Anthony Reed for Springfield School Board

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Edit: 1:18:55 for Public Comment Discussion

At last nights school board meeting the discussion topic was “Public Comment Process Review”. This was presented by the superintendent and he framed it as “trying to figure out what the problem is”. Part way through the presentation one of the Directors stopped the superintendent and asked why he was going through all of the policy when we clearly already know what the problem is: community members want to be able to sign up in person to speak the night of the meeting and can’t due to pandemic era protocols that have not been removed. Although that director tried as she might to explain this simple problem, the chair, vice chair and superintendent repeatedly threw up confusing and unnecessary roadblocks. At one point the chair said that she hasn’t heard from anyone that hasn’t been able to speak in person at the meeting so it isn’t really a problem. 🤔 ❓It’s unfortunate that two of the five board members were missing as I’m certain at least one of them would have been able to help bring some sense of clarity to the charade. It seems simple enough: let people sign up in person and if there's too many people then listen to as many as you can. The public are smart enough to figure it out despite the superintendent’s assertion that different cutoff times would be too confusing. No protocol was changed last night, but hopefully in the near future the board as a whole will find the value in allowing in person sign ups for public comment.

Edit: When the video posts to the district website I will attach a link

Springfield School Board Meeting - 05/08/2023 This is "Springfield School Board Meeting - 05/08/2023" by Springfield Schools on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.