Gaylord Board Meeting

I attended a Board Meeting for the Santa Rosa Academy School District
on October 16, 2014. The board meeting began at 4 pm and ended at 6 pm. I
have been a teacher within this school district for the last four years, and I
was happy to know that the meeting was at a time teachers could attend. In
years past, board meetings had been scheduled during the day, and in order
for teachers to attend, they would have to get a substitute teacher, and/or
use a personal day.
This is relevant to the conversation because I think it is important to
have board meetings at times teachers, as well as other people concerning
the school, can attend. Also, during the beginning of open session, a parent
addressed this time change.

She expressed her appreciation for the time

changes to the future meetings. After her opening remarks of being thankful
for the later meetings, she also spoke about her concerns about the agenda
of the meetings. In particular, she was not happy the board first met in
closed session with there being no predictability to when open session would
begin. She reasoned, being a busy parent, sometimes she could not stay
until the end and requested the board would consider changing the agenda
to better accommodate people attending.
This being said, besides the board, the executive director, the principal,
school accountant, and secretary being at the meeting, there were only two
parents, one student, and myself in attendance. I thought some of this was
because of the nature of the meeting being that it is the beginning of the
school year, and most of the meeting was confirming new hires and new

Gaylord Board Meeting

members of the board. I did ask our secretary how people are informed of
board meetings and she told me they are scheduled on the school calendar. I
thought this was interesting taking into account that the board meetings
were scheduled at more accessible times for parents and teachers to attend.
I questioned whether there should be more information communicated to
parents and teachers about the meetings and its agenda. Since it was the
first time I could attend the meeting, while I was sitting there, I felt like I
could see the importance of people being in attendance. For example, there
was a very important board meeting last year, in which, the Executive
Director of the school asked the entire board to resign or she would herself.
This meeting was during the day, and hard for teachers to attend even
though the meeting had a full house of concerned parents. The results of this
meeting were the entire board resigned and the Executive Director
eliminated any future board positions being filled by people who were being
paid by the school, reasoning that it presented a conflict of interests. The
validity of this idea is debatable, but what it means is our school board no
longer has a teacher representative.
The second speaker at the meeting was a 10 th grade student who had
been recently chosen to be a representative to the city with other students
from the community and offer input on future city parks. The speaker
addressed the schools involvement in the community and how her
appointment reflected the schools goals to be involved in the community.

Gaylord Board Meeting

She then told the board she would keep them updated on future progress,
and the board thanked her for her work.
After the speakers were done, the schools accountant addressed the
board on the schools finances. He told the board that the school was
deferring payments from the state and recommended the board consider
using this money to invest in future school infrastructure in order to get the
equity. His main concern of the deferments was the money from the state
could possibly remain unpaid if the school did not use the money. The board
then questioned him about the amount of money the school had deferred
and more about the urgency of the issue. The board agreed the issue should
be added to the agenda for the next board meeting and discussed during the
next closed session.
The rest of the meeting was then spent on approving the new board
members, new hires, and the creation of new positions. Through this, the
president of the board asked the board members to motion and second the
new members, new hires, and new positions. Once this was completed, all
those in favor were asked to confirm and the meeting was concluded after
the next board meeting was scheduled.