The following is an important message for those who came to last night’s BOE meeting to support changes to policy 443.

An estimated 400-500 people attended last night’s BOE meeting, which we believe is a record turnout. Unfortunately, there were a lot of delays and missteps by the board that threw the meeting off schedule and once again made public comments harder than they should have been.

Nevertheless, it is incredibly encouraging to see the number of community members that came out to support common sense changes to policy 443, and it would have been an excellent opportunity for the board to hear from the parents who signed up early to comment on why 443 should change. It also would have been a terrific opportunity for those that came to listen to their fellow community members speak on the topic to make their case for changing the policy.

Unfortunately, these people were negatively impacted by a series of questionable decisions by the board and the continuing failure to manage the meeting agendas in a timely and effective manner. The result was a delayed start time for public comments until 8:20 pm and the bumping of eight supporters of updating and making policy 443 more effective from the first 12 speaking positions.

Here’s what happened.

Earlier in the day, at 3:00-4:00 pm, the board held a public meeting with five topics on the agenda. One of those topics was an update on the Brunswick High School replacement project, and since this is a critical issue, people from Brunswick were lined up just after 2:00 pm.

Assuming they were there 4 hours early for the 6:00 meeting, the board brought them into the 3:00 meeting for the Brunswick update. Still, some board members became concerned that attending the 3:00 Brunswick update would cause them to lose their place in line for the 6:00 meeting, so they went into a private administrative meeting to decide how to handle that situation. After some time, the board gave them cards numbering 1-12, granting them those positions for public comments at the 6:00 meeting. I wondered why the board would assume the Brunswick people would be lining up for the 6:00 pm meeting since the Brunswick update was on the 3:00 pm agenda and not on the 6:00 agenda, but I guess that didn’t occur to anyone.

This threw the 6:00 public comments off since the first 12 people that showed up early to sign up for public comments and were in the first 12 speakers were now relegated to positions 13-25 (8 of which were there to speak in favor of changing policy 443). Unfair and Unnecessary? Yes.

Making the problem worse, due to extensive overruns in the 3:00 pm meeting, the board decided at 4:00 pm to move the Brunswick update to the 6:00 meeting. This packed an already busy 6:00 pm agenda and public comments, the second item on the agenda after legislative updates, began at 8:20 pm, two and a half hours after the meeting started.

These decisions by the board were poorly thought out and are an example of why the meetings continue to run long, meander, and are hard for the public to sit through. Does the board think that the people who come to the meeting to speak or listen to public comments want to wait almost two and a half hours after waiting to get in? 

To be clear, we asked board president Johnson why the board chose to deviate from the normal process for the public comments, and she stated the board’s actions were intended to maintain order and safety as the public queued up for the 6:00 meeting. Ms. Johnson also stated they added an extra 30 minutes to the public comments to try and include as many of the people that got bumped as possible. As for the continuing issue of topics that drag on and push the meetings to midnight, we suggested the agenda include set timeframes that block a set amount of time for each topic as a time management tool.  Agenda items would no longer begin without a scheduled end everyone could count on.  We’re not sure it will be considered but it would be worth a try and better than the current process.

Thanks again to all those who came last night to support changes to 443, and I apologize that all of your voices and messages could not be heard. We will continue to work to make sure they are.