Recording the School Board Meetings

My proposal for recording Gilbert’s School Board meetings.

Last month I wrote about recording the School Board Meetings. And after a good discussion at the board table last month I was asked “to continue the exploration of options for the board to consider regarding recording future board meetings.”

My primary goal: increase awareness and information of the great things going on in our District. And I want you to understand the critical issues. (Oh, and all of the mildly-boring topics in between). The best way to do this is to invite you all to come and participate in all of the meetings. But the second best option is to give you a non-biased* representation of the entire meeting.

With significant help from Jason Holtan, our district’s Technology Coordinator, we came up with a sustainable plan. It will use equipment that the district already owns and is familiar with. And, more importantly, this process requires around 30 minutes of time to setup, record and upload per board meeting.

I will be presenting this plan on Monday night, December 12th, at the School Board meeting.

The Equipment

A basic tripod, digital video camera, secure digital (SD) storage card and shotgun microphone — all equipment the school has and regularly uses for recording classrooms and staff meetings.

A demo of the setup, with the camera in the back of the room

The Process

1. Prior to monthly school board meeting a district office employee would setup the tripod and camera, with microphone attached. They would make sure the camera is plugged in, aimed correctly (5 minutes of work).
2. When the board meeting starts Gail will ask one of the admin staff to press the record on the camera. (10 seconds)
3. After the board meeting one of the admin staff can press record again to finalize the recording. (10 seconds).
4. In the days following the board meeting one of the district employees will upload the file to YouTube and link to it on the School’s website (20 minutes).

Outstanding Questions

Will this increase patron awareness and participation? Will it detract from it? Will fewer people attend board meetings because they can just watch it later? Will it squelch healthy board debates? Will it force us to wear makeup? Will viewers pluck out non-represtantative quotes? Will it prevent people from running from the board? These are all valid concerns. At the end of the day, the collective board will need to agree on if we want to pursue this or not.

As it stands right now, I think that this still has a large net positive impact — it allows every single patron to have access to the meetings and hear from each board member and administrator on the issues being discussed. It is unbiased transparency at its best.

• My writing is filtered and color intentionally (or unintentionally) by my take on the meetings and topics. And while I want to be fair, honest and factual — everything I write will be seasoned (probably over salted) by my view. Now, a link to a YouTube video is free from all of that, it’s a word-for-word account of what transpired at the meeting.

The cute camera we might be using.