Here’s a story from ALXnow that talks about an Alexandria City Public Schools board retreat Thursday night where they discussed, among other things, a board conduct policy that would require members to defer inquiries on some topics to the board chair or superintendent and to circulate written comments to the board before submitting to media.
There are many things in this story that make my head hurt. And hearing the news that the district’s superintendent resigned on Friday says to me that it made other people's heads hurt, too.
Starting with this, when talking about the written comments to colleagues policy change.
(a) Are the citizens wanting to hear from their representatives really so dumb they can't tell the difference between that person's opinion and the board's position?
(b) I see this notion about working as a team/speaking with one voice a lot. ACPS isn't alone. But where does it come from? What's the point of representative democracy if there is an insistence on only "one voice"?
Board policy would have members defer questions on some matters to the communications office. Based on the following sequence, maybe that's not the most effective way to do it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And my "favorite" part of this story? The doors to the public meeting were locked. The clerk acknowledged it, according to the story.
This is FOIA 101. You can’t have a public meeting with locked doors!
So, if the doors were locked, how do we know what happened in the meeting?
It gives me the image of Donkey Kong, with Mario (the ALXnow reporters) starting at the bottom of the construction site, dodging barrels to get all the way to the third floor to save the meeting/princess.
“Help!” indeed.
When boards vote as one voice, encouraging each member to publicly explain their views on the matter at hand and how they came to the decision that guided their vote, provides citizens with background on the matter and helps them understand complicating factors that may not be readily apparent.
All too often public meetings, especially at the local level, are attended only by those whose “ox is being gored”. Given the deterioration of local media sources, routine, in depth coverage of regular meetings has become a rarity.
Locking doors for a public meeting gives the impression that the body in question might take actions without citizen input or any transparency.