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To make its public meetings more audience-friendly and productive, the Wilkes-Barre Area School Board should approve a few, simple format changes.
The sooner the better. Meetings this summer have been standing-room-only affairs. People’s interest in the board’s activities spiked after it announced the planned consolidation of a pair of city high schools.
Presumably, the emergence this week of a grassroots, high school-preservation plan – backed by private financiers – will draw even more district residents to the meetings and to the podium for public comment.
Here are five things the board’s members can do immediately to indicate they value the public’s participation.
• Be on time. More than 100 men, women and children waited Monday night for the start of the board’s regular meeting, advertised as beginning at 7 p.m. Instead, the elected officials didn’t arrive in the room and launch into a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance until almost a half hour later, at 7:25 p.m.
Granted, the board’s members had a good excuse; they’d been involved in a committee meeting, which got underway in a separate room, since 5:30 p.m. Nevertheless, the delay sends the wrong signal to attendees.
Either hold the committee meeting on a separate night or at an earlier hour. Barring that, at least appoint someone to notify people the regular meeting will be held up and by approximately how much. It’s common courtesy.
• Provide seating for all. In an attempt to accommodate overflow crowds at its traditional meeting space, the board recently relocated. But the newly chosen venue, Kistler Elementary School’s Large Group Instruction Room, quickly filled Monday night. Find a more appropriate site, where adults don’t need to scooch, squeeze and otherwise get the sense that they are late arrivals at a pep rally.
• Be heard. No one should have to guess what board members are saying during a public session. Doesn’t the district own multiple microphones, perhaps tucked away in a theater department? If not, and the board can’t justify the expense, is this cost something the Wilkes-Barre Area Educational Improvement Foundation or a PTO group might cover?
• Be specific. A speaker at Monday’s session rightly chastised the district for routinely distributing incomplete meeting agendas, with Mad Libs-style blanks where names of newly hired or promoted individuals should be. That night’s agenda included about 15 instances of the annoying, and some might say devious, omission.
• Encourage efficiency. Individuals making public comment are limited to about three minutes, a window that some say should be extended. That’s worthy of consideration. Meanwhile, why not eliminate the time-wasting procedure of waiting for one speaker to finish, then calling the next speaker’s name and waiting for him or her to reach the podium? Let the audience know who is “on deck,” to borrow a baseball term, so the person can leave his or her seat and be ready to address the board.
Encouragingly, the board members and attendees at Monday’s meeting acted with mutual respect and civility. A few tweaks to the meeting procedures might help that spirit to persist throughout the great high school debate – no matter how long it lasts.