As the Gainesville City School Board works to streamline its operations, members are working on some operational protocols for the board and tweaking some board policies.
The Governance Team Operating Protocols, presented at Monday night's work session at school board headquarters, has been under development for the last seven months. The goal, based on the presentation by Superintendent Dr. Wanda Creel, is to make the operations of the board more efficient, ensuring that board members understand what's expected of them, and making them more accountable to each other and the community.
As the board works on the protocols, there also will be some policy changes.
One of the changes will be the way citizens can offer public input to the board. Under the proposed Policy BCBI (Public Participation), any citizen who wants to make a public comment at a school board meeting will need to submit the request in writing the Thursday before the meeting.
Creel said the idea is not to squelch public comment, but to make the process more efficient.
"It might, for example, be a coordination of a group of people...where instead of five people speaking from one group, one spokesperson would speak," said Creel. "It allows us to be able to come to a meeting somewhat prepared and it also allows us the opportunity to resolve a problem working at the lowest level."
Creel said there have been times when an issue could have been resolved with a simple visit to a principal, rather than bringing the matter before the entire school board.
"The board is really about policies, it's about budget, it's about governance from an overall standpoint," Creel said.
Creel said there will be times when board members will have to listen to issues that can't be resolved on the school level.
"We certainly recognize that if we can't solve it at the teacher level, we can't solve it at the principal level, we can't solve it at the superintendent level - then, by all means, please come and speak with the board."
Creel also noted that citizens often don't have "all the pieces of the puzzle," as she put it, when they come to air a grievance at a public meeting. She said by knowing in advance about an issue, board members will be better able to solve a problem before it escalates.
Board members will review the policy additions and changes, along with comments on the changes, before voting on the measures at their April meeting.
