CUSD tweaks meetings

Plan on later nights, but fewer of them.

The Chico Unified School District Board of Trustees on Jan. 18 approved several changes to its agenda format and meeting schedule.

The board will hold regular meetings once rather than twice a month, and if members of the public want to speak to something not on the agenda, they’d better not hold their breath—that’s been moved to the end of the night.

Superintendent Chet Francisco told the board the revised format, along with less-frequent meetings, would streamline presentations, reduce document-preparation time and save money. “I think this will help us be more effective and more efficient.”

“Dozens of hours a month” will be freed up, Francisco said—time that can be spent on “support, leadership and improved efficiency.”

Instead of the first and third Wednesdays of each month, the board will hold regular meetings only on the third Wednesday. Additional meetings, particularly workshops, could be scheduled on the other reserved Wednesday as-needed, perhaps at school sites and other locations besides the City Council chambers. Trustees plan to find a way to televise the special meetings and show them over the Internet, just like the regular meetings.

Perhaps most significantly, rather than being allowed to speak near the beginning of the meeting, just after the Superintendent’s Report, members of the public must wait until the end of the meeting to comment on topics not on the agenda. Public comment, now called “items from the floor,” has been the forum for everything from pet beefs the board no longer wants to address to short announcements of events and programs.

Trustee Scott Huber cast the sole vote against that change. “Some nights nobody’s here for the agendized items but there’s a whole raft of people here for items that aren’t on the agenda. I don’t think those people should have to sit through an hour-long budget presentation before they can present the item that they’re passionate about,” he said. “I would continue to advocate for the public forum to be at the beginning of the meeting.”

Trustee Anthony Watts countered that people can watch the meeting online or on cable TV, gauging when to show up based on that. “I don’t think it would cause them … to sit through the whole thing,” he said. He even suggested the CUSD could notify interested parties of the meeting’s progress via e-mail.

The agenda will also be shuffled. Rather than take up an item in “discussion” only to revisit it under “action,” each item will be dealt with all at once. Also, the agenda will better-organize topics, addressing “general,” “personnel,” “educational services” and “business services” issues in that order. Also, the board has begun holding its closed session before the regular meeting start time of 7 p.m.

Trustee Jann Reed had some concerns about holding regular meetings only once a month. “We’ve passed our cutoff point [of 10:30 p.m.] tonight; we were supposed to be adjourned,” she said. “If we have more things on a single, monthly agenda, it could stretch out our time to where we’re back to discussing things late into the night when things start to get foggy in our brains.”

The once-a-month thing is a minimum, assured Francisco. The CUSD would not give up its claim to the council chambers on the first Wednesday night.

Watts said he hopes the changes won’t be perceived as “looking to have less meetings and perform less work.” Instead, the result will be “more hands-on-type meetings.”