the speaker selects. The New Prague Area School Board should be commended for allowing the public to address it. Odd as it may seem, there are some places where the public is not exactly encouraged to participate or its comments are limited to only items on the meeting’s agenda.

Sadly, here in the New Prague area, the public has become quite adept the past few years at using the forum for venting frustrations at the board. In just the past few months, we’ve seen remarkable examples of a lack of decorum.

The public forum does not entitle citizens to berate board members. The board, having no time to prepare for the comments, typically offers little or no response to avoid a lengthy discussion for which it is not prepared. The public comment session is part of the recorded portion of the board meeting people can sit and watch. With the board unaware of the topic the speakers brings to the forum, there is no opportunity for rebuttal, no fact-checking to protect the public record from someone spewing a diatribe of misinformation.

Even with all that, a proposal Director Mark Bartusek offered at the Jan. 9 meeting is of particular concern. He proposed eliminating the public forum as it has been used, or in some cases abused, in favor of an offcamera opportunity for a citizen to discuss an issue with two or three board members. Since three directors does not constitute a quorum, the discussion could legally be conducted behind closed doors and off camera. For a school district priding itself on the concept of transparency, Bartusek’s proposal creates the opportunity for discourse that is anything but transparent. We hope the idea is set aside.

A better idea?

A proposal to have citizens address the school board on camera was briefly discussed. It would require citizens interested in addressing the school board submit a notification to speak to directors at the public forum and identify the topic by, say, noon the afternoon of the board meeting. Knowing what the topic would be, staff could provide the school board with some background information potentially supporting a response from the board to the citizen’s concern.

Such a schedule would allow the board, specifically its chairperson, to respond with something besides abject silence which is all too easily and too often taken as disregard for the concern of the speaker. The board would have the opportunity to explain to the speaker its position on the issue, the person’s concerns have been heard and, perhaps, schedule a separate meeting to discuss them could be set up so that the issue could be fully aired and citizens would know their concerns were not dismissed.

But the responsibility can’t solely rest on the shoulders of the elected body. Citizens must hold some responsibility for bringing researched, verifiable claims to the public forum. A citizen who wants to raise a concern about how business is being conducted ought to bear the responsibility to explaining what happened, when it happened and, to the best of their ability, who is responsible. Because the school board must make decisions reflecting the citizens’ values and be for the good of the community, speakers should always know they may not get everything they want.

Give and take goes a long way. We hope this both preserves the board’s public forum and gives citizens the access they want and need.

John Mueller is the managing editor of The New Prague Times.