Our Opinion: School board should livestream open forums

We second the idea to livestream the segment of local school board meetings that involve comments from the public.

At the Aug. 17 school board meeting, board member Brad Bates and former board member Michael Couty made the request. Bates noted the board has been accused of anti-transparency for not streaming open forums.

The rest of the meetings are livestreamed on YouTube, but the district excludes the public forum portion. As we previously reported, Communications Director Ryan Burns said the decision was made to protect student information that could be discussed.

But Bates pointed out the disclosure of student information could easily be avoided by setting parameters before someone from the public speaks. He also said an attorney with the Missouri School Boards’ Association’s policy department wasn’t aware of any other school districts that livestream meetings but exclude the public comment portions.

The board refered Bates’ request to the district’s policy review committee to determine what it would take to stream the open forums.

“I think it benefits our citizens to be able to see and hear what their fellow citizens are saying,” he said. “I think it’d be better for our community, and we would be in line with what other districts are doing.”

Couty campaigned on the issue of streaming meetings during his candidacy “to be able to see what was being presented to the board in totality so that we would be open and transparent in what we were actually doing.”

As we previously reported, he said there would be no reason for somebody to disclose student or employee information because community members should only be speaking about policy issues that are on the agenda.

“We should be very transparent in what we’re talking about, what issues are being discussed and what are the concerns from the community at large,” he said.

We agree with Bates and Couty, and we commend them for bringing the issue to the forefront. The public deserves to see the livestream portion of the meeting when the public address the board. It’s a simple issue of transparency, and it can be done without compromising individual student information.

News Tribune