Good Luck Attending a School Board meeting

The Hillsborough County School Board is changing their meeting times yet again further blocking public participation. In September they changed the meeting times to alternate between 9 a.m. and 5p.m. but they must have noticed that some people were still able to make it to the 5 p.m. time so now they are changing all their regular board meetings to be 3 p.m. That’s right- when you and just about everyone else that works regular hours is still at work.

And if you want to speak at a school board meeting you have to be at the beginning of the meeting because ‘Audience Comments’ occur at the beginning of the meeting which pretty well guarantees that there will be few speakers.

 Apparently, the school board meets for their convenience, not yours. You are just a taxpayer, who cares what you think?

And what if you are a teacher and wanted to publicly address the school board about some important concern? Well, the new time guarantees that you will never speak before the school board because Middle schools dismiss at 4:15, High Schools dismiss at 2:45, Elementary schools dismiss at 2:15. Even for an elementary school it is not likely that any teacher could complete dismissal duties and then race to the school board to be present in time to speak. But who cares if teachers have the opportunity to speak publicly, what could they possibly know?

You get the distinct impression that the school board is changed the times to make sure that none of their employees can ever speak publicly at a school board meeting.

Check out their revised schedule at http://www2.sdhc.k12.fl.us/BoardAgenda2010/pdfs/BD20140225_627/Attch_20140225_15068_000.pdf

In particular, note that there are 16 REGULAR Board meetings and 4 RECOGNITION meetings. The RECOGNITION meetings are staged by the board to promote themselves. The school board invites select groups and individuals to come to these meetings so they WANT them to show up so these meetings start at 5:30. So it is clear that if the school board wanted the public at REGULAR Board meetings then those meetings would also be at 5:30. And this is why the board will NEVER again have REGULAR board meetings at 5:30 if they can help it because they don’t really want you there messing things up with your silly ideas.  

On the Action Item 9.03R at ‘Strategic Objectives’ the school district is supposed to provide the justification for changing the meeting times but it only says “All Strategic Objectives”. Check out the agenda at  http://www2.sdhc.k12.fl.us/boardagenda2010/Shared/CoverPrint.asp?AICS_ID=15068

Some think the school board is actually trying to limit public participation to this public process.  Making difficult to attend a public meeting is a subtle way to limit participation, and not unlike the tactics used with voting laws to limit minority participation.