Drive for More Accessibility, School Board Openness Gains Traction

The push by a small group of Rohnert Park teachers and residents who have been asking for years to make the Rohnert Park-Cotati Unified School District’s board meetings more accessible to the public is gaining traction.

The school board is exploring what it would take to tape their meetings and archive them on the school's website.

And a couple weeks ago, David Rowley, the information systems operation manager for the city, fielded a call from the board, asking what it would take to get board meetings live broadcast through City Hall, like City Council meetings currently are.

The cost: $20 an hour per technician to run the live broadcast on Channel 26 and to stream it in real time online. It takes two technicians to run the Council meetings, so that’s forty bucks an hour. Meetings regularly run three to four hours long. Total cost: about $160.

"We offered City Hall for free, but they would have to negotiate with Community Media Center of the North Bay for their rates," Rowley said.

Planning Commission, Parks and Recreation Commission and Mobile Home Rent Appeals Board meetings are live broadcast online and on TV for free by interns and city staff.

Airing City Council meetings live has spurred more civic involvement over the last 15 years, said Vice Mayor Jake Mackenzie.

Mackenzie pointed to the example of when the WalMart Supercenter proposal was brought to the Planning Commission last year — citizens watching from home came to City Hall to voice their opinions. People packed the chambers and overflowed out into the entryway.

“I’ve seen time to time people watching from home come down to City Council meetings to comment on issues,” Mackenzie said. “I think it has made quite a difference since the mid-‘90s when a major effort was made to televise meetings. People don’t have to come down to every meeting to learn about civic activities.”

Attendance at school meetings is spotty, at best, some parents and teachers said on a recent day.

Russell Hatcher, president of the Rohnert Park-Cotati Chapter of the California School Employees Association, who attends every meeting, said depending on the time of year, attendance ranges from 20-100 people.

“We have to give members of our community every opportunity to be informed,”said Trustee Marc Orloff. “I campaigned on a platform of transparency — it’s so important for parents to know what’s going on.”

“But I understand how hard it is for a parent to get to a meeting. There’s after-school programs, homework, sports…” said Orloff, who has five kids in the district.

Board President Ed Gilardi and Trustee Karyn Pulley agreed with Orloff, though they said a live meeting would be too expensive, and plans are already in the works to move school board meetings to Mountain Shadows Middle School next year.

They said they’d be open to recording the meeting, and putting it online afterwards as a podcast.

“Podcasts are fine, but moving it to city quarters and televising it would cost a minimum of $80 per board meeting,” Pulley said. “Let’s be real — where’s that money going to come from?”

Pulley said the other problem with moving meetings to City Hall is that City Council and school board meetings overlap on the same night, Tuesdays.

“And we are already scheduled to have our meetings at Mountain Shadows when we move next year,” she said.

Gilardi said moving the meeting would cause too much conflict with the city.

“The problem with using City Hall is the meeting has always been on the same night as ours, and if we need to schedule a special meeting, we would have to work around their schedule,” Gilardi said. “It would not be a smooth process.”

Gilardi and Pulley said the podcast currently is just an idea — they need to investigate how much time and money it would cost.

“We have that we’re dealing with,” Pulley said. “This has gotten to the bottom of our to-do list; we haven’t even talked about it as a board yet.”

Orloff said he supports the idea of a podcast. He called it a baby step.

“Look at what we have right now — not a lot of people come to our meetings,” he said. “I would love to see [meetings] televised live, but from a budgetary perspective, I understand some of the concerns.”

“I think we need to make our meetings as available to our community as possible,” Orloff added. “I think it makes sense when we consider our schedule for next year’s meetings, to look at having them on a separate night as City Council, if possible.”

The Governing Board will consider next year’s meeting schedule at the April 12 school board meeting at Lawrence E. Jones Middle School. That’s when the time and place of the meetings will be discussed. Members of the public are encouraged to come forth to let the board know what they think. The meeting calendar will be finalized May 10.

Editor's note: Trustees Leffler Brown and Andrew Longmire did not return repeated calls for comment. Listen to what parents have to say — click on the video to the right by clicking on "view gallery."