New Rochelle School Board Sorts Decision to Publish Board Resolutions to the Web

Written By: Robert Cox

98BB8DA7-0188-4456-A212-CA13DDCBB8A0.jpgIn a major victory for proponents of good government, the New Rochelle school board has agreed to move forward with their recent decision to publish school board resolutions to the District web site in advance of school board meeting. Residents will now have the opportunity to see for themselves what the board intends to vote on at upcoming board meetings.

After discussing the matter in a illegal executive session board meeting, the New Rochelle Board of Education brought into the open a discussion on how best to manage their secret decision to publishing board resolutions to the web prior to school board meetings. The decision to publish board resolutions on the web comes after months of calls by Talk of the Sound for greater transparency by the school board, including the publishing of board resolutions online. Transparency became a campaign issue during the recent school board elections when Dr. Jack Wagner announced a campaign platform based on transparency including televising school board meetings and publishing all public records online. Jeff Hastie, who won the “open” seat on the school board replacing Martin Sanchez who chose not to run for re-election, supported Wagner on the issue of publishing board resolutions.

It was clear from the public discussion which took place last Tuesday that the administration and some members of the school board did not support the idea of publishing board resolutions online. Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak informed the board that he had sought approval from attorney Jeffrey Kehl as well as ALMS Principal Bill Evans, head of the organization which represents school administrators and, course, Marty Daly, head of the F.U.S.E. which represents teachers and locksmiths.

Apparently a decision was made during their secret, illegal board meeting to assign Deidre Polow to research how other school district’s publish their board resolutions on the web. Polow told the board that she had looked at other districts but preferred Ossining’s approach. She did not report on any other district or report on any alternatives which suggests that Polow, who indicated throughout her recent election campaign that she was not in favor of great transparency, went looking for a district that made the lowest level of disclosure of Board resolutions by a district through their website as a way to roll back the previously agreed to decision by the board to proceed with publishing Board resolutions online.

Polow told the board that Ossining publishes “encapsulated” resolutions which disclose the title of the resolution not the entire resolution. In defending her recommendation Polow stated that the New Rochelle City Council offers encapsulated resolutions. Several board members pointed out that the City later releases the entire resolution. Polow ignored this point and went on to claim that encapsulated resolutions were preferred because some resolutions were more than one page and it would be time consuming to created PDF files for longer resolutions.

Board members who would know better (e.g. Hastie) said nothing about this obvious canard. Anyone who has worked with Adobe Acrobat to create PDF files know that the difference between publishing a one page document and a ten page document is measured in milliseconds, there is virtually no difference. Occasionally, there are attachments to a resolution which would require scanning before conversion to PDF but a quick survey of the past few months of resolution show this represents less than 2% of all resolutions. It may be a reason to argue that attachments which need to be scanned would be optional but it is not a reason to argue that Word or Excel documents which can be converted to PDF files in one second each should not be made available because it takes too long to create them or that this would justify publishing only the title of a resolution. The effort to publish the title of a resolution is almost identical to publish the entire resolution regardless of page length in almost every instance.

It is worth noting here the irony of Polow endorsing how the Ossining school board utilizes the web. On the home page of the Ossining School District web site is a clearly marked link to the full version of the Ossining School District Code of Conduct. Ossining lists all of the school board members with both emails and phone numbers for each school board member; New Rochelle provides a name only (see below). If Ms. Polow really supports the Ossining approach then surely she will also endorse publishing the New Rochelle School District Code of Conduct on the home page and listing board member contact information on the web site as well. Right?

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Seeking to roll back the decision to publish board resolutions online even further, Organisciak sought to leave to the last possible minute the submission of resolutions to the District Clerk and then create a loophole for “important” resolutions that could be presented to the board without first being published to the web.

Several board members then sought to advance the idea that this decision to publish board resolutions was not firm. Some called it a “pilot” program. Other said that it would be tried for a while to “see how it goes”.

Hastie, who clearly supports publishing resolutions online, pushed back on the “urgent” resolutions loophole which would almost certainly be used to bring forward any “controversial” resolutions without publishing those resolutions on the web before the board meeting in which the resolutions would be discussed and voted upon by the board. Hastie argued that while he might accept a resolution that had not been published to the web coming before the board that this should be the exception not the rule.

School Clerk Liz Saraiva spoke up to say that her office needed as much time as possible to be able to read the resolutions before publishing them so she want them by Wednesday before the meeting. The “anti-transparency” group pushed for a submission deadline of close of business Friday with the resolutions published the day before the meeting. Sara Richmond settled the matter by declaring that as a compromise, resolutions would need to be submitted by the end of business on Thursday and would be published by close of business Friday.

What was abundantly clear in observing this discussion is that many board members and the administration of the school have forgotten who employs them. The idea that the same week the Internet celebrated its 40th anniversary, when grandmothers are using email to share digital photographs, when 3rd graders are texting, the New Rochelle school board would still be debating whether or not to publish board resolutions on the web is a disgrace.

To their credit, Jeff Hastie and Sara Richmond clearly supported this step towards greater transparency and openness. There is still much to do (e.g., put audio and video recordings of all meetings on the web, improve the FOIL procedures, put an end to using executive session to discuss the public business of the board, allow public comment on resolutions after they are published to the web and before they are voted on by the board, etc.) but make no mistake this is a big deal. It is the first time the school board has taken a decision to increase transparency since the advent of elected school boards in New Rochelle. May it be the first of many such decisions.

2 thoughts on “New Rochelle School Board Sorts Decision to Publish Board Resolutions to the Web”

  1. Transparency – Meeting info on web
    By balking on this issue it looks like the BOE is trying to hide things.

    By publishing the agenda on the web, more people would participate in the district. Isn’t that what is best?

    1. BoE does not want participation
      It was said aloud at a board meeting last year that my attending “their” meetings was disrupting an environment where everyone got along before I started showing up.

      They do not like me pointing out…

      1. The BoE routinely discussed topics that are, by law, required to be discussed in open session.

      2. The routinely violate the FOIL law.

      3. They have been violating the due process rights of parents and students on a massive scale for many years

      4. There is all sorts of corruption going on

      5. They are constantly covering up very bad acts by employees.

      And, has been documented here many times, the administration and SOME board members have no problem lying through their teeth.

      Ironically, some of these people are under the impression that I am making a significant effort to dig up dirt to embarrass them. In reality, all I do is point a spotlight on what is happening in plain site and they embarrass themselves through their own acts and words.

      That said, this is a GOOD THING. If it is a sign that the BoE is moving in the direction of transparency and openness I will be (and have been) the first to praise them for doing it.

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