School Board going live

Meetings will be broadcast on the Internet, satisfying both advocates and critics of the panel

Leila Navidi

Cameras are in place in the meeting room of the Clark County School Board, and its first meeting video will be aired live on the Internet when the school year begins in August. Board members Carolyn Edwards, left, and Mary Beth Scow and the rest of the board meet bimonthly at the Greer Education Center in Las Vegas.

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Sat, Jun 28, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Leila Navidi

In preparation for the switch to live video broadcasting of Clark County School Board meetings, Vegas PBS staff members have been taping the board at work so they can make recommendations. Producer/directors Mark Williams, left, and Kevin Robinson work the equipment that will be used to record the meetings. The School District has spent about $125,000 on equipment for the chamber and another $12,000 in staff time on the project, which goes live for the first time in August.

Clark County School Board members, get ready for your close-ups.

After lengthy delays, the School Board plans to begin broadcasting its meetings live on the Internet beginning with the start of the academic year in August.

Plans are also in the works to air reruns on one of the two educational channels shared by Vegas PBS, UNLV and CSN.

The School Board’s bimonthly meetings are held at the Greer Education Center on East Flamingo Road at Eastern Avenue. The meeting chambers hold about 150 people. Typically the audience is small, unless the School Board is voting on a hot issue or a campus has been threatened with attendance zone or calendar changes.

The public would benefit from more people witnessing the board in action, the district’s advocates and critics say.

With an operating budget of $2.1 billion, the Clark County School District is the state’s largest recipient of tax dollars. It’s also the state’s largest public employer, with a workforce topping 35,000.

“Everyone should see how the district is supervised and how decisions are made,” said Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas. “Conversely, board members need to know that they are being observed by the public at large, not just the handful of individuals who are normally present.”

The state’s two next-largest school districts, Washoe and Carson City, broadcast their meetings, and so do the Las Vegas City Council and the Clark County Commission.

During the 2007 legislative session, Segerblom authored a bill that would have required the Clark County School District to broadcast its meetings. The language was downgraded to a recommendation after the district argued it needed time to study the logistics and expense of such an undertaking.

Airing its meetings live on the Internet is good progress, Segerblom said Friday. But he’s still looking forward to the first TV broadcast.

One question asked by legislators during the 2007 session was why Vegas PBS wouldn’t be able to broadcast School Board meetings.

There’s long been confusion over the relationship between the district and Vegas PBS, said Tom Axtell, the station’s general manager. While the School Board holds the franchise license for the station, Vegas PBS is an independently operated affiliate with its own governing board.

Channel 10 is the region’s sole PBS affiliate, and is required to carry the national network’s schedule of programs on the same day they are distributed, Axtell said. That leaves little room for flexibility when it comes to airing local material.

And currently there’s no available airtime on the “EduCable” digital channels, 110 and 111, which are used to broadcast college classes and other educational programming.

With the cuts to the state’s higher education budget, it looks as if UNLV will have fewer staff members available to produce its own programs, which could mean time slots on one of the “EduCable” channels could be freed for School Board meetings, Axtell said.

Clark County is one of eight school districts that hold television-broadcasting licenses. Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, carries some PBS programming and airs its Board of Education meetings. But, Axtell emphasized, the Los Angeles area has three other PBS stations.

“When you’re the sole-source station like us, you have to draw the line and say that public meetings belong on the public access or educational access channels,” Axtell said.

Albuquerque and Spokane, Wash., also have school district TV stations with PBS affiliation, but neither carries school board meetings because each is the community’s sole source of PBS programming, Axtell said.

The district has spent about $125,000 equipping the School Board chambers for broadcast, plus another $12,000 in staff time. The annual cost of the broadcasts will be about $19,000, Axtell said.

Similar to audio recordings of the School Board meetings available online, the broadcasts will be indexed so people can search for a particular agenda item without having to scan the entire meeting.

School Board member Carolyn Edwards has advocated for broadcasting meetings since before she was elected in 2006.

The broadcasts may require the School Board “to refine the way we conduct our meetings,” Edwards said. “We need to make sure we’re doing things in a way that the public can easily follow along.”

In fact, Vegas PBS staff has been videotaping School Board meetings so that Axtell and his staff can make recommendations for improvements before the system goes live.

As for whether the School Board will develop a loyal viewership, Edwards thinks plenty of people are interested in the proceedings but can’t attend at 4 p.m. every other Thursday.

“This is a good first step,” Edwards said. “And it’s long overdue.”

Discussion: 5 comments so far…

By avalentiner

6/28/08 at 9:35 a.m.

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I think its great they are going to webcast the meetings. It should have been done 5 years ago. $125k is rather expensive to simply enable web broadcasting. I hope for this rather large expense the equipment is HD ready. Many TV stations now broadcast their live signals onto the web 24x7. May be this could have been a more affordable option. Indexing is great but very time intensive and expensive. Maybe overkill for school board meetings. How about closed captioning, wil this be incorporated. I hope they are doing this all in house and not outsorcing which is always 10x more expensive. Aloso where's the web address we an view this at?
By Martin_Dean_Dupalo

6/28/08 at 5:37 p.m.

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The Clark County School District School Board members with a few rare exceptions on the Board of seven, has been dragged ‘kicking and screaming’ into the 20th century, in terms of technology, public education and responsibility, however, it is now the 21st century. Politically, they are as adept or diffident as ever. As stated by a Board member “This is a good first step,” of literally hundreds more desperately needed towards an open and responsive school board.

“And it’s long overdue.” Many in the public, particularly parents with children in the school system, buttressed by some political representatives have advocated that these all too bureaucratic and dysfunctional meetings be broadcast, that ‘sunshine’ be allowed. With a consensus amongst many about a lack of leadership and a non-responsive bureaucratic system, the public will with either cable or a high-speed Internet connection be able to watch the proceeding or at least in part.

At the least, viewers will at times be able to see the Board speaking in its own language consisting of insider phrases with no public explanation. The vast majority is often between professional bureaucrats, lawyers and Trustees. One could sometimes mistake the Trustee meeting for a courtroom with lawyers arguing with the public what is legal and their interpretation of Nevada Revised Statutes. One session some time past had the Board supporting lawyers for the district stating how a four year old attending school is illegal and ‘breaking the law.’

School board meetings take place with the same insiders present. The key players are on the stage, accompanied by a handful of influential operatives with a few interludes spread throughout the meetings, a few good reporters, and district bureaucrats who often wander back and forth through the marathon sessions. Only a handful of observers are present unless there is a specific issue at hand.
Towards the end of meetings and during breaks , the viewing public could witness some of the politicos mingle, sidebar conversations and negative quips, with particular Trustees and school officials which would better explain alliances that occur as Trustees vote along certain patterns often excluding a single member who has repeatedly made her concerns of inequities vocalized; only to ask for a second motion to call for a vote, so that certain items could be addressed – and almost without fail, abandoned.
And when concerned residents and parents and citizens are present, the public will often hear the trademark responses of several school board members to include “We appreciate …” and “Next” and similar dismissive responses.

Part 1 of 2
By Martin_Dean_Dupalo

6/28/08 at 5:38 p.m.

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The majority of working parents have not been able to observe or participate in what the school board does unless they have five hours every other Thursday evening between 4 and 9 pm. Alternatively, they may have had to purchase one or two $5 internally-recorded tapes by the school district to view these limited access meetings.

But what about the meetings held at the high-end facility with more-than-adequate security and plush accommodations where the Trustees have their offices?

What about the violation of open meeting laws? Or the periods when the Board goes into ‘closed door sessions’ and are off camera? Will there be elevator music played during these times or promotions for trustees?

While the second and third largest districts in Nevada have efficiently and effectively broadcast their school boards (Washoe, Carson City), the majority of the Clark County School District Board has considered public broadcasting the public meetings as a choice to be weighed with variables of politics and personal preferences, not as a responsibility to the public.

With $2.1 billion dollars of taxpayer’s monies as the states largest recipient and generally only a handful, some 150 regular attendees present, and repeatedly dismal results from the district, and a national ranking of 48 out of 50 – perhaps now, the public can witness much of the underlying principles of failure of leadership at the Clark County School District.

Let the sunshine in and broadcast these meetings – all of them, everywhere, unedited, a user-friendly format, readily available and with links and notices for all the citizens of Clark County.

Part 2 of 2
By ZeddyBear

6/29/08 at 8:30 a.m.

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I want to see the fights that will occur at the Board meetings. Remember the elderly lady who was shackled and then thrown out by CCSD police at the command of a Board member? They have attacked like a pack of vicious dogs one another -- especially Shirley Barber. I want to see the legal machinations of such folks like CCSD legal beagle Bill Hoffman as he interprets NRS laws and then says, "These NRS regulations don't really apply to CCSD." Yes, I can't wait to see these idiots up close and personal. And you know the best parts will find themselves posted on YouTube, and the rest of the world can see for themselves "what fools these mortals be."
By loves2tch1st

6/29/08 at 3:39 p.m.

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Yikes...I should have read some of the bloggings about CCSD before unrooting myself to try and obtain a teaching position in this district. Unfortunately, I think that the majority of districts are run in the same fashion. I have worked in several and most, if not all, of the problems stem from management or mismanagement. I think it is a sad scenario when a school district has so little in their fiscal budget that they can only afford to hire subs. So...who is ultimately responsible for the failing scores of the students. You certainly don't expect high scores from subs in a classroom. It is the domino effect.

At my district in Arizona we were always surprised at the number of new teachers coming into our district from Las Vegas. Now we know why!