BOE 2020-01-07 Policy Review

001(gentle music) - Good morning, it is approximately 8:30 on January the 7th, 2020. This is a meeting of the Policy Committee on the 1000s. I believe this is our fifth meeting, following meetings on June 11th, June 19th, October 3rd and December 4th, 2019. And we are, I believe, gonna start with another look at policy 1050 and then move on to policy 1222 and continue from there and we'll see how far we can get today. 1050. - Yeah, can I start off with just a couple? So where we left this, there was some concern about the nomenclature of some of these items and making sure that we were using the terminology correctly and consistently throughout the policy. So Honore and I had a conference call with Dan to clarify propositions, just to be clear, are questions

002of referendum, shall the board do X, fill in the blank? So that's what a proposition is. It's a question from the board, that's soliciting whether or not the board will take a particular kind of action. A petition is a request by voters to nominate or place a proposition on the ballot, and it comes from a group of citizens. So that's what the petition is. And then the special meeting for the annual meeting, it was 25 or 5%. And for petitions it was 25, or 2%. And so just to provide that clarification on those items that we didn't have a lot of clarity on before. And then there was also a question on the propositions of, how do we accept those and you either accept or reject the propositions that come from the voters. - Petitions

003come from-- - The propositions. - No, it's a petition to place a proposition. - For the proposition, right. - Okay. - Right? No, I'm just. - Yes, that sounded right. - So it sounds like what you just said is help-- - No. - No? - We accept or reject the proposition. - The proposition-- - They bring us the petition, we gotta take that, read it, fine. - The proposition is the question itself. - Yeah, and that's what we get to analyze and decide whether it conforms-- - Shouldn't petition have to conform also? - Well-- - It may or may not, we kind of went over that, like, we can change it if it doesn't completely conform, we can them tell them to change it. - So it's signed by whatever percentage, right? If it doesn't

004have 2% theoretically, we're rejecting it, right? - Or say you need to get-- - Yeah, but it's the proposition that's the meaningful part, right? - All right, so it sounds like we should probably in here define what a proposition is. At least based upon what you just said. I think that if the whole idea of this is to inform resident or whomever, of what this policy or what they have to do, I think that would be helpful. - Does it make sense to do that in that first sentence under propositions? The board may place propositions, comma, questions of referendum put to the board, comma, on the ballot for the annual election? - If that's the right definition, sure. - I mean, that's the one he gave us. Specifically, it's, shall the board do X, fill

005in the blank. - Except, it's not in the form of a question normally, is it? - Yeah. According to Dan it is. - Is it always? Really? Were our, I guess that's true. - The petition may not come in the form of a question. But the proposition would be in the form of a question. - Yeah, even our own, our own propositions are always-- - Yeah, because that's gonna go out to the-- - Well, should we raise money for Green Acres? That was-- - Yes or no. - That was the question. - Yeah, 'cause-- - Well, this is, these are for, but these are for voting purposes. I didn't specifically ask for boards' purposes itself. This is to put out to voters though. - Right, right on the ballot in-- - I think it is

006yes or no. - It's definitely a yes or no answer. - Which means it has to be, I would think it would have to be an interrogatory then. - I guess. Funny, funny we don't remember that. - Well, is the board authorized to tax for-- - Yeah that's-- - Or whatever dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. - That's the way they've been set up in the past. - Okay. - Or, unfortunately, they're often like paragraphs and don't seem like questions by the time you get to the end of it, but whereas, whereas, whereas shall the board... - Okay. - All right so we'll define each of these as they first appear. So in the first paragraph, propositions definition, petition definition. - I think that would be helpful. - Yeah, I agree. - Or should be helpful.

007- And then so the number one under that was 25 or 2%, not 5% he said. - In number one. - No, five is for propositions. Candidate petitions is 2%. - Petitions. I think 25 and five comes from, right from school law. - It does. - It did, but so do five and two, I have those petitions on my notes. - That's for candidate. - Nominees for-- - That's for candidates, yeah okay. - So number one, maybe should-- - Which he advised to tick off. - Maybe number one could begin the same as number two, petitions for propositions. - That's right. - And you're saying we're not gonna do the ones for candidates? We're not gonna reference ones for candidates in this at all? - That's what Dan advised, to take the candidate petitions off.

008This is primarily for the propositions. - So really, don't address the candidate things at all in here, candidate petitions at all in here? - That's so odd-- - Because that's-- - When the section's called annual election. - And that's really the only petition we get, like nine out of 10 times. - Right, but we-- - We get those every year. - Yeah, guaranteed. - We do have that other stuff. - Because it's addressed-- - Yeah, he specifically said take out nominations for the school board as well. - Where else would it appear, if anywhere? - It's in another policy. - But this policy we should re-title then, to whatever it's gonna be. If it's only about propositions, or special district meetings. - Yeah, I think it's budget votes, special district meetings. - Budget vote, it

009probably is. - Yeah. - Well, but it talks about an annual election, where... - So annual election and budget vote. And then propositions. - I mean we could put a better reference. - Non-candidate. - See in here, like petitions to nominate candidate are discussed in policy number boom, as opposed to just-- - Definitely a reference. - A reference number at the bottom. - Yeah. - So if someone goes here-- - So a text, not just a reference. - Right, that's at least my reaction. Because I think Chris is right. I'm not sure I wanna play with the title, because I'm not sure if that would be inaccurate to take it off, you know? But I think to give a guidance to someone that would go here normally. I would have gone to this one for

010petitions for candidates potentially, so... - To me, I don't think all cross references are necessarily that clear, but I think in this particular case it would be. Whether you land here on the other ones, having this kind of mimic the same language, and then one explaining the board and special meetings and the other specifying the board elections is, I think, pretty clear. - Okay. - So you're saying you don't think there should be a line referencing to the candidate petition policy? - You mean the, I think having the first paragraph in here as is can be like on both different, on both policies. That there's an annual election and budget vote, 'cause that does happen at the same time. For this one, read it on here. If you wanna read about board member elections go

011to policy so-and-so. - Yeah, so there should be a line referencing go to. - Correct. - Yeah. - I think that would be right in that first, maybe it's an addendum to that first paragraph. - So, is in one, two, three and four, are they all, those are all petitions for propositions, right? - Well no, three is only about propositions themselves. - So four should be a petition for a proposition. Right? Wording of a petition for a proposition. 'Cause those are the only ones we're talking about here. - Yeah, and he actually said to put back in number four. - Right. - That's what I heard. Do we have a cleaner version? - Right here. - Sorry, thanks. - And it can be plural to match the other's wording of proposition, of petitions for propositions.

012- I'm sorry Chris, what change did you just make? - In number four he pluralled petitions and added for propositions. - Wording of petitions for propositions. - Take out the word a. - In four? - Yes. - Yeah. - Wording of petitions, plural. - Take out the space before. - It's in the line. - What do you mean it's in the line? Formatting? So wordings of petitions for propositions. - And what was the 2%, so and the candidates one is the only petition that requires that 25 signatures or 2%? - Yes. - Number one is still 25 or five. - The key may be off there by... - Yeah, yeah. - So then Thomas, you're gonna edit the other one, the matching one and conform it in style to this? - Yeah. - Do you

013know what one that is, FYI? - It's in the 2000 series. - Right. - And then this improper advocacy paragraph, are we gonna duplicate that into the other one, down below at the bottom of this page? It really applies equally. - Yeah, yeah. Right there would be a particular candidate potentially as opposed to particular position, but it's the same... - Yeah, yeah, but I think you could take the whole paragraph. - You could just copy. Yeah, yeah, I agree. - Fix that. - Okay, okay. I missed the, where are we putting at the end? - We're duplicating this on the other policy that matches the board elections as well, so I have that. - Okay. - So you're adding a reference to the other policy in wording here, and that's really about it. - The

014only reference-- - And we'll duplicate the first paragraph, we'll duplicate this improper advocacy paragraph. - Yeah, and maybe even if there's-- - Parallel structure. - Yeah, if there's specifications for the candidate. - So we do reference nomination propositions in paragraph two as something that's not required to be included in the notice. So that's only due 30 days before. Are we okay with that as the example here? - Sorry what are we on? - Number two. Petitions for propositions that must be included in the notice of the annual election or special district meeting must be filed with the board or the district clerk at least 90 days prior to the vote. What's your question? - Keep going. Petitions for propositions that are not required to be included in the notice, and then we reference nomination propositions.

015- Yeah. - And A, is that even the right-- - Place to put it? - Yeah, is that the right example? Is it... - Is it the only example? - Yeah, is that the only example? So that was just my question. I agree that there's certain petitions that don't need more notice, so it's only 30 days, that I get. But, here we use this as an example because we were talking about nominations. I'm not sure if that's... - Needs to be in there either. - Right. And there's an extra space between clerk-- - Yeah, we got that one already. - Okay, sorry. I just. - No, no, no, we were side-barring on that so. - And the formatting, yeah. - Right, three to paragraph four. - Yeah. - Okay. So, with those changes, are we

016comfortable that we're kind of done with 1050 and it should go to the board at this point? - We'll clean it up and-- - Yeah, confirming that sentence that you just mentioned, whether or not that should be in at all. - Right. - If there's other ones that needs-- - It definitely should be in the other policy, and we'll see if there's another example-- - And we probably use another example, yeah. - Right, if that's the only one, and it doesn't need it-- - And if not it goes out. - Then everything needs to be 90 because it says. - And if it is, it should be another example. - Right. Okay. So the next one in my stack is 1120, but it seems to be bolded on our list. Does that mean that we

017are done? - The reason why I did include that is because there was some question about the data privacy officer. We did talk to Dan about that. - Okay. - [Honore] Right, so as of-- - I'm sorry. - July 2020, I think that will go into effect, that requirement. - Yes, right. Yeah, so my suggestion would be to include the language and either say effective by this date, or as required by law, which also has the... - It says pursuant to law now, I think. - Then that covers it already. - Right, it says the superintendent shall designate with board approval that a privacy officer and a records access and records management officer comma, pursuant to law. - Yeah. - So that covers it. - So you don't have to do it now. You're not

018out of compliance. If we were to pass this policy. And everything else was the same or? - What was the date again on that one? - [Honore] July 2020. - So we'll do it on the July, the reorg meeting then. - Yeah and the list of whenever. - Just put it on tick and file when the reorg was. - Okay. - Pam can handle that. - Just, yes. - Just Chris and I will not. - Yes, I can. - We got you covered. - Okay. - So there's nothing else that you needed about the data privacy officer here except that you're gonna be designating the board approval of that person? Is that right, Thomas? - Yeah, just let me check. My notes here, the cross-reference for the policy, community feedback, received, okay, yeah, I think

019those were the four things we talked about. - Beluga whales going on. - So, we have at the end of this policy now, school district records, we talk about you and then assistants from the records access and records management officer, we don't really talk about the data privacy officer, other than-- - Or any other. - That you're just designating them. I'm okay with that I guess technically, but if we're trying to tell the community what anybody does, data privacy officer probably should say that, maybe, or records access or records management officer, what they're responsible for. The last paragraph kind of does that I think, for records management, but not for data privacy. - So we should add from the... - From the statute. - From the data privacy officer. And records management. Access and management

020officer, records access management officer. - I will tell, I don't really know what the records-- - Do we need records and records, is it two people or one person? - That's one I believe. - So it's kind of duplicate. - We've used that all the way. - Oh we have? - But I think you can check it. - That's fine. - I wonder if that's a state title or something. - I feel like you checked it before. - I did, I think we added that. - So are you saying that you're gonna describe what the data privacy officer does in this? - We're just adding too because they're the ones who are also responsible for developing and disseminating the department specific retention schedules, and the guidance to staff, so it's just another person who has

021a major function now. - Does the TPO have any other function in here? - They're not part of the litigation hold probably. - They don't. - I mean they probably work in conjunction with somebody. - If you want to add that to the litigation hold paragraph, we can do that also because we talked about the record access and record management official along with the district's attorney. - Yeah, so we should add it there. - So down there you're adding it too. - Data privacy officer. Yeah, because properly implemented might mean some simplification. - That someone else should look at it for the privacy issue. - Correct. - Okay. - Okay, so that was 1120. - So now we're jumping ahead to 1222. - So with 1120, once we add the data privacy officer, that's when

022we go to the board as well? - I think so. - In two places. - Yes, litigation hold and the last paragraph. - If you scroll up, Honore, I sense, yeah, that resided, there was something to tell us when they printed that. - Right, so I'll duplicate the way it's said there in the other two spots. Okay. - I think that's right. - It will become the, in the other two spots. - All right, 1222. So we have not... I see the district attorney made suggestion, or we have obviously with this one. - Yeah. - Numerous times. - Yeah, so Dan's notice is helpful, but I don't think it changes any of the language here, right? We've kind of already assumed what he said was true. I think this is fine except that we'd reorder

023these points, especially three and four just for common sense because number four is about the more typical thing of in-school, and then three would follow as if you're off-campus. - Flip flop is that what you're saying? Flip flop those two? - Which ones? - Four and three. And then logically, maybe five should follow from one, but that doesn't really matter. One is saying don't disrupt anything, five is saying-- - Respect. - Yeah, follow, deal properly with the employees. - So then one, two, two becomes three. - It could. - And three becomes, then four stays four, three becomes five. - Okay. - Right. - I don't have anything else. We have this-- - Do we have a mail list or are they all in case? - Because the running and it's a semicolon. - Yeah,

024but in other policies, let me see if I can cap those lists, no? What did we do on our last column? - We do not define loose organizations. - We tried to do it. - I know, I know. - Once upon a time. - And we don't say anything about what this business of recognition by the superintendent and approval by the board looks like, and was this actually something that's gonna happen, is it gonna happen annually? Will we check off that people have followed all seven of these guidelines. - Right, or are we recommending it once that they be recognized as a board, booster organization, and we never do anything about it again? - Well, the regulation is how we implement, the policy is what provides the overall guidance. - You think that you would

025want to develop a 1222 R here? - I mean, yeah we probably should actually, just to have the paperwork, the documentation on this stuff, but I wouldn't want this to hold up from moving through the policy, because once we adopt this, then we have guidance to start working on regulation for it. - But how might that look? Would you want at the reorganization meeting to just have a quick item with on your recommendation that we acknowledge the Education Foundation and Friends of Music and The Arts, and five others? - Booster organizations for 2020-2021? - And then if anyone wanted to come up with something in January of that year, it could just be done-- - Through the end of that year. - Like at any time. - So I think we discussed this last time,

026my concern with what Chris just said, although I think that's a fair process is that year to year, I don't think you want to wait, wondering if they're going to be the boosterorganization or something else, and they shouldn't have to do anything, I don't think, as long as they're complying with one through seven or whatever, it should be routine. They are our sports booster organization, what if all of a sudden we have greater pride that comes out, they're not competing necessarily. - But there's a lot of routine stuff that we do on that reorg meeting. Like so many of those approvals we do every year. - That's all internal people. - So this could just follow that exact same structure. - I'm not saying it can't, I think just from them, they believe they've been

027a booster organization for the last 50 years. - Yeah, but they'll get used to it, but I'm just saying this is just a formality. - So we need, someone needs to communicate that. - We're not actually asking them to do anything, right? - Right. In the regulation, it would just be. - For me it would be pro-forma for the groups we just talked about. If somebody were new and were to come onboard, and say, now we want to be a booster organization for Steam or for something else, then I think then that would need the formal. It's just like we do our attorneys and stuff. - So it's two things. - That would just roll over. - There's the regular pro-forma and the process for new. - Correct. - And I think, all I'm saying

028is we need to manage, we need to tell the existing groups that nothing is changing as it pertains to them. I mean it's a good communication, managing their expectation. They know all of a sudden, they see this on the agenda and get worried that they're not gonna be a booster organization. - And in fact, I think the way to do that, my attorneys are talking about, what we've never done, but we probably should is send out a letter every fall or summer or spring that says, we appreciate you being a booster organization of the district, we appreciate your support, by the way, here's a reminder of the seven principles that we ask all of our booster organizations to follow, if you're planning on doing a fundraiser, please make sure you meet with Stewart and Thomas,

029if you're planning on doing this, make sure you get it from the board. - So it's policy 1800. - Right, so that could be a simple letter that we send out every year, that just sort of outlines roles, responsibilities, expectations. - And we do a lot of those types of letters when we do buddy and liaison assignments in the summer. - It can even come from the board. - Well, it's board policy, so it probably should come from the board. - Okay, so if the community engagement committee will recommend that. - They can work on the letter, give them some work to do. - More work? So basically it's an annual letter to boosters with referencing this policy and the thing? - And them doing roles, expectations and responsibilities, whatever. - So would that typically

030go with the reorg, like we do with the buddies, kind of a relaxing time? - So for the reorg meeting, we can have the boosters listed, we can have the copy of the letter that we send out, once the board says it's okay, that letter gets mailed out to everybody, boom, boom, boom. And you know who the new presidents are. - So between now and July would be your intention to come up with the regulation? - Community engagement. - No, that's, you come up with the regulation. - Yeah, yeah. - Or admittedly we'd have to recommend the continuing ones-- - Correct. - On the July agenda. - Yeah. - I mean the regulation for me is the form that people would fill out, you know, those kinds of things so that's available. - It should

031be, like Chris said, but annually you will recommend for board approval, we'd send the letter. - We will send the letter, it's a process. - Just in number seven, which I think is now the last one, at least on my version. - Yeah, I kept it in order in here. - Okay. I think it should be make gifts in accordance with policy 1800, not make any gift. - So I have some language in my head that's going back, there were different, we had gifts, and I remember a policy that had like two other things attached to it besides gifts. - Like tangible property, that type of thing? - Yeah, I wonder... - I think it's all covered by 1800 now, isn't it? - Is it? - Or is it, or maybe what you're thinking is,

032did we end up, we talked for a long time how to define gifts and whether to include things like-- - Programming, real property, cash or stocks... - If we're paying some author to show up, making a gift or not? - Yeah, exactly. - So I don't think we're gonna get to 1800, but it's in the per-view of this-- - It is cross-reference too so it has to conform with that, so... - Is it here today? - No, I think we only went through 1500. - It's in your packet. - It is? My packet only seems to have gone through 1500. - Yeah, same. - I can put it to you over here. - Have we done 1800 already? - Not as part of this committee. We've done 1800-- - Oh yeah. - As relates to

033the recognition and other things. - So do we want to just add Dan's language as is here, suggested language? - The board retains final responsibility paragraph sentence? - Yeah. - That's just the final paragraph? - Yeah. - So the sentence would run from the board through school and property, period? - Through off-campus? - Or off-campus too. - I don't like the booster clubs as separate entities part. - Why? - It's just liability. - I would do maybe the rest of that sentence, the district shall not be allowed before any actions of the booster on or off-campus. - So if there's a big fight at a booster event... - To say they're separate entities, to say they're separate entities in a policy isn't legally binding. Legally they are separate entities. It actually doesn't say anything. In

034other words, we're not Maroon White. - But we're not saying that anywhere in the policy so far that they're separate entity. It says we recognize them and that they're important to our success. - But you have to be a separate entity to be a booster organization. - Why not just state it then to be clear? - Because separate entities is actually weird language. - I don't think he was proposing this as language to add, right? - He was. - He wanted this language added? - Yeah, that was his specific comment. - Oh, I see. - I'm okay with that first sentence, I'm actually okay with the end of the second sentence theoretically, we're talking about this whole thing, you're a booster, you're supporting us, by the way you're a separate entity. Like, if you want,

035maybe add, say, are legally separate entities or something like... - I don't think this is intended for the booster org, I mean maybe it is actually, but it's really for somebody else who, because there's always confusion like is the PTC part of the district, is the Foundation part of the district, are booster organizations part of the district, I gave to that one already, why am I giving to... - I agree, but I don't think the word separate necessarily describes exactly what you're trying to communicate. - So what are you talking about, independent? - Maybe. Legally independent, like I guess what purpose are we trying to solve? - I like the purpose of clarifying liability. - That's the point. - And to just acknowledge. - You don't have to say they're separate, they are separate. -

036But every time our lawyers come to us around an issue, it's like where did you say that this was not attached to the district, they want the language written down somewhere where we notify the community that-- - So this is good. - And all this does is provide that little bit of buffer there, I don't think it's mean to be a statement on the value of them, it's just meant to say, you guys are different than we are. If you want to sue someone, it's not us you're gonna sue. - So I would be more explicit then, as they are independent, the entity is not related to the district, the district shall not be liable for any actions of the booster organizations. - I don't even know what separate is a standalone word. - Neither

037do I. - Separate from each other, us? - It's just a word thing, independent, that you're saying. - But you want to say independent from us. - Do you want to add that at the very beginning when we're doing the boost, because that's a little bit of definition. - Yeah. - Versus having it as a certain liability. - I think it's very important. - That's fine. - So the board recognizes the booster organizations, are, what do I want to say, are separate entities, but stimulate-- - Independent from the district. - Entities independent from all, it should be from each other and from the district, quite frankly, right? - I don't know if we can control that. - Sounds like legalies to me. - Entities independent from the district. I don't know if we have to

038talk about their inner-relationship. Entities separate from the district, but stimulate community... - I'm not sure separate is the right word. Just independent from the district. - Or independent entities? Give me language. - I don't know. That's why I'm telling you what I didn't like, I didn't come up with a solution yet. - So what makes sense? You like independent better than separate? - Yeah. - You're kind of using a little bit of legal. - My sense is that last sentence here. - Are independent from the district, but stimulate community, interest and provide support to the district? - Yeah. How about just are not district entities. - Well, because you don't like the negative, you've been trying to stay away from the negative. So are independent entities which-- - I like independent entities which, yeah, I

039like that. - Independent from whom? - The district. - So then we need to clarify that. - We need to say that effect. - Entities independent from the district which stimulate... Does that which reference the entities? - It's almost like... They're independent, but they serve, I don't want to lose that little piece, they're independent from the district, but provide an important function as they stimulate community interest and provide support, something like that. - Which is what it says, they provide important support to the district, student, schools and right there. - You can change, you can go provide and stimulate community interests. You can flip those two if you think it's better. - But what you just said is basically what's up there. - I think this is perfect. Although I would say that, but I

040think this is great, right, we're in the clear? - Entities independent from the district, that provide important support-- - To the district and its schools and stimulate community interest? - Yeah. - If you preferred it that way. - So bring stimulate community interest to the end of that first sentence, after start with provide, and bring stimulate. Got it. Now, what are we doing with... We're still gonna leave that last part of that sentence down at the bottom, Scott? - Yeah, and then you put in the word and, and then paste what you've cut. - And take out the other and above. - Before provide. - So provide important support to the district and schools-- - Up above take out and in front of provide. - Okay. - And I think there's an extra space between

041schools in the end, I couldn't tell. All right. - That provide important support to the district-- - Not that one, the start of the next, and. - And stimulate. Yeah, I like that. - Formatting. - And a comma after school-- - Okay, so now-- - Back down to the bottom. - So then we can leave that sentence, the board pertains. Do we then say there-- - So what do you think is Dan's reasoning there, because he kind of unwinds this effort to separate ourselves from these entities by saying, we're responsible for everything they do, that effects students. We're responsible for everything that boosterorganizations do. - It's really for what they're allowed to do, I think is more the... - Well, okay. What they're allowed to do... - It sounds like to me, all we get

042to say is yes or no. Once they decide to do the thing then we step back from it. - Okay. Well, if I weren't happy about the brawl, I would be very happy to read this language that the board is responsible, for the activity that occurred, because it affected the students. - So, Maroon White sponsors a bonfire and something happens there, because we give final respons... - Kid gets hurt, parents wanna sue us. - We will be sued but do we need to really embrace this full responsibility? - Like, it's almost as if... We're saying, we are liable for everything, as opposed to saying that we're not. By saying that we have final-- - That's the thing, right. - It's better to argue the reverse, it doesn't say that we were responsible. - It says

043that we're completely responsible. Meaning that we are liable. - I mean in places we've said the board, or superintendent has the final say, right? Like when we went through that whole comity structure, or advisory comity. We said, you can recommend all you want, but we have final say. I'm not sure that's exactly what we're saying here. - Responsibility and authority is very different. - Yeah. - Is that what his means? - I mean as you guys are describing, I hear what you're saying for sure. But I also recognize the value in saying that the board either... The board has to retain the right to sanction or not sanction things, otherwise people are grinding out, doing fundraisers for lights, and that's like, I don't have to ask the board, we're a separate entity. So, I think

044we have to be careful about saying-- - What can't we just say the board must approve all activities. - And the district should not be liable for any actions of the boosterorganizations on or off-campus. - Instead of retaining final responsibility, that the board must approve all activities, which haven't been backed and then we just use the district-- - All activities? - And the board's not gonna do it. - Yeah. - All activities? - And the board's not gonna do it. - Even the superintendent isn't doing it. Number three says just go deal with Ray and other people, and then five says for this more important things that are weirder talk to the superintendent. - So then, isn't it sort of said up there in three? - Well, I think it is well-covered already, yeah. -

045Yeah, we had to fix the numbers, we changed that were... - It sort of, the gap is the example Thomas just gave though. It's a designated entity, it's not really directly involving students, but they're gonna run out and raise a million dollars for lights. Where do we cover that here? - Gifts in accordance with policy 1800. - So how about receive-- - Maybe. - Yeah, that's 18 months later. When they get the check. - How about, the number of what was up there as five, receive approval by the superintendent or the designee for specific off-campus activities involving students and faculty. So, you know, that's-- - They would say this exists really in cyber space, it's not off-campus and it doesn't have... Don't worry we're not gonna involve the students. - Which may have an impact

046on students. If it may have an impact on students, than that addresses the lights. Anything that may have an impact on students... - So, I think we can cover this by taking off off-campus. - In number three? - In number five. Receive approval from the superintendent or designee for activities involving students or faculty. - Okay, so number three is about physical plant number, this other one is about-- - The activity. - The kids and the faculty. - And to me that's club advisors could be a designee, Ray could be a designee, Ken could be a designee, Megan could, I could, just the right person at the right level. - So, tell me how five would read. So you just take off off-campus. - So, receive approval by the superintendent or the designee for activities involving

047students... So that means every time they're gonna have a meeting they need approval? - The designee will give approval. - The designee will, so if it's Ray, Ray does all the athletic stuff. - But he definitely doesn't approve Maroon and White meetings and... - Do they involve students? - It's only students and faculty. I don't care about like, their own meetings-- - But your lights example you care about a lot. That doesn't involve students or faculty. - But that's fundraising which would be under gifts, right? - Not really. - Well, it could. I mean there they wanted donor recognition, so we were surely involved in it from the start as opposed to them going out and raising money without talking to us. - Or on five we could say, involving students or faculty, or fundraising

048initiatives, or efforts. - Why do we wanna... That thing way down at the bottom, impact on students, schools, school programs and or school on property. Why don't we wanna include that up there? - Sorry, where are you, Pam? - So the very bottom. Impact on students, schools, school programs, and, or school on property. That's where we use recommend in. Having activities which have an impact on... Isn't that what you wanna bring up into the guidelines? - Sure, great, so we can add that. - And take that off at the bottom. - And take the second part of five off. - Let's talk about their fall dinner. - That involves students, so we wanna have-- - And Ray's really involved. - Right, so all the coaches are involved. - Right, no that should be, that would

049certainly fall under this. But I don't think we have a formal, like, Ray's not approving it. He's involved in it, no doubt. - I kinda like, I mean I hate doing this on TV 'cause I've been coming up with bad examples, and these don't happen necessarily, but I think we have to examine you know... So like right now these happen at public venues, private venues, you know. But if it was gonna be at somebody's house and there weren't gonna be supervision, and things like that, I mean it's nice to have Ray be able to say no. Like you can do something independently, but this can't be part of the booster activity because we can't support having this at somebody's home with no supervision. So I kinda like that. - I don't disagree with any of

050that. But in terms of actually implementing this, is there gonna be a regulation that says... Like a form saying, we're doing a whatever, approval for an activity, which may have an impact, and there's actually sign-off required, 'cause we don't do that now. - And we don't wanna do that. - I don't think we wanna do that. So just think about that, in terms of your regulations. When you're talking about approval, that's what it means. - I wanna be careful, 'cause I don't wanna get on this road of like being super regulatory to the point that it turns people off, but having like, one of our vulnerabilities as a district has been that we don't write things down. We don't have that kind of chain of command, that formality. Then when something goes backwards and our

051attorney says, we need documentation on who approved the activity. What was the capacity, what was the supervision like. That's a big vulnerability of ours. - Why don't we? - I know, like maybe we should do that, even if it was a blanket one that you did at the beginning of the year and just sort of filled out the-- - Like here are the eight events we're planing. - Correct. - And basically they do that for use of school facilities. I mean there are checks-- - Yeah but the coordination-- - Tasks-- - The coordination doesn't always happen, you're right, it happens-- - No, no, no. - In that office. - Yeah, but that's another thing they can be asked to do. - It's important for our calendaring functions, it's important for our... I mean just lots

052of reasons. - We went to you as a regulation-- - I think it's a good-- - It's administrative work. - But it's a good thing for us, in terms of liability and coverage, knowing what's going on. - So somewhere we need to be done with people like Maroon White to say... - It's not that many, it's not that many. And if you're willing to do the administration on it-- - And we can do an online, we can make it easy. Like we don't wanna make it hard, we can do drop-down menus. - So do you have to do regulation for that as well? Because you're already doing one about how it's improved-- - Yeah. - You can add that to the regulation that there will be a process for. - So, if we move that

053which has an impact, are we taking out that last sentence? - Yeah, I think we can now, 'cause we're covered. - Are we leaving the last piece, which was the district shall not be liable for any actions of booster organizations on or off-campus. - I like it. - I support keeping that. - Yeah. - So we wanna keep that in? - Not that our separate entities piece, but starting this sentence, I think with the district. - Instead of it just being a floating sentence at the very bottom, do you wanna add it to the top paragraph somewhere? Like, just because it's silly at the very bottom. One sentence. - So, I think we're taking out all that paragraph. - We totally are. - I keep going back. - You can just add up the very

054last sentence on the first paragraph. - I know, right. Can we? - So you want the district... - It could just stay there, shouldn't we have still a sentence like what we did on the advisory committees, that you just referenced, Scott? - You mean, that we have final say? - Yeah. That all this delegation and the superintendent's involvement, and Ray and everything else notwithstanding, the board keeps, retains its... - Advisory committees-- - Its oversaight. - Is that in here, that's 1210. - Can we go to 1210, Honore, please? - Sure. - Let's just add it. - It's 1210, yeah. - There it is. - I have every version in here. - We took it out of there. - Okay. - I guess we talked about-- - We talk about providing advice and recommendations. - And

055we said that we have final say on everything so it doesn't need to be reiterated, I think it's what we concluded. - And by saying they'd only give us advice or recommendations, it's clear what they're not allowed to do. - All right, so the question is do you want to add it here? - Let's just bring the last sentence up to the first paragraph, about liability. - Okay, that sounds fine. - So I would take out the words on or off campus, I would just say we're not responsible for any activities of the booster organizations, wherever it's at. - Very last sentence. Period, after organizations. - Period. - Right, that shouldn't matter? - It shouldn't matter. And then, and then if we're making a distinction. - Then why are you drawing that distinction, if it

056was meaningful. - And a lot of their activities take place not on school locations. - So it's a little bit, that's negative, as what you said before, it's not a positive statement, but I'm not sure how when we're disclaiming liability can be a lot nicer. - Yeah, and it's at the end. - We'd like to be, but it's not pliable. - Getting rid of this, by having students or faculty-- - The booster organization is liable for all actions of the booster organization. - Right, it looks like there's a space between activities and which earlier, that's a paragraph. With the formatting, looks like there's an extra space. - Not too many. - That would be nice, Thomas, to have that new process taken out on a formal approval. - It's a much cleaner, safer process. -

057Safer for sure. - We talked about this three or four meetings ago with this group, so who are our booster organizations, under this theory, Maroon and White, Friends of Music and Art, Foundation... - Foundation. - That's it. - I wouldn't say PTC. - You would? - Would not. - Yeah, we had that whole discussion of whether or not they're booster. - I mean some of the sports ones are a little bit confusing to me right now. - Like the ISOs you mean? - Yeah. - They're not boosters. - But they give money and they donate stuff to the athletic program. - That doesn't mean, they're supporting baseball or whatever but I think that's just another organization in town that chooses to give a gift. SFPC is not, I mean they're a partner, vendor. - I

058can't think of any other ones. - Doesn't really. - Just those three? - I think so. - We spent an awful lot of time on policy for this. - We sure did. Because PTC is not in there, why aren't PTAs booster organizations? - I think they have a larger charge than just... - But they do, but part of their role could be to be a booster, arguably, I don't know if they want to be, or don't want to be. - Yeah. - I guess we're putting the Foundation in, I guess we could do that. I just, yeah. - I see no reason not to. - And they are separate entities, they do follow. - I mean everything here... - So what would the benefit be to them if any? - None really. - Yeah I

059know, I'm just thinking-- - Formal recognition. - Yeah. - But it shouldn't hurt them in any way, meaning they're doing all this stuff anyway. - Yeah, it's just a formality, really. - So you might want to talk to them if they want to be recognized in July. - If they don't want to be. - Yeah, if you kind of read through this, it does actually kind of make some sense, right? - They made all the guidelines naturally, actively and naturally and more often than any of the other ones made. - Which group? - PTC. - Or PTAs. - Right, I think theoretically if they're getting approval from the principal, that theoretically is your designee for all these things. - Correct, correct. - If it's a school specific one, as opposed to PTCs probably coming to

060you because they're the umbrella organization. - I mean realistically, any organization could say we don't want to be a booster organization and then they don't have to adhere to any guidelines. Like, it's almost like what's the point of being-- - They also don't get access to our buildings and our-- - So it's almost like we don't have that reverse side of it, you must be a booster organization to... You know like this is saying-- - Yeah, because we can't force anyone. - You have to be one, but what's the benefit of me being one? I still get to do all these things. - We're putting a lot of things on in here. - Yeah. Because it's a little, why be one if I'm limited and I can still do all these things without being one.

061- You can't do any of these things without being one. - You can't receive approval for use of school facilities? - Well, you could, but-- - As an individual? - You can make a gift. - It would be pretty darn difficult to do that. - No, as an organization. Like, that's what you're saying. You're saying there are organizations-- - Doesn't wanna be recognized. - Yeah. - So the other thing we could say is that our boosters get priority over other community groups. So that would be a reason why you do it, and it also does order of operations for things like facilities use. Like first and foremost we're gonna provide the spaces for our booster organizations first, and then as a second level, other community groups who are gonna use them after. I mean, that's

062in fact what happens, we just don't say that, really. But we always give priority to our recognized booster groups. - Well, and the point would be, if you don't wanna do it, if you don't wanna be called, if you don't wanna cooperate with the district and the board, what is it that is so offensive to you about these requirements? And if they had a good response, if we could imagine a good response to that question, we would fix it now, because we're not intending to make this difficult or burdensome, right? - Right, so an organization that doesn't want to abide by policy 1800 and raise a million dollars, they might raise a million dollars, but not in collaboration with us, we wouldn't except the gift. - And we would, and we would stop helping them

063get rooms and borrow mailing lists, and do everything else that we do for these groups. - Do they get access to mailing lists? - No. - Where does the education foundation... They buy, they buy the stickers from us. - No, I think they get it from-- - We're not allowed to give out mailing list information. - Where do you think they get their stickers? - There's just like a, PTC just gets it from-- - I think data services, pay in some cases, but-- - I guaranty you, the Education Foundation buys its stickers from us. - And Harrison does too, I think. For like when he does mailing for his tax alert, or whatever. He's told me he comes and gets, you know lists and stickers. - Many years ago that may have been the case.

064- Two months ago, Scarsdale Schools Education Foundation. - Bought stickers? - I believe so. - I'll check into this, but we're not allowed, that's the whole reason we have a data privacy officer, we're not allowed to release, we can directory information, but we have a whole policy, remember we kind of went through that whole thing about what we can and cannot release to the public. We can't sell anything. - Yeah, selling is-- - Selling, they pay a fee to get the printing done by us. I believe that that is-- - PTC didn't do that, although I do believe we got lists for post cons. - We verified, we provided information that verified the school directory information. But there were some pretty strong limits on what they could do with that, but they added their own

065data, and only used ours for verification purposes. - Look Chris, I don't know about the two weeks ago, or two months ago. - So let's get back to whether or not, you know? - Well, if were adding that, but if we talk about benefits in terms of either priority for rooms, or you know, do they have access to data, they shouldn't. Certainly more than would-- - Some, what we're allowed to release and we're cooperative with people. - That would be anybody right? It's not limited to boosters. - No, I don't know, if a booster comes to us and says, we do directory information, like kids sports numbers on their jerseys, that's director information, we release that, we'll do it in mass for teams. If an individual came to do it, I think we would make

066them foil that information, we don't just hand that school district information out to people. Whereas we're much more cooperative with our boosters. - Yeah, I'm not sure we want to go there in the policy anyway. - Yeah, exactly. - I think we just were talking about whether in the policy. - Stuart calls you back and one day, on this list, throughout days. - Like again I'm thinking, what if we don't want to be a booster organization? Would, Maroon and White say, nah, we don't want to be one, we don't want to jump through these hoops, we just like what's going on now. - Well, they are a booster organization now. - Yeah, but like... - What hoops are you seeing here? - Well, the hoops are, there's the process for, to become one, yeah, okay

067so we'll be, so Maroon and White, these three we would be approving in July anyway, because we can see them as them, but any new one would have to get approval from you to become a new booster organization and there's also now a form to receive approval for activities. So there's one extra step now because of this really. But in any case, I'm still thinking. - Let's talk through an example, say we had a group who was really interested in early literacy and they wanted to be friends of Scarscdale School libraries, classroom libraries, and by the way they have this whole program, they wanted to bring in authors to read to kids, they wanted to pull third grade students out for a book fair, we would say no. If somebody just said that we want

068to do this to your school and impact, we would say no, unless we said, no, you're a bonafide booster, we've talked about this, we've planned this, we understand how it fits into our programming, we think this is core plus more, absolutely we support what this work is. That's what would happen, and I think that's really what happens, I don't see them jumping through hoops so much. The PTC talks to us all the time about what their plans are so we start talking about steam day a year ahead of time and kind of worked through meeting after meeting after meeting, talking through the logistics, like that's the kind of relationship that I think we have to have to make these booster organizations work. That's the most involved, the least involved is probably Friends of Art and

069Music, in terms of administrative time, but I know they worked closely with Ivan, and they just do with Craig, and you know, there's some liaison person that's attached to them. - Okay, but for Maroon and White, but for Maroon and White, let's just assume they don't want to do it, for whatever reason they believe somehow this is putting obstacles. So then they still want to support sports here, they want to improve the scoreboard at Butterfield, they'd go to Ray, and say like or they'd just show up with a check for us. - And that just becomes a gift. - It just becomes a gift. - It doesn't matter if it's their booster organization or not, but they accept the gift then or don't accept the gift. - Exactly what I'm saying. - So? So that

070can happen. I'm just saying, that can actually very much happen. - But what's the negative about it? If they didn't talk to us before and they want to own that recognition and didn't follow the policy 1800, we're gonna say no. - There is no negative in that, I'm just saying this can be fully bypassed in a sense. You can still do things with the district, you can still do any one of these guidelines and not be a booster organization. - I would say the only thing, you can do a one-off event that you get the appropriate approval for or you can give a gift, but having an ongoing sustained relationship with the district over time-- - Is what this is about. - I agree, it's a different relationship thing. - It is. - And I'm

071not quite sure that is like totally offered here as different than just these seven things or how ever many guidelines there are. People can follow these guidelines, any one of them, give a gift or hold an activity and not be a booster organization. But to be a booster organization, you need to follow all of them, there's really no reason to be a booster organization in a sense, unless you want an ongoing relationship. Which isn't in here necessarily. - No, to me, that's what the booster organization is. - Like your point about preferences or I mean that kind of stuff isn't in here. - It's not, I was just trying to think of ways... - That's what I feel and I get the sense when I'm talking to you, is there anything like that that's missing?

072- So do you want to say, we can say in the first paragraph, instead of support a specific district or a school program, you'd say support ongoing, you know, you can use words like that. - Maybe this is more about a partner relationship. So maybe we recognize the booster organizations are-- - Our partners. - Are ongoing partners with the district as opposed to, you know and then-- - Provide important support. - And still independent. - What's that? - They're independent partners. (laughing) - Domestic partner. - I don't think it's super-important, I think this is trivial quite frankly, but I just see it as a little, I don't know, if you guys don't want to fix it, it's not a big deal. - We're engaging in what you're saying. - Do you think it's worth adding

073something like that then? - Ongoing or partner or both, whatever, sure. - I mean what do you about an organization that's prepared to meet all these requirements, but that you don't really want. - We tell it to have approval then, but we just say thank you, but that doesn't really fit into our mission or vision right now. But here's how you can be involved in other ways. - Look I also think if we pass this as a board, and our three current boosters all say, we don't want to be boosters, that we'll have to revisit the policy, if they find something objectionable. - But they do this already. It's a matter of practice. - Yeah, I can't see why they wouldn't, I agree, but it's just like theoretically, it's not at all practically, it's nothing

074I expect at all. - To me, it's the-- - But theoretically... - To me it's the opposite, it's someone who's saying, "We're Scarsdale booster--" - Absolutely. - Who's never had any real interaction with us, and using our name as part of the cache of their organization. - How about the board recognize the booster organizations are entities independent from the district, that in partnership, you know, in ongoing partnership with the district provide important support for us, down to the district again. - Wait, can you just add partners instead of, like, you know, or partner... - Independent from the district, but partnered to provide, but partner to provide important support to the district. - Partnered with and providing important support to the district? - Yeah. - Partnered with? - But it's not the ongoing piece. - I

075don't know, I think it's worthless. - So what is worth for? - I don't think this needs to be fixed. - Okay. - All right, very cool. - Yeah. - Just leave it be. - I don't think it's worth fixing. I just think I feel it, but I don't feel it's worth fixing. - So moving on 1230. - We've picked up a stray comma there, on the third line, after schools. - Actually we do need that comma there, because it's two independent clauses, separated by an and. - Is it? - Yeah. - I don't see how it's an independent clause, but sure. - Because you would read it, comma, and they stimulate the community, the now is just understood to be there. Otherwise it's two independent clauses. - No, but it's okay, you can put

076a comma wherever you want. - I found this grammatically it's correct. - Yeah, this is Thomas' thing. - The sentence is, that provide and stimulate. - That provide support to the district and its schools, comma, and they stimulate community interest. - No one would read like that, they provide and stimulate, they walk and run, they help. But put the comma, I don't care. - We'll move on for now. - So with the revision, this is ready for the full board? - Sure. I guess. - Sure. - Yeah. - Okay, I'm there. - Did we do this one, about the reservation yet? We haven't done this at all, right? - 1230? - I don't think we've gotten to this one at all. - No, this is new. - There is a PTC recommendation. - Yeah. Good,

077good ideas. - A time limit, close speaker. Five minutes. - They want us to reinstate a time limit of five minutes, and they don't recommend limiting a public comment period. - Who do? - PTC. - Oh I was looking at somebody else's notes. - And they do not recommend that board require event sign up or notice from the public. - We don't do that now. - So what do we have? We have... This is a lot of note. Oh my gosh. - Diane Baller in her individual capacity gave us additional comments. - Where is that? - We should retain board, it's on the second page of that comment page, of the comment, the board should retain broad discretion, set time limits as a whole and for any time, the only portion that may be useful

078to incorporate is the requirement that people addressing the board speak to topics relating to district business, an agenda item, and, or district matters in general. - Why don't I have that? - It's on the second page of the notes, they just have different dates. Yeah on that page, it's the second one down. - I think her suggestion might be the most practical. - The last part of it, where it says what we should say? - No, of leaving at your discretion, at the president's discretion to set time limits for public comment as a whole and for time allotted to any individual speaker as appropriate to the meeting and setting. That's really useful, right? Because we don't like cutting people off, but when you know there are 60 people there who are just there to yell

079at you and you've got a long agenda, and everyone wants to talk, you've got to have some means of controlling that. - Agreed. - But saying in advance that it's gonna be capped to three minutes or five minutes when there are two people in the audience-- - Or an hour when we have six minutes. - Let them make thoughtful comments about the budget or something. - Right. - That's-- - Unnecessary. - And I think it's worked for the most part, the last two years. - Yeah, it's been pretty smooth, better than having the clock. And less irksome to the public. - Having the time running in front of them or the bell. - The bell, yeah. - Yeah, I never loved the bell. - But I very much like the related banners presenting the district.

080- Okay. - I think it's really important to have in our policy that's district business agenda item. Or district matters. - Yeah. - Because that's something that-- - We could avoid. - Is bothersome for everybody, when you clearly point to it, in our policy, and we can even say that in the opening comments. - Exactly. - In fact, I already put it into mine. - Good, good. - All right so we're gonna look at the policy and make these adjustments? - Sure. - So Dan gave us a comment about using the word non-personnel, that phrase, saying that, we're trying to stop negative comments, but the idea about complementary isn't really captured here and we don't really stop those. - What was his comment? - Yeah. - Where is? - I think it's on the center,

081in yellow right there. - That one, okay. - If a comment is removed, it's almost governing... We recommend the policy include maximum length of a comment period. Length of time permitted for each speaker. So he does go back and say all the things that we've undone. - Well, yeah. - But I think reserving the rights is a really good point. - There's a lot of case history out there on those personnel matter, I wish he had been more specific in saying what he wants us to say or not say, and what he wants us to allow and not allow. Because it's definitely problematic to have all these abusive comments about all kinds of people, retiring teachers, board members, everybody else, and then the moment somebody wants to criticize a coach, we shut them down. -

082Yeah, but we have to as an employer. - There are a lot of reasons why we want to. But we really should follow the law. And the constitution, so Dan could help us do that. I don't have any language for this. - But the praise is his point, I think the praises could be problematic as well, or not, I'm not sure what his point is. - Who, Dan's point? - I'm not sure, but if we say non-personnel, then we shouldn't be able to take praise at our meetings if we have that in our policy. - Personnel may be the wrong word there, but it is about speaking libelously or whatever about somebody disparagingly or inaccurately in public about somebody's work record, that's really what that language is about, it's not saying you can't talk about

083people at all, it's saying it's inappropriate in a public board meeting to get up and say, I hate this teacher, I hate this coach, they're a terrible person, they don't ever come to work. You know, like, you can't do that. We'd have to shut that down. - Right. - It's not to say you can't say anything about people at all, you can say lots of things about people, and we want that, I think that's part of the board's role and the superintendent's role, is to acknowledge people, to acknowledge, whether it's volunteers or employees. - All right, so we just got to be specific, about what's prohibited. - Non-layman. - Yeah, and have it be legal. - The word non-personnel doesn't capture that. - That's right, exactly, that's correct. - So what, are we going back

084to Dan with that or are we gonna come up with a libus? - I definitely can't. - Do we have our law book here, the language is, I don't think it uses the word non-personnel issues. - It's a different model or two. Because I think it's more-- - Other policy is 1230? - So are we also just like combining? - The first and second... - Why do we have two, why do we do that, say it two different times, the same thing? - I'm not sure. - Say what, Pam? - To allow for public participation, a period of time shall be set aside, at the first part of each board meeting and a second period of time will be set aside at the end of each board meeting. - And it says the same thing

085about voting. - Yeah, do we need to say it that way? - No, it's redundant. - Oh, okay. - The New York State school board, I think the first one, there was something I remember, the first one speaking about agenda items and the second one was speaking about... But we don't distinguish between the two at all. - You have to start recommending those a bit. - Well, certainly, if you want us to deal, before making decisions and discussing things, that should be in the first one. - Right. - But I don't think, if we don't stop you in the second one from commenting on saying what was on the agenda or not on the agenda. - And we don't stop someone from the first comment period to talk about anything. - Right, well, certainly in

086your language, we're talking about at least district-related. - But I mean even district-related stuff. It doesn't have to be on the agenda in the first speaking, it could be district-related, but not at all on the agenda. - And look I think that we've learned that people don't want to stay until 10 o'clock necessarily. - No, yeah, let's get them out. - Right, so I think we want to be open, receptive to hearing things. I'd like it to be district-related. - Yeah. - I think that's been our biggest frustration at times. - Yeah. And then yeah, how do we stop that, just saying, this is not district-related. - It's hard to do. - It's impossible. - Because somebody could come back and say, well you have students that go to school at such and such. -

087Yeah, you talk about students-- - Students are district related. - And we don't have this policy right now. - It does say non-personnel related matters pertaining to the district is all that says. - This is the current version of 1230? - Yes. - Yeah, I know. - So just as a reminder to me, there's no requirement of the school board to allow the members to speak at board meetings. - Right. - However, I encourage the school boards whenever possible to allow citizens to speak on matters under consideration, that's what the commissioner encourages. - We're allowing it to be broader. - The commissioner has ruled that the school may not permit non-residents to speak. Creating an open government concurs with the commissioner that school boards are not required to allow members of the public to speak

088at board meetings in the first place, but cautions the vendor, open meeting exec, if you do, it shouldn't discriminate between residents and non-residents. Does the public have the right to speak about any topic at board meetings? No. School boards for example may justifiably restrict the availability of members, of the public speaking at meetings to offer public commentary on matters involving privacy issues, so maybe that's the language there. - Oh, privacy issues? - Privacy issues, otherwise protected by law, so that's probably the language we're looking for. - Privacy issues otherwise protected by law? - Yeah. - And it said non-personnel. - In that case for example if the public wants to engage in a discussion with a potential to disclose information of particular students, so that's the other thing we've actually had is where someone wants

089to go up and talk about their special ed. students, we're supposed to say no, even if the parent wants to do it, we're under an obligation to say you can't talk about that here in public. - Students, special ed. situation - The privacy is protected by law, so there's a special ed. - I'm not sure that's true. If you want someone to talk about someone else's kid, obviously, but I think of a parent talking about their own kid, their effectively-- - When a member of a public wants to engage in a discussion and may potentially disclose information about particular students, even if that disclosure would be made by someone other than the school official. - You have to stop them? - Yeah. - Yeah, but I can't imagine that we would be legally, we would

090be held to be in compliance if we told the parent they couldn't talk about their own kid. It just, I hear what you're-- - We're allowing it to happen at a public board meeting, though, that's the issue. - It's still the parents' decision, they're the ones that hold the privacy rights, not us. - Well, no. - We have obligations. - I don't know. To provide the form for it and sit there listening to it, I think we do have some-- - We have an obligation, I don't think we have the privacy right then though. - And then we're televising it, we're live-streaming it out to the entire community? - I think we would do everything to suggest to the parent that we do this at the appropriate time. - But that same reasoning would, that's

091why this is hard, that's why we need guidance, because that same reasoning would apply also to criticizing a coach or complaining about a teacher. Right? It's an individual just getting up saying, if we don't think we control this forum and are responsible for managing the rules of it, then everyone's fair game. - But I don't think that. - Right. So what's the difference? - If the coach wants to talk about his or her own experience, I'm not sure, that's their privacy right, they want to air their dirty laundry, I'm not so sure that we can stop them or should stop them and that to me would be analogous to the parent about their own kid. But we should allow other members of the public to comment on the coach, on privacy matters, protected by law,

092I think. But I agree, we want guidance. - I think we're required to restrict that. Even if it's a parent about themselves, because we're still the employer at the end of the day. - For me, it may be on the teacher, if they want to talk about their own kid, forgetting the teacher part of that. - If they were to talk about a generic kid, my kids really struggle with reading and I haven't gotten any help, then yes, you're right. But if they're going into their IEP details and things like that, I think we're absolutely supposed to stop them. - We should ask the question, but again I think that goes back to what Chris and I were saying, we need some guidance on the language you read, it may be the right language. -

093Privacy, otherwise protected by law. Let's kind of pencil that in. - We can ask these hypotheticals to Dan about the parents speaking about their own kid or whatever just so we have some clarity amongst ourselves. - A coach defending himself. - Right, or a teacher, anybody. - Pending litigation. - PTC reading abusive comments about a retiring teacher? - That's fine, that's not-- - Well, that's-- - That violates our current policy. - This is not our current policy. - That's why I asked. - It's not. I just looked on it online and this is because I had just looked at it, this is-- - There's no recommendation? - Because this is very different from ours, that's very different. - So we need to work off of ours I think. - She's gonna get it, but on

094my phone it's tiny, but on my phone, it's three paragraphs. - Okay. - If I looked at the one online. - Okay, so let's stop. Yeah, good. - Because this doesn't seem at all familiar. - Because I was thinking the same thing, I just got on to kind of-- - Did we change it just recently before we sent it to NISBA? - How would they even have this policy then, I don't get it. - Maybe the things are supposed to be in gray boxes and like notes. - Well, this is their gray box. - It says it's our local policy, we're supposed to take our policy and... - Yeah. - This is all we have right now. - So where did this come from? - I don't know. - It's a good question. - Then

095we have this, right, we have this which NISBA gave us with all the gray. - I don't have that. - Right, that was in the first packet. - This is valid for the very first day, so this is the first packet, but still they recommend, their work here doesn't really match with this either, their paragraphs between notes are not these paragraphs. - Right and someone changed it obviously to say the board from the board of education, so clearly this is edited from somewhere. - Did we go over this already? - This comment should be kept as brief as possible and relate to school matters. We do say that in our policy. - Yeah, I looked at this and have put it in a kind of little preamble for me just because I was just trying

096to get something together. - Remember too, this is policy, it's not just law. - This can't be the law, 1994, I know we've changed this policy, we've updated this. - It says something on the bottom, January 12th 2018, last modified by Honore. - That's just, you know, edited something, yeah. - Got it. - But I know we've looked at this since then. - You think you've looked at this? - I know we have. - We've looked at the last sentence. - In our last meeting-- - I remember we looked at this last sentence when we wanted to out call control because 60 people were in the room or something else. We've looked at it to make sure that the president of the board has discretion or flexibility. I don't think-- - You have history on

097this, right, but you can't look at-- - It's so different than what's in front of us. - It is. - We should work off of that. - Absolutely. - I can go back to the last meeting. I thought... - I don't have any work on this at all, and I have everything here. - We haven't done it in this committee, but I thought we've looked at it earlier. - Here's all the notes. - These are yours, Thomas. - We've reviewed it. - As a group? - No, looks like Thomas and Honore. I mean... - In preparation before. - But this still didn't come, this was the original NISBA one that they sent to us, right? - Right, so this is... - When were these done? - This is what NISBA-- - November 27th. - This

098past November or the year before? - This past in preparation for the December meeting. - In which we didn't get to this. - Right, so I did the clean copy taking in these. - But it's not in comparison to what our current policy is. This was NISBA's work. - Right. - Without, so they did a notice, a local policy, Thomas, what looks like really without redlining to what our current policy is, and you guys edited off of that. - Right. - At least-- - I was going crazy, because I know I had spent time on this policy. - You spent time there, not ours. - Losing my mind. - So we have it and you worked on NISBA. - I'm not sure how to conform the two, I think I'd like to start with our

099current policy. - Why don't we just talk about the principles and then let Thomas go away and draft. Because I don't think, there is a lot here, I don't think we can draft from this committee right now in an efficient way. But we can talk about, do we want a time limit on individuals, do we want a time limit overall. Do we want-- - Residency requirement. - If we go through both policies and put like checks or Xs, then we can kind of. Because like you said, there's a lot in one and almost nothing in the other one. - So do you want to start with yours, or the one that's currently on the books? - Whichever, I don't care. - So let's start with the one that's currently on the books. - All right.

100- Good. - Okay, so interesting about responding to a comment. We're doing a pretty good job of doing that, but the board previously didn't really seem to think it had any responsibility to do it. - That's true. We heard, but we didn't respond. - Yeah. - We don't respond to everything. - And we don't do it at the moment, either. - Sometimes. - It's rare that we respond to public comment. And we don't even respond, we clarify. - We respond sometimes at the end. - We, yeah, we clarify. - We answer yes or no questions. - I think there is a need to have a word beyond here, like to take into account, to engage, right? This isn't just you know speaking to the empty room. - So the NISBA one says we encourage public

101participation on school related matters, and that's the purpose, without saying what our responsibility is. - That's funny because that's just like, you go ahead and have your activity, over there and we'll watch. - Right, we're not engaging in it, we're just offering an opportunity. - Well, the responsibility is self-imposed. - Yeah, it's not at all legal. - Agree. - I don't know if we want to-- - I'm finding these hard to compare side by side, because this one is so detailed and this is so minimal. - Okay, so starting with what Chris said-- - I like that we encourage public participation. - I do too, but that says on both of them, but not here, that's kind of where Chris is starting, saying, here are our principles. So we encourage public participation as principle one,

102right, or public engagement, you can say engagement, you could say participation. - On this one, the school board encourages public participation on school matters at board meetings, outlining the policy, that's a little sterile, but it does the encouraging part. - I think Chris' point of like, are we just observers to a public session or does the board have any obligation to do something with that public participation, I think. - I think well, first of all, we want it, we're not just accepting the responsibility, there is no responsibility. - We desire and encourage. - We're choosing this, yeah, we're encouraging this, and then we should be engaging with it. - So the community engagement committee has focused on this in a sense for minutes, for 20 minutes on our meetings and we have a little bit

103of phrasing. - But we don't engage, this is the tricky part, you don't engage at the moment because you speak as a board and not as individuals, so that's the-- - I'm just gonna get the wording from the letter we're sending out. - But like, Pam and her email responses says that board members will all receive this, and will consider it. So I think that's better than what this doesn't say, right, or just here, the word here. - The other one says it encourages public participation, I do like that language. - Sure. - There's not a responsibility to hear and respond, but we do encourage it because we want it to. - Here's what we say. Recognizing that community involvement is integral to its work, the board has identified, we can kind of go that

104way. - That's nicer. - Like it's saying why, we can kind of keep parallel here, that we recognize community involvement is integral to its work, the board of education is establishing two public comment periods, it's that simple. - It start with a value statement which is nice. - Yeah. - Fine, okay. So value statement, you're looking in terms of rewriting this, start with value statement, good. - Pam, what are you reading from? - So this is the draft, the working draft of the letter we want to send to the community that you have put edits on. It's actually the second, it's the second-- - The blue. - It's the shorter version, it's the condensed version. - Right, okay. - Which is recognizing that community involvement is integral to its work, the board of education has

105identified enhanced community engagement as an important goal this year, but we can at least use that value and then talking particularly to public participation. - That it encourages public participation. - So that will be the first sentence next. - Maybe even the first paragraph depending on how-- - I mean yeah, this is specifically talking, speaking to receiving input on the committee. - Right. - So then I think in terms of like, what you were talking about, in terms of what we wanna hit. We're setting aside time in our meetings for public comment. I don't think we're setting a time limit, I think that's-- - Right, we're gonna say there are two sessions? - Yeah. - I would say generally two sessions, because I think there are times where we've only done one. - Okay, generally.

106- Right, and that gives us some flexibility. - But basically the content of each are the directives or the guidelines, for each are gonna be the same. - I would think so. - Like there's no, in terms of content. - No. - Which is all we're providing guidelines about. Which is about the privacy line and the district matters line. - Right, and then... Well, there's this piece about how they have to recognize themself. - Yes. - That's by law. - Yeah but I don't... - Is it? - Yeah. It says in the law book, they have to do their name-- - So I like actually the way it's written in our current policy. I like it more than this draft, 'cause I don't think it's for verified residency. That's not our goal. - I don't

107think we should be restricting to residents. The only time that this has come up was when the lawyer for some of the Green Acres people turned up. It didn't make any sense to turn him away. - And we would want if, the layman's people wanted to come and plead for us to continue to buy from them. But they don't live in Scarsdale. I think we would've let them speak too. - Right. - For example, so businesses. - Would we? - Yes, if they have school-related matters, I think we would. - I suppose-- - So any vendor who wanted to come and petition the board could start coming here directly, and doing public comment at the board? - No, because we, no, because we are free to... Just on terms of where we needed the guidance

108from Dan is on content. So I'm looking at this one model from Brunswick, where they say... They list a whole lot of things they don't wanna hear. Some of it legal, but maybe some of it also is like, commercial activity. Maybe there're a lot of things we can way we don't wanna hear about, but just like they say, "Please take care not to attach any remarks "that might be considered hurtful "and defamatory to any particular student or person." So that should be specific legal language, whether this is right or not, I don't know. "This is not the time to register complaints "about individuals or items that've not first been addressed "to appropriate staff and administrators." So that's not really a legal thing, that's like sort of steering the conversation-- - That's protocol. - In the

109way we want it to go, I think to give guidance like that could be really useful. "These types of comments will be declared "out of order by the president "or the Chair of the meeting, and may cause the public "comment portion of the meeting to cease." I think that kind of thing is useful, to have the mechanism laid out that lets Pam say-- - Shut something down. - Enough on that, right. - In this it says a little bit about non-residents in here. - Yeah, I saw that. Oh, in there, I see. - Yeah, it says, "The commission's ruled "that a school board does not need to permit non-residents "to speak, even where the board has a policy "of permitting residents to speak." "However, the state comity on open government "has indicated that such a

110practice would violate "the open meetings law." "The comity agrees with the Commissioner "that school boards are not required "to allow members of the public to speak "at board meetings in the first place, "but cautions that if a school board "permits public participation it may not discriminate "between residents and non-residents." - So I don't think we want to go there. I mean I think that's-- - So Thomas, the commercial speech we could probably restrict in our own way. I think the thing that people don't like the idea about is that suddenly you're gonna have, you know, advocacy groups from all over the place showing up to talk about, you know, whatever. Educational policy, or security, or culture fights. But it just doesn't happen. - But for example-- - You never know. - No, but for example

111the village board had, like a merchants that are adjacent to freeway, come and speak at the public participation. If we were building, you know, the Green Acres, but it happened to be on the White Planes boarder, I think that we would allow-- - This talks about prohibiting comments form for example, district staff, district business owners, district property owners, parents of non-resident students and future district residents. I mean that's five parties that a non-resident, laws would prohibit. - It doesn't make any sense to me. - Yeah, that's what you were just saying-- - I don't know why we wouldn't-- - We'd not want to. - We don't want to. - Any thing including non-resident restriction would then thus potentially, you know, could have the effect of prohibiting comments from these five impactful sources. - And if

112a total outsider showed up? So, we would accept it, right? If someone came and said you know, "We demand that you stopped teaching about evolution." I think we would hear that comment once, and then we might step back and think okay how do we not let this become an out of control thing. - Yeah, so we're saying that we don't wanna have a non-resident restriction. - No, not for now. Until there's a problem to solve, we should let that lawyer show up, we should let the Lange's people show up. We should let the neighbors-- - Can you go back to our current policy? - Sure. - So no non-resident restriction, we don't have. - We don't have a residency in our current policy. - So we're just not gonna include one. You guys mentioned the

113reason why we're getting the addresses, you said in there we say something about... - You have to by law. - Yeah, instead of saying-- - It would make sense to print this so we can mark-- - Yes, it would be helpful. - Let me go down. - I think we're marking up both. I don't wanna create more work. I mean we already have this, it's only three lines. - I know, but it's holly inadequate. I think for what we're trying to do, so it's like... - But either way this needs to be drafted, right? I mean we're not gonna start pulling sentence A from this and sentence B from the other one. Chris' idea was to talk about these major tenets and bullet points, and then wherever we pull it from, the next time we

114get together we're gonna have to look at a new draft of this I think. - There's a lot in here that I like actually. - In our current policy? - Yeah. - But you say it's holly inadequate, because there's all these other things you wanna include. - Well, not that I wanna include them, just this chatting about things, there's a lot of stuff that's not in this. - And the big thing here to me is responding. Like are we gonna talk about what we do in response? Or is this not-- - I mean to me this policy is about them, meaning the public, participating. It's not about what we do with the participation. In my gut reaction of prescribing... - That is what I think it is too. - I think that each board, like

115what we did a year or two ago to start trying to respond more in the moment, or at least have wrap-ups and stuff like that, I think was our own practice. I'm not sure that would be policy driven. - I think so too. I mean, in here there's, in this new one it talks about that we may ask clarifying questions. - But it actually says we will not respond, I'm not sure we want that in the policy either, 'cause maybe we will. - Yes, I mean I kind of feel that we almost don't talk about responding at all. - I think that's right. - I'm sorry, I was still looking at this, what was-- - So this uses the word respond, this one talks about responding, and we're talking about really, maybe this isn't the

116place for it. Because this is just about an opportunity to participate, to contribute, and not our, a board's policy on how we're responding. - Yeah, I read that part. - But in terms of protocols, like to review it like at our retreats or, you know, whether it be public or private session, it's probably this needs to be on the list, like we're gonna continue, respond to emails the way we do. - A kind of annually board decision. - Yeah. - And maybe comity, engagement comity will have a recommendation on it. - But I don't like it being a policy, necessarily. - Because it's very complicated and variable. - Right, and it also wouldn't fit all situations. - So we're kinda not gonna include that, and remove it and not include it. Yeah? I mean that's

117another one of these tenets. - Say it again, sorry. - We're kind of not, we're not gonna kind of address a boards responsibility to respond in any way. Not even at the superintendent's clarifying questions, like that. We're just gonna leave outside of this, completely. - I would say the number one frustration, or at least the top three frustration of people, is, especially if it's a first-timer, is that they come and they don't know that. - Yes. - And so they get up and they have their passion plea, and then the board sits there. And there's no indication. And then it's hard for the board president to say that if it's not precedented in policy in some way. - I don't think, that last peace I don't agree with. I mean we can say that it's

118part of a preamble or something else that... - If Pam says or you say, "We're not gonna respond at this time." It's like where does the board policy say that that's the case? It says that you encourage us to come and speak, we came and spoke, and now you're just sitting there silently. - Yes. - So we're talking about it as a protocol decision, as opposed to a policy decision. An annual board retreat. - But should we not address it all, I guess is the question. - Right, that is what I'm bringing up. - Yeah. - I don't think there's a policy that fits all there. We may or may not respond, that's not getting any guidance either. - I think we say that now, we say it's a matter of factual information, if we're

119able to answer a question in the moment, then we'll do that, otherwise we do X, Y, Z, we do say that right now. - We don't say it in our policy. - No, but we say that in practice. - You said it multiple times. - Sometimes, sometimes. Sometimes you say it, sometimes you don't. So which means it is very kind of wishy-washy right now, than clear. - Yeah, but I'm not sure that this policy needs to be clearer on that. It can, that's on what we do, not with-- - It's our protocol. - Right. - It's our choice. - I don't think it's wishy-washy personally, I mean if it's of factual nature, and it's not dependent on the individual opinions of board members, to me, the way we handle this is fine. - The wishy-washy

120is just whether we say it or not, it's very-- - But Thomas, I think we began the argument about whether this thing is factual or not, and then if Stuart doesn't have the facts in his hand, we say we're gonna respond to factual, I just worry a little bit. - If we're able to. - And I think the original goal was to prevent a lot of back and forth, you don't want a little cross-examination of factual matters, that just goes on endlessly. - Isn't it true that you never met with me, isn't it true that you didn't allow me to meet with Ray, isn't it true that you didn't let me meet with the principal? We don't want, those are facts. - Well... - But that's precisely my point, we don't want to engage in

121that, but if we say, we'll respond if able, we can answer those questions, we're just choosing not to engage, and I don't think we would engage in those, but if someone asked us, which is room 22 on the list to be renovated, if someone had that - I would just go back to the notion of who is the policy for, is it for the board or is for somebody who wants to kind of speak in front of the board so they understand what the parameters are? And I think first to say nothing about... - So we could just say-- - You say generally if we don't respond-- - Board's annual protocol would determine... - But that sounds like some days we'll respond, some days we won't, that doesn't sound good. - Well, that is exactly

122what it is, some days we'll respond, some days we won't. - So isn't it, while I stepped out, you talked about our taking into consideration with the public, just to say, so I think that comes first. We give you the chance to speak, we take it into consideration, I think we have to respectfully say that much. - Do we? - Of course we do. - On everything? - We say it all the time. - Every single time. - That's why I same my name out. - If someone is going to particular callers, if it's not a district matter, I will not be taking that into consideration. - Well, on these, on the topic, when we discuss, what we can say is when we discuss or consider this topic. - Just because you let the meeting

123get out of control, doesn't mean... - No, but we do consider when we discuss that topic. - That I agree. - When we discuss that topic, so basically that's just the extension, which is in the email, we consider these input when we discuss the topic. - To the extent it's actually relevant, we will consider it. - Yeah, but no, but yes. - Right, which I think, that is what we owe. - I agree with that part. - And we will follow up in some capacity afterwards. - Not everybody wants to follow up. - And we don't want to either. - We'll consider it. - I think what we do in practice is, we talk at that wrap up session about things as appropriate, right, some things we just shrug and it's like, okay, he doesn't

124like evolution. Some things we say, oh, busing, probably not gonna can come up this year, other things we say, oh, that's kind of interesting, maybe Stuart is gonna respond to that or maybe we'll take that into account in the budget forums. - So it's not responding as appropriate? - Or you look around and say does anyone want to hear on another agenda? So it's-- - Or what about bring it up in a threeway, which isn't necessarily a response to the person. - It's not a response to the person. So we take it into account and then what do we do next? - Consider it. - We consider it. - That's what we're saying. That's all we do. - Is it related to any decision making. - Consider it as appropriate. - I think you can

125qualify it by... - And that way it's not a definite response, but a consideration may include questioning or follow up. - So, here, questions in the last paragraph of this new version, questions and comments from the public concerning matters which are not on the agenda will be taken under consideration, referred to the superintendent for appropriate reaction. - That's not very true, because the things on the agenda will be taken under consideration also. - Sure. So you can take out just questions and comments from the public, doesn't matter, concerning anything, will be taken under consideration then, referred to the superintendent for appropriate action as appropriate? - But what if we don't refer them? - As appropriate. - Why can't we just take them under consideration? I mean can't that include and open ended? - And maybe

126sent to us? - Within our consideration, we may choose to pursue-- - I don't think it's referred to you necessarily. It could be on our, it could actually be specifically on this, we think you should reinstate a five minute thing, we wouldn't refer that to you, we would decide whether or not we want to take that up ourselves at another... - There's something, not for you guys specifically, but when you say I'm taking something under advisement and you're the person on the giving end of that, it feels really like why did I bother. I can see why a lot of people would say, why did I bother wasting my time if the response is, we'll take it under consideration. It feels, whereas with another step further to say, we'll consider it and we may act

127on it if it's something that's important. That at least gives people a sense of-- - But I don't think that acting is only referring to you. - I'm talking about the broader sentiment, I'm not caught up in the language of this, but just that we're gonna hear you and if there's enough whatever behind it, then we will... - All right. - I feel like if you just say, we'll take it under advisement, it sounds very dismissive to me. - I agree with that. - I'm not sure we can capture what all the other things are that we might do with it. - So may, they'll may, we'll consider it and we may-- - Take appropriate action. - Yeah. And we may choose-- - Take into consideration as appropriate, I think it's better than under advisement,

128but it implies less action. - So we'll take it under consideration and may, and may lead to eventual-- - May suggest upon remedies, improvements, corrections, whatever. - I guess if we can figure out a way to say that, I'm not opposed to it. - Because right now it says-- - I think that's probably what we do anyway, in practice, when it rises to that level. - We refer it to superintendent for action. - We need to be flexible, because there are times clearly when we don't do anything other than take it under consideration. - More often than not. - So it's may is all, may allows the flexibility, right? - I just want to pull it back up to the top, because we're saying we encourage this, we actively solicit and we encourage this, and

129then we'll take it under advisement, it just sort of feels like a deflating balloon. - So you're just talking about, and may, under advisement, we will consider it and-- - And it will inform our thinking, even that would be, just something that's a more-- - But how do we make that statement, in seriousness, do you think each member around the table all the time thinks that whomever comes up to the microphone, they're gonna take that person's particular view under consideration. I like the sentiment, but I'm not so sure. - I do, literally every one. - Absolutely. - You might think, well, that's the dumbest thing I've heard all year. - So that's consideration? - Absolutely. - It doesn't resonate with me or it does. That makes sense to me or it doesn't. - But it's

130an out of one, but at least we heard this different perspective. - Yeah, and that's all we do, is hear it and say, that works for me-- - I agree with the idea. - That doesn't, that works for me, that doesn't. That's all we do, but we don't always take action on it even if it works for us. - And it definitely, I think every single comment has an effect. - And I agree. - Okay, I'm fine with that. - Public or written. And I feel that the board does, it is up to each board member to kind of have that active, open, listening mind, but, that's what we're hoping for. - That's what we hope for. - That's what we're hoping for, period. But we're sooner resolving that may lead to kind of close

131the loop on someone. - I think the informing-- - Is enough? - To me it says, that it's like, you know-- - So we'll consider and we'll inform our actions going forward? - Our thinking and deliberations, something like that. - Okay. It may inform or will inform? And will inform? - I think will. If we're saying every single person does, whether it's a contrary point of view. - So that's enough of a response. - To me it's like, okay, that makes it worth, if the board is really gonna consider what I'm saying, and they'll deliberate on it in some capacity, then it's probably worth my time to come and share. - Okay. - I think. - I just don't want to be setting up an expectation where there's all 10 of us that are doing

132that as a group. - Well, yeah, the delivery word is troublesome, because we're not just gonna discuss, what about comment 46 about Green Acres, are we gonna deliberate on that one? - I mean in a formal way, no, but I think that having sat through many, many conversations, I think people constantly reference, even our own process right here, we're looking at individual comments, one person's comment and we at board-- - No, no, we agree with that. But if we're trying to give notice to the reader here of what we do and don't do, I think the word deliberate might suggest that after we sit down, the seven of us get around and we talk about it. - It's gonna be an agenda item at the next meeting. - So that, I just don't want to

133set that expectation. - If you say inform our thinking and deliberations. - Okay, that's different. - That's what I said. I don't know how, if you're thinking, Chris, and anything that comes out of your mouth is then part of whatever you, whatever thought you've been influenced by. - I'm fine with that. - I think that's strong enough for me. I think it-- - Okay. All right, there's a bunch of stuff in the longer policy about civility, obscene language. - I think we need a very strong paragraph saying what's not allowed, that we can't draft here, and it should include as much as the law allows that we want to guide. I don't know what it is, it's defamatory speech, it's whatever you think is what we're supposed to be saying about criticizing employees. - Privacy

134issues, otherwise protected by law. - Privacy issues, it's vendor pitches, it's stuff that should've already been handled, that should have first been handled administratively. - Wait, what, what's that last one? - The Brandswick example I read, where, don't come and take up air time. - Registered complaints not addressed to the staff. - Complain about something that you haven't even brought to either Ray, or Stewart or Thomas yet. - Or the principal. - Really? - And that reinforces our protocol, if you have the problem, go to the staff member. If you're not getting an adequate response, go to the principal, and if you don't get it, I think it's okay to model that protocol, I think from at the board table. - And reference that in this policy. - Yeah. - Okay, so that that. -

135I think so. - Protocol district, protocols on communication. - Where it's more like who do you go to when you have a complain. - Well, which is that. - Is that what you're talking about? - Yeah. - Okay. - There is a formal complaint, public complaint is 1400 by the way. - Okay. - The title of the policy is 1400, that's something we can... - We can look at Brunswick to see, and Dan should be able to give us some advice on... - Yeah, Brunswick was just the first time on a search, it doesn't mean it's best by any means. - So basically we're looking at getting a new version that starts with a value statement, which might be pulled from that letter, which does include two time frames generally, two options, which has some

136guidelines, that kind of are legal guidelines. - What you should speak on, what you can't speak on. - Right, we're not gonna include a time limit, neither by minutes nor, 30 minutes? - We're gonna reserve the right-- - Something like Diane's words. - So reserve the right, you're gonna put in there, for timing? - I think that's here too. - I'm just going through it to make sure we have all these things for the new one. - Right, but I'm saying our current policy has that, we can go off of that, the president is responsible for orderly conduct, shall rule on such matters as the time to be allowed for public discussion, appropriateness of the subject, suitability of the time for such a presentation, so we can build off of that in terms of how

137long is allowed, it says suitability of the timeline. - And we're not gonna include the non-resident component, we're gonna allow non-residents. - Right, but we still want them to identify themselves, which is in our current policy. - That's in there. And then, so identification warning, and in terms of the response component, we're really just talking about informing our thinking and deliberations. - Which is gonna be a part of the values thing at the top. - Okay. - So added values. - And I like the last sentence of the new policy. The president shall have the right to discontinue any public comment which violates this policy. Let's be very clear about we can actually shut down public comment. - Yeah. - When would the president rule on matters as the time to be allowed for public

138comment? - If we have a 100 people there and you say, we have a lot of business tonight, there's a lot of people here, we're gonna set aside an hour for public comment. So please be courteous and allow all-- - Don't repeat, yeah. But you can actually say, it's 8:30 now, public comment will end at 9:30 so we can go on with our business. And that's completely legal. And our policy should allow for that. - It's all at discretion considering this. - And likewise, we might choose to impose a time limit per speaker at a moment like that, or you might not. - Right, say, we have an hour, and because we have so many people that want to speak within that hour, we're gonna limit you to two and a half minutes. - Yeah.

139- While speaking of that, somewhere there was this idea that only one person from an organization could speak, maybe that was on something I was just reading not on any of these comments in front of us, I guess that's right. Because we don't want to do that, we're happy if the league of voters has three people speak. - I don't think we would stop it. - And now we don't really have to, we used to do it because of the three-minute rule and pass off, now it's really generally one person unless they have different committees speaking. Do we want this about speakers are welcome to submit documentation as part of public comment? - Yes. - Okay. - Where is that again? - In the new draft in the policy, in the third paragraph, after clear

140and concise, speakers are welcome to submit documentation to the board as part of the public comment. - Can we encourage? - Present their comments? - Yeah, I would love to get it in writing. I mean I would love to encourage them to send it in writing so that we have it documented via email or somewhere to refer back to. - We can't require them, but I think encourage. - Encourage, we'll say they'll welcome. - I hate going back to public comment videos, and not going back to written. - Yeah, it's a funny thing because public comment is better than letters in that it gets into the public realm more successfully and yeah, it's not searchable. - No, it's very difficult, you can't even remember what meeting it was at, there's absolutely-- - Right, it's not

141like we can categorize them alphabetically to go back. - No, no. - To know what meeting it was. - It's in the highlights, right? - No, you have to go back to each meeting. - We have no idea, like it was some time in the spring which could be like-- - Can you search NAVA? - You can search words, but you'd get like 60 meetings. It's horrible. - We put it into one giant doc. - But if they send it in writing, then it can be filed well. - That's true. - And Gmail ones are at least searchable. - Yeah. - Even if you don't file it appropriately. - Even if you don't file it. - Okay, so we're at least decent with the versions. So this is not going to the board. But this

142is at least for the next round. - So in the next round, we're gonna compile these, billets, information, the two together. - And some comments from Dan in terms of-- - Completely rewrite them and then we'll be good. - Right, comments from Dan. - And then we'll rewrite it again. - Did you guys talk about a hard stop for this, I have a sick kid who just needs to know where I might be, how long I might be here, are we going to noon? - I would like to leave by 11:45. I have to make a 12:10 train. - Okay. Since every one of us other than Honore is just looking at our phones, shall we take a five minute break and then come back and go for like an hour and 20 minutes? -

143I'm looking at public participation at board meetings policies. - I'm looking at my train schedule. - I was looking through my calendar. - I was just responding to my child. - I was writing notes. - To answer the question... - That's what we hear at the dinner table, I was just checking my schedule-- - All right, so let's take five minutes, we'll come back and go for the last hour and 20 minutes or so. - So where are we, 1400? - Okay. - So do we have a current policy on this, has this been edited or is this the current policy, do you know? - I'm not saying anything extra, I don't know anymore. - No, it's been edited, okay. - Hold on, can you go back to the top for a second. It's just

144our? - This is the NISBA one. - Okay, so they didn't use ours again. Hold on, I recognize the key. This is weird. That's our current one? They did not use ours. - It's really frustrating. - Yes, it is. We just had a long talk about this. - It wouldn't be frustrating if what they provided instead was good. - Or at least a redline to what we currently have. - Yeah. - Let's print this off. - You want this printed off? - Yeah, it's hard for me to go back and forth on the screen. - There's three of them. Okay. - This is crazy. - Do we have public comments on, yeah, we do. The board drafted companion procedure, okay. - So that's it about it. - Yeah. - So they wanted regulation which probably

145makes some sense. - Is that what they mean? - Yeah. - The regulation. - That's what it is. - It should not be the board drafting, it would be administration because it's an operational. - It's the PAP really, but just to streamline that into a document or something. - There's, there's... The weirdest thing about these two versions to me is, we were like setting ourselves up to be the traffic cops, and I don't think we want to do that. - This really should refer to that protocol that we talked about, right? First you should go to whatever, then you should go to whatever. - Right. - That's what Thomas just said. - The second paragraph starts to get into that. The PTC, the-- - The parent educator partnership. - Exactly, they worked on that for

146years. - But it's not just parents, let's be careful. This talks about all community members. - Residents. - So, like where you're going with the second paragraph, public complaints about the district will be directed. I don't want to say that, we don't want to be directing anything, you can come to us and appeal things, bring serious matters, that's great. But we don't comment, we don't really need letters from people saying this and then Pam has to write, and say, oh why don't you take that up with me again? - I'm thinking of the person who, you know you get resumes from random people, you get complaints about a car being parked somewhere. Really, again, this is for the layperson, like what do I do with this when I'm reading the board policies, and it says,

147don't, you know, you should send it to the administration and not to the board in most cases, that's all I'm reading that as. - It's not what it says here. It says will be directed. - It's like office of an ombudsman, send us anything-- - And we'll direct it to the right office. - So instead of will be, should be directed? So it's not like it's coming from you. They should be. - Great. - We're trying to give the reader guidance. - Right, exactly. So it should be directed to the proper administrative personnel, classroom teacher, if the matter is not settled-- - The next by the way, our current policy, Thomas. - Yeah? - Says it should be directed. - Yeah, so that's right. - Or the draft says it will be, I don't know.

148- I like our current policy. - Okay, let's start there. Like reasonable people would do. - So it should be the board. Which I'm sure this is part of the reason you guys edited this. - So this is local, not required. And, and it says we require that districts must have a complaint procedure for parents alleging violations of the law. Which really isn't this, that's the NISBA note. I mean I'm just trying to kind of reconcile these two things which is like... So the NISBA note at the top, this thing. - I have the original here. - This thing in the recommendation. - I don't know if I have the original with me. - I mean they have a lot of notes here, they have tons of notes again on this. - We'll see. -

149I don't know, it's local, but now they're saying we're required to have accompanying procedure. - They're up on the screen. - Okay. - So violations of the law, yes. - Right, but to not mention as part of your public complaints policy I guess is what NISBA is saying, whereas if a parent goes and says, I want to register a law type of complaint, then you get to public complaints and you don't see anything about it. - So do you have that? That complaint procedure? - Can you scroll up some more? I mean I'm reading this about special ed. stuff where we have a lot of the legal stuff, and there's all sorts of compliance stuff related to that. - There's this whole section on that later. The ESAA complaints and academic interventions, there's stuff, there's

150a whole section on that in their recommendation. - Where did you get that? - Yeah, I don't have it. - This was all our very first packet, and I still have it. This is NISBA stuff which we should still have then. - Yeah, especially the ones we haven't reviewed our first time. - Yeah, this is where we started, because this is what we were paying them to give us. - I'll have to go back out, because I'm not late to the printer. - I have them all. I might have it at home as well. - I probably have it somewhere, but it's not here. - I have them for everyone we've been discussing today. - Moving forward, maybe a binder, and having so that, I don't know-- - Well, I think also red lines are

151important. - Pardon? - Like red lines, you guys made these edits which I think is helpful, but we need to red line against I think our current policy, because... - Because this is their recommendation, you red lined theirs. - Right. - But how does that fit in with our existing. It's a new policy, that is obvious, but to the extent where we already have one, I think... - It's very hard to combine all three. - Right. So what is this? - That is theirs. - No, that's yours. - It's NISBA's edited by Thomas and Honore. - And it's for the copy, with the notes off. - Yeah, so it's with the notes off and edited. So it's NISBA, but then the notes, I think are very important. - These are actually very, very similar in

152this particular case. They don't have, the two now-- - The existing one. - The two existing are pretty close, they don't have every note that you are talking about in here, Pam. - Right. - But these are pretty darn close. - Yeah. - But I'd just like their guidance on what we're trying to do here. Like, this being a local policy, I think it's really important to understand why we have it and what part of it is really district responsibility versus what the board is just telling people. - These are close. I don't think these are true. The superintendent shall keep the board informed, and refer any unresolved issues to the board for final resolution, so this is saying that anything that's been percolating around with principals and other people. - What language? - That's

153unresolved, you don't come to us. - What language, the security guard at the back gate is lazy... - Teachers, teachers... - Parking is too disorganized. We don't get any of that stuff and much of it is unresolved because it's, it's just you know, an annoyance. - Have been heard, yeah. We could say nay or we could strike it completely. - And then on the other hand, the stuff that comes to us, we know, as soon as there's reason, possible or unnecessary, the timing is not significant, but we don't refer things to the superintendent, the complaints we're hoping to get directly to the board are ones that we would not necessarily give directly to the superintendent. They are things about our own behavior, about his own behavior, about the district as a whole that really our

154board, significant policy... - So I think what the second paragraph in this new 1400 does is kind of outlines our pet process which is start at the lowest level, eventually gets to the superintendent, and eventually if necessary goes to the board. That's what we outlined as our pet process. I think this says it maybe not-- - That's pretty good, that's better than what we have in the current policy. I guess the current one does say refer to us, but only when and if necessary, as opposed to, the current policy says, anything unresolved would come to us, which I think is just more realistic. - Yeah. - And honest about what we really do. - And then shall on the last paragraph should probably be should because again we can't force people to. - Right. -

155Concerned to yesterday, they shall be referred as soon as... - I'm not so sure about that. We use the word formal complaint, in other words, if they're lodging a formal complaint against you, Thomas, I think it does need to be in writing. - This is just concerns, registered directly to the board. - No, the last paragraph. - Legally, all formal complaints. - Legally, somebody could say, Scott, I don't want to put it in writing, and you're still obligated as a board to investigate. - Okay. - He's saying, to go back to shall, but in reality, we do this all the time, we tell people, can you put this in writing, and they're like, no, I don't want my name attached to this, but this thing happened. And we are obliged to investigate. - Under the

156guise, whatever, we have to-- - Right, no matter what, so I think the language has to stay should, even though you want them to put it in. - Well, see, you're thinking a lot about special education complaints. - No, I'm thinking about sexual harassment, targeted bullying, talking about, I mean anything. - I'm not so sure I understand formal complain versus informal and the content of a complaint here. Like for example, yesterday I was somewhere in a dentist's office, where I always run into someone with a complaint. - Your formal complaint is-- - But that's not a formal complaint. - No. A formal complaint is saying, I feel like I'm being bullied by Pam. - I don't think that's a formal complaint, that's just a harassment complaint. - It's a formal one because harassment is one

157of the protected categories. - Is that what this is talking about? Those kinds of complaints versus-- - You're legally obligated to do something, but I don't think the word formal fits there. - Yeah, I can get the language for you, but when it's something that's protected by law, those become formal complaints, so you have to investigate. - There is a distinction to make here. - Yes. Not, I don't like Mandarin, I want you to do this, those are general-- - Yeah, the school doesn't teach, blah, blah, blah. - But things that are protected by law, bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, if somebody makes, that's a formal complaint and if you have child abuse, then you have to follow up on those things. - I don't think legally that word is formal, that's all, but I agree

158with the extension. - Yeah, I just feel uncomfortable talking about something that someone just shared with me yesterday, is that a complaint that has to follow a certain policy guideline now? - Is it under something that's protected by law? - It's just like, oh, why didn't my kids learn about this... - That's not, that's not. - But it's a public complaint, in my head. - So you should say, have you spoken with X, and if you haven't, I encourage you to do that. And if you have and you haven't resolved, then the next person to go to is Edgar or Thomas or Stuart. - Yeah, I just said write to Edgar. - Yeah, so there you go. - But they won't. But my point is you want that kind of level in here? - I

159think it is in here. It's in second paragraph. - Okay. - The third paragraph was an effort to say, was an effort to address the more serious things... That require-- - Through investigation. - That require, where the person speaks, it imposes an obligation on us. - Right. - Of course and there's a cross reference to 1440 which is complaints about school personnel as opposed to instruction, district programs, materials, although this says the word, staff members. - Yeah, that's right. - Which is a little weird. - Say that again. - There's a cross reference on the current policy to 1440. - Yeah? - But which we're not reviewing here. It's not in our list. - Do we have a 1440? - I don't know, it would be interesting to cross reference, and see if it doesn't

160fit. - Do we have 1440? - I don't see it anywhere. - Yeah, we don't. So probably at some point this was combined and the cross reference wasn't taken out because that's probably where the last paragraph came from in our current policy I would think. - Cannot collect the parking, can't complain on staff. - So that's funny, but gone. - So we don't have 1440. - But maybe that's more appropriate, I don't know if it's more appropriate, or less appropriate, we obviously, at some point staff members was incorporated into this. Although it says in 1994 was the last when it was adopted, I'm not sure it was revised and so. - Well, it states a revision in 2017. - Yeah, but that could have just been like-- - That's editing, putting it into board docs.

161- Yeah, we got board docs or something. - I thought we got board docs in 18? - No. - It was 17. - Yeah. - I actually think it was October of 2016. - Then we dumped the policies in eventually. - It took time to get the policies. - Okay, so cross reference should come out. I guess, but Pam's question is what are we trying to accomplish through this local policy? - Just to let people know if you have a complaint, how to address it, that simply. - Okay. - I think it's what you're saying, a very useful policy. - Good. - If you have some personal-- - They need to know how to do it. - Petty, little or important thing that can be handled through proper channels, do that, and if you have

162something that's really important and, then do this. - So I'm still concerned with the pep versus the formal complaints, like, as a reader, as a community member, I'm not sure what we're talking about between public complaints about the district should, I love that paragraph. - So I think maybe providing a legal definition of a formal complaint, would that be enough clarification for you? - Probably, I mean I don't know the difference between public complaints about the district, versus formal complaints referred to the superintendent. It seems like formal complaints are outside of the pep. Which is paragraph two. - I would call those that have legal implications. - Okay. - Legal protections. But I'll double check with Dan. - You want to do examples? - Let's see what the definition that Dan kind of maybe can

163provide for us. - And that has to be in writing? - Maybe not, Thomas said, that if I reported to him about sexual harassment of someone here, that doesn't have to be in writing. - We can't compel them to. We want-- - To encourage that. - It's helpful to have it in writing. - Okay, concerns registered directly to the board, so what are those concerns, are they still referring to formal complaints? - It's unclear what that means. - Because that is what I was talking about, about public complaints. - Typically, people won't read this policy, and they'll say, such and such a principal is abusing my child because they won't let them go out to recess. - Okay. - So that has the implication, because they're saying they're abusing their child, it becomes a formal

164complaint which would require an investigation, the board would refer that to me, and then I would do the follow up and say. - So we want to redefine concerns there. - It says concerns with already formal complaints registered directly. You were saying, in other words, just because we get concerns directly to a board member doesn't mean we're referring it. - That's what I'm saying, it's got to be, if it's a formal complaint concern, we need to clarify it. - So what's the language again? - I just said concerns regarding formal complaints. - Of the formal complaint type or whatever. - Right. Because Pam's dentist appointment, that was a concern registered directly to the board. - Yeah, or as a whole, and I'm not doing any of that. I did the pep thing, I said go

165to right person. - That's right. - But I'm not gonna refer it to you for investigation, so yeah, so that's what I was trying to get to, those two differences. - So let's, we'll have Dan kind of work with us on differentiating those two. - But otherwise, we definitely had the normal complaint processes. - I guess that's right, but if the board has an obligation too as a fiduciary for the same types of things like you said, under law, we'd probably want the board members to be aware of that. - We have to be careful about that, because the board is the final stage of appeal. - But are we a mandatory reporter? - Mandatory reporter, absolutely. - So I think we need to spell out what the board's responsibility is, I'm not saying get

166involved. - If it was a complaint about a principal for example, the board doesn't want to get involved because the appeal process will eventually come to the board. - No, no, if we hear it, we still have to refer. - Yeah, as a mandatory reporter, you are absolutely right. - So I mean this is to the reader, but I think we also at least somehow need to give guidance to what board members are responsible, would that be in this policy or not, I'm not so sure. - Yeah, the mandatory reporting thing is interesting. - I know it's in our other policy, not the code of conduct, whatever that one is. - That part of your ethics role. - But that is where a lot of real world things go wrong, like that Dartmouth professor who

167just killed himself over the mishandling, he had received complaints about sexual harassment, hadn't really handled it right, sort of tried to fix things himself, and it just became a mess. - But the mandatory reporter stuff isn't about minors, it's very spelled out legally. - But when people get uncomfortable, they often think, oh no, we'll do everything to contain this and deal with it, I'm just gonna give them some advice on how to handle this and you can't. - You absolutely cannot. - And whatever I just said may not be appropriate for this policy, but either it should be another policy, or it needs to be, I know that we're trained on it, but it's something that we probably need to remind each board member on an annual basis. - On the mandatory reporting, yeah. And

168the reality is if you actually got that letter, the board president, by law, the board president would need to make it, whether or not you talked to me, agreed with it or not, and then-- - Even if Pam just heard it at the desk, nevermind the board president getting a letter, right? If it was the right sort of allegation, it would absolutely require further steps. - Correct, that's right. - There are some 1440s out there by the way, complaints about school personnel, but I think we can easily cover this in here. - Okay. - All right, we'll work on that one and bring it back to you guys. Complaints about curriculum materials. - Why do we have a 1420 and it's not referenced, in which we actually literally say instruction and materials in 1400? -

169Oh. Gosh, do we really need this? - What does our current 1420 look like? - That one? We actually do. - How is this? - Standing committee has reviewed. - How is this, I mean if we don't think we need a standalone one on personnel where we have actual things all the time. Why do we think-- - For once it's as it sounds. - Why do we think we need this? If we can cover personnel where we actually do complaints from parents all the time, when's the last time you had a serious complaint about curriculum or instruction materials? - This one is saying materials anyway. - It does. But there was a group of parents last year at the middle school that complained about the use of the iPads, would that fall under this arguably?

170- I don't know. - Actually surprisingly or not, we, not on a daily basis, but on a unit basis, we have individuals who come forward and don't want their children exposed to a book, a health unit of study. A social topic and it actually happens more often than you might think. It's usually on a very low level and the teacher makes some accommodation for the kid, just so you know though, it's not as though, we get them, it's a fairly common issue, but it's usually handled at the teacher level. - Do we have a standing committee on book selection appointed by the superintendent? - Yes. - We really do? - Through records office, yeah. - Huh, new one. Really? - So all those books that Dan tells us about and recommends, a standing committee has

171gone through that between the teacher and Edgar? - Yeah, I mean departments make agreements, the high school would be the departments and the middle school would be the departments. - You appointed that committee? - It also says, administrative librarian teacher and a student should be on that, defines who should be in that committee. - Yeah, we don't do this. - No, I doubt, but there are agreements made by committees, the big standing committee is not, but it doesn't just happen on individual teacher basis, they're done through departments at high school, middle school and they're done by grade level school. - The standing committee appoints a review committee, I mean. - What? - The standing committee appoints a review committee. That's at least three other teachers, knowledgeable. - And Edgar reviewed this, you made changes to

172this. These are his edits. - I'm not buying it. - So he is confirm that this exists? - Or he wants it to exist. - Does he understand that if we put this in there, this is what we do. - This is our current policy. - I know, so either we're following it or we're not. And if we don't want to, then we need to change it. - Or rescind it. - I think this absolutely happens. We had book challenges before, I remember Lin specifically going through this process a couple of different times where people challenged the text, she formed the staff, I don't know that there's a standing committee that exists all the time, but formed a standing committee that reviewed the process, made the recommendation. - It's only when there's a protest. -

173When there's a complaint. - That's really on books, not on instructional materials. - Correct. But as I mentioned-- - For education material, it says. - I know that's what it says, but the committee is a standing committee on book selection. It's not on the use of technology in the classroom or some other material. - I don't think we would do this. - It's for particular, like, I don't want Huck Finn to be taught in middle school and then we would go through this review process. - You would treat it like any other complaint. You'd say, yeah, we're not really gonna look at that. Unless you felt like and then you'd say, that's interesting, maybe it's time for us to consider that and we'll have a standing committee and a review committee, we'll talk about it

174board meetings. But most of the time, the parent complaints, like Huck Finn, we don't do this, say-- - We have done this, Chris. I'm telling you. - You have done it, but you don't do it every time. You're not gonna do it every time, you don't want to do it every time. You're not gonna commit to this. - I can't say how often, but I know it absolutely has happened here. Absolutely. - I'm not saying whether or not it has ever happened, I'm saying whether you want this to be the policy. If I say that I don't think the language of "To Kill a Mockingbird" is appropriate for 10th graders. Because I, as a random parent have that random comment, you're suddenly gonna do all this and on every other matter in the district, the

175reviewers, yeah, we'll sit there and listen, if we feel like it, we might respond or deal with it. No, you're not gonna do this automatically for every complaint. - This is exceedingly complicated more so than this because we just had Sheila Arnold here who talked about race, and teaching race in the middle school. Part of this was because of complaints that came out about first source texts that may have what we find to be today a very offensive word, but is a part of the primary source. - Right. - And then do we not teach that primary source, or do we teach it? So actually the middle school spent a lot of time talking about when, why, how, you use the primary resource and then how do you teach that. I think for us to

176say there's not a mechanism for parents to express their concern, because if I was a parent, I could see a number of different kinds of parents who might be concerned about that kind of an issue, to say we're not gonna have some kind of a formal process to entertain that. - Why would that fall under policy 1400? That we just looked at. We say instruction and material, so you go to the principal, you go to the teacher, if that's unsatisfactory, you go to the principal, if that's unsatisfactory, go to Edgar. But why would we set up this process, because every time if the parent just said, I object, I object, I object, we're doing all this work, I'm not sure why it wouldn't fall under the typical complaint. Why books or something... - I see,

177and just to answer your question, I see this being as kind of fundamentally different. Teachers do have a lot of choice about the materials that they do want to bring, particularly the supplemental material that they do want to add into a class or curriculum. This to me provides, I think it respects the complaint that comes forward, it also has multiple professionals that are coming together and looking at a text to determine the appropriateness of that text for the particular developmental age. I don't personally have a problem with this because I think it is a good process and I think to Chris' point, any individual teacher could say, this is my favorite author, I'm gonna teach it, I don't care what you say. - No, that's not it at all. - But I'm saying that could

178be an outcome, versus we're using a text for a class or a unit of study, I could see a place where you would want to have more professionals be a part of that conversation. - But let's talk about real life. Go ahead, Chris. - But you do that already, and you do it in a broader way. I'm not saying this isn't important, I'm just saying it shouldn't be the right of every parent to be able to trigger this sort of thing, just like on transportation. Of course it should be thoughtful, we think about the limits, we should reconsider it once in a while. Any parent should be able to talk about it. But they don't get to just automatically trigger this massive process because on a particular day they thought that Huck Finn was offensive.

179Of course the district needs to be thinking whether or not Huck Finn is offensive. - I hear you and again it does happen more often than you would probably think around specific issues. - So how many times have you convened the standing committee and the review committee? - I'd have to ask. - If it happens all the time. - I'd have to ask Edgar. - Lin did it a handful of times since I've been here. - All right. - Why doesn't, go ahead. No I was just saying, if this one talks about materials... - You can add the word books. - Here it says materials. - No, but if you wanted to add the word books, you could. - Yeah, I mean, curricular, instructional materials. This, isn't this concept parallel to all of them about

180programs, operations, members-- - It adds two layers or three layers of committee work for books. - And books is covered in here anyway, just on a general level. - And it's so disproportionate to what we promised people on anything else that concerns them, including other matters that are just as important. - It's okay that it happens because it happens under this just as easily as this. - I'm fine with it happening when the superintendent and Edgar think it should happen. But I'm not happy about it as a policy that any parent gets to trigger at any time. - So we're slightly suggesting rescind it. - When parents have no rights to trigger anything else that they're concerned about. - So the three of us are kind of talking about rescinding this then. - I hear

181you. - And having to bolster 1400 if we need to, to add words books if we feel it's important or whatever. - Are you totally against that? - I'm not against it, I was trying to provide a rationale for why I think it's been in place. And that there are parents who have, just to make it clear, there are parents who have objections to a wide variety of content that we teach. - Got it. - I'm only concerned and I think this is too laborious and I completely agree with his points, but I also think if we sort of move this down to one teacher's, which is I know not what you're suggesting, but only one teacher sort of solving the problem, that it could really create a headache for somebody. - My point is

182only, a parent who objects and thinks its discriminatory to honor Rosh Hashanah, but not Chinese New Year doesn't get to automatically, they get to speak about that, we'll take them seriously. - It doesn't trigger-- - In the right period of time, you think about that hard, but you don't just automatically get to have that standing committee and calendars. - That's where I agree with you. - With the book, you'll want it to go through the normal process because a teacher shouldn't be making all those decisions. - I'm fine for it to go through that process, I'm just trying to present why this policy has been in place and it has been used in the past. So I don't want to just walk by it quickly and think there's no controversy. - So that sounds like

183a regulation on 1400 potentially on how complaints about books are handled by teachers. - Correct. - And department chairs. - That might be-- - As opposed to-- - That might be the much better way to go. - Yeah, and the other reason that this concerns me, I think it's kind of such a burden, it's potentially a little chilling to what teachers are willing to try to teach, it kind of gives them nearly a beat right over the classroom, to trouble-making parents. Or parents who are coming from a particular point of view that is not-- - And also, if you think about, if you protest its use, what does that mean, the kid gets to sit out the lesson? - We do that now. - Do we? - We do. - But still, that can all

184be within operational, regulatory description. - Okay. - All right, so it sounds like we're rescinding this and adding an R to 1400. - And maybe if there aren't any languages, include the word books, although I agree with Pam, instructional material, or curriculum, whatever is already in there, if we want to call out books, I'm fine with that. 1400 or text books I guess is the word? - Books I think is more generic. - Yeah, like in here-- - Because books are where you're gonna get, most text books are not gonna have the objections. - So in 1400, we actually call... - Textbooks easily could, right? And health-- - We could say books and other materials, operation staff members or other members, we can use the same language, books and other materials. - I also received

185a complaint about a book at a dentist office too yesterday. - There you go, see? - Okay. - What book? - You want to know? - Later. - I just said tell Edgar. I don't know what else to say to those things. - Talk to teacher first. - I said write Edgar. - Then the principal, then Edgar. - Sorry. They go straight to the top. - These are notes and stuff, this is in the form from NISBA that we have here, 1500 or no? - What did you say? - We have 1500 here. That's the next policy. - This one is from NISBA. - This is in the form from NISBA. - Yes, I have all from NISBA. - So the middle, I lightened it because in Pam's it's really dark and hard to read,

186so yeah, the notes are included in these. - Okay, so where's our current policy? Is there any? - It should be integrated in what they're... - But that's hard to tell. You can't tell like red line wise which is existing, which doesn't. - And it's eight pages. - It's huge. - All right. - I have all the originals if anyone wants. - 1510 is much easier. - Yeah, if it clarifies, I thought I was making it easier making it lighter, but it's making it harder. - I mean it's not bad, I mean with the dark. - Is that our current policy, Pam? - This is what NISBA gave us on the first day. - Right. - So it should be-- - That's our current policy, now we have an eight-pager. - We don't need eight

187pages of policy. - A big part of this is their notes. - Does anybody want the NISBA stuff? - Pages of it is their notes. - I have three copies of the NISBA. - I have NISBA, that's what's in our packet, it's just not as dark in the notes. But we don't have any way to read it in conjunction with our current policy. - Print that one out. - Sure. - Maybe we should have three. - Eight pages. - It will give us a chance to read through it while you print. - While Honore is doing that, we did get one comment. The NISBA one, very specific, it may be more appropriate to relegate to the building use application process rather than codify as a policy. - Thank you. - That's basically... formalizing this level

188of minutia in a policy may have unintended consequences for the school and community-based organizations that have veiled themself historically to permit the use of the facility. - Actually I think it would be helpful for you guys to see the form of this policy right now, so let me help her print that one while we're doing this. - We use this policy, no? - No, there's a form. - He means the form that backs it up. - That's submission, yeah, I think you have to send to facilities. - Okay. - Can I just raise that? - So I noticed you didn't respond to Melinda... - No, 'cause I'm gonna oppose Pam. - You're gonna oppose her. (laughing) - For president. Why would I want to be vice-president in my last six months, come on. (laughing) -

189I didn't get any response. - No, because it's done. You didn't ask, I mean you only asked for, if you wanna change the course of events. You've pretty well laid it out, and everyone's on board. - But I specifically did not include names for vice-president. - Oh I see. - Yeah, that's where the opening is-- - Oh I see, right, of course. And now it is different than what you have intended. - Which is fine, by the way. - It was different than one option. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. - If we go back to the original option we can still do that, but if we actually wanna elect a vice-president, then-- - Then you need one. - Then I actually need one. - I'll just nominate one. - Do it. - We'll

190see how that goes. - We're still gonna have that discussion, 'cause I think it's appropriate, but we're hopping at least to have a... The discussion could've been a little bit different if we had one person interested. - I would, I assume that there's one person interested. - I assume too, I would like that person-- - It'd be nice if you're ahead of time, so it could be clarified. - To let me know that. - Right. - What's with the person? - For vice-president. - So what should we talk about on public use of school facilities. What are policy level matters? Almost nothing, right? - It's local. - We should make it available? - Period. - Whatever, yeah for anything. - Subject to conditions on the form. Insurance or whatever as it is, right? - Why

191did they make this so long? - So I know there has been an issue with number one, by the way, like historically. Like when people ask for permits, like when they do adult football and soccer games. Like maybe one resident is, or the person asking is a resident, but not 50% of people that are actually participating on a Sunday morning at some field, are necessary residents. - I mean how we moderate that anyway? - Thank you. They can sign a little like affidavit thing, if that's the case. - This is what people have to fill out. - This is the current form, and really you wanna look at the back. - Oh my God. - That's where all the... - Number one takes exactly from-- - Correct. - Well, it's not consistent with our policy,

192we say not less than 50%. This says more than 50%. So if it's exactly 50%... I'm just saying. - So your number three probably needs to be updated for electronic cigarettes. (laughing) No, I'm serious. - That's the first note. Where are you? - The rental agreement. - It does say smoking. - Or smoking. - Vaping. - Oh that's definitely not smoking, yeah. But I think you want to restrict it, right? You don't want people... - This was supervised. - Actually, I don't even know, that's probably a law already. - Probably is. - Or is it covered somewhere in our policies? Are you allowed to sit in the football stands? - No. - Vaping away. - No, you cannot. - Yeah. - It's coming to our code of conduct. - Yeah okay, that's where it is.

193- For adults and for kids. - So, see number two? Is that consistent with our-- - Sorry, which two are you on? - The back page, the rental agreement. Is that consistent with our public sales on school property? Is that where that would be covered? 'Cause I thought we don't charge admission or raised funds. - Who will charge admission, and will be considered only if the net proceeds are, yeah, this is by law. So if somebody wants to-- - Charge the tickets? - Right. - So the spelling bee? - If that was held on the school property. - It is, in the auditorium. - Is it for charitable purposes? - It's for their own charitable purposes. - They're probably 501(c)(3). - Then that's your, that's fine. - Right, 'cause we trust that they're gonna use

194their proceeds in accordance with their tax. - You can't be a for-profit group who comes in here, runs classes, makes money, getting tuition and using our facilities. - Correct. - For that purpose. - If you're charging admission or raising funds. - Right. - And I guess the ISOs do that too. Right, the OSOs are fine. And they're charging a participation number, or something. - And the adults, also? - Yes. - Yeah. - Okay. - So how do we wanna change our policy for this? - If at all. - I mean, we wanna have the responsibility part, for sure. Indoor spending, that's really what we're talking about here. We should be talking about that in the policy, not the details, right? - Scott, those organized groups, can comply with this, but when you're talking about... No,

195they don't actually, they don't actually rent it, never mind. Like you're talking about your Sunday morning group, but fewer than 50%. They also don't have a million dollars in liability insurance. - I think they do. - Not 10 people showing up to play soccer. - Not each person. I don't know, but I mean that's what it says-- - No, 'cause they don't even rent it, they just show up and use it, like any community member. - No, I don't think that's true. - It's true for some of the groups. - I've played football on Butterfield, where there's been fights, literally on Sunday mornings about who has the permit to the field. - And permit prevails over the residents that show up just to use. - But we do have people who show, like we don't--

196- I don't know what the building use facility they require when an individual comes and says, "I wanna play soccer on Sunday mornings." - You're supposed to have these? - Right. - We absolutely know that not everybody has them, but if you show up and you have the permit... - Yeah, sure. - That's it. - But to get the permit you're supposed to show... - Correct. - So that's process, I don't think from a policy, I think that's okay. - Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, I was just saying the example-- - Curious. - Yes. - They're not always under this agreement, they're just people that show up. - Right, I mean when you show up to walk on the track, run on the track, you're not renting it. - A million dollars. - You're not renting

197it. I mean it's a public use. - So, so far one and two are exactly the same. - And we think it's important to include them in the policy. - Yeah, I'm trying to, application non-school planned to charge admission fee. How does the A, B, C, D, how does that fall out of that? That doesn't make sense to me. - Where are you now? On the back of the rental agreement? - No, I'm on the new policy proposed by them, 'cause the first... One and two is kind of the same as what we have, then we have the applications, which is presented by law, then all of a sudden it goes to this A through H. Which I'm not seeing the sequitur. - No. Well, it's too detailed. - The list of permitted, it says

198it in there. The list od permitted uses set forth in the sample policy. Is that what you're just asking? It's in the, this note, permitted uses. - But like, if you read the policy... - No, it doesn't make any sense. - That doesn't make any sense. - I don't know why we would need enumerate every type of-- - Yeah, why do we need to enumerate. - Legit organization. - That's incredibly bothersome to me. - Applied for educational or charitable purposes as is required by law. That seams perfectly broad and comprehensive. - The list the permittee uses set forth as a sample policy reflects virtually the entire list contained in educational law 441, 414. This is as broad as the law allows. They want to be broad, but then to be careful about being broad. -

199I would personally take out all all of those, A through K, right? - Right. - I don't know why we have any of that. Take out the military. - Look what the note says, "It reflects permitted use under education law, "however, as the district is not required to allow this use, "please be sure to." We could, but... - That one paragraph is pretty tight, the applications that plan to charge will be considered, so it's still clearly within your authority to say no, only if, and it's limited to educational and charitable purposes and limited by anything else that you're taking into account. And referencing law. - Under prohibited uses, I think that one sentence is fine, I think I crossed out the rest of the entire page. - See again, we're kinda working of off two

200policies, our current policy and their recommended policy. - But they're actually really... If you cross off all the fluff. - I know but when you talk about... - It goes back to our original. - Well, the original actually talks about, during school hours and not during school hours, this just says any use not permitted. - And then investigate. So what this does is uses, prohibited uses. - Application. - Political, you know, conditions for use, I think this is a little cleaner if you take out all the garbage. - Is it true though? - It is true, right now it says exactly the same thing. I'm on the fourth page of this policy and it's exactly the same if you cross off the garbage notes. - I don't think that's true. - What's exactly the same?

201- So I'm on this one. - Yeah. - Right now it says permitted uses, take all this off and we just do this, that's the same thing as our policy currently says, 50%, then you take off all the uses, the A through K, you take all that out, prohibited uses comes down to one sentence. - But we don't say that in our current policy. - No, that's what I'm saying, we should. - Okay, but you're saying it mirrors it, I'm saying that doesn't mirror. - The substance mirrors and I think this one lays, someone just challenged what is this adding to, and I'm saying actually it's a little clearer and it has the subcategories where you can go through them fine very quickly, but prohibited uses, conditions of use, limitations on use, boom, boom, boom,

202boom, boom. If you take out all the garbage, it's actually a pretty clean little policy. - Okay, but I'm not sure we agree with all conditions, do we? - So far, I have, if you cross off all the notes. There's nothing new in here that it wasn't in our current policy. - There is. - What is? - We don't say any use not permitted by this policy is prohibited. - Yeah, Thomas wants to add that. - But we should. - Okay, but I'm saying, but it's not. You're making the position cleaner. - Sorry, everything that is affirmative in this policy has already been said here, there are some things missing from our current policy that we could add for clarity. That being one example. - Okay. And our current policy talks about, it should take

203place during school hours, and only through our opinion of the board, which I'm not so sure we want the opinion on this. - I don't like that either. - We'll use, not used to be disruptive of normal school operations. - They don't have that in the proposal, I don't know if they referenced that anyway. - I'm not sure that's in our application or something like that either. But I certainly don't want it. As the board, I don't think we should be responsible for that use. - I mean do we even need an application procedure in the policy? - We should reference it. - Yeah, but it's not a policy. - They want it in the policy. Is this a regulation or is this just referencing the rental agreement? - All of this application stuff. -

204I think that actually might be gone, and the application itself is the regulation. In other words, all applications need to be made 30 days prior, if that's policy. - This is really the regulation part of it. And then the form. - Yes, yes. - I agree, but if we want that form to be used 30 days before, that should be in the policy. Policy sets forth time, and timelines. By the way I'm not sure we abide to that. If someone comes on the 28th day, we won't say no. - Right, yeah. - Okay, so-- - And we have proper buildings available, we have coverage, whatever. - Well, it happens on the spur of the moment, established groups can just say, can we have-- - A room tomorrow night. - Right. - So Thomas, you really

205like the new one. You said these three sections, permitted uses, prohibited uses and application, and conditions and applications for all sections. - I haven't read through all of the conditions yet. But so far... I mean, a note that opens up, this is how-- - Permitted uses, it's two items, the rest of the garbage comes off. On the page three, prohibited uses, take off that big note, it's one sentence. And that's as far as I've gotten right now. - Any use not prohibited by this policy is prohibited? - Period, yeah, easy. I mean that's-- - Allow me to see that. Okay, look, if we're gonna come back to the completely revised one, let's just do that and I'm not sure we're spending valuable time right now until we see it and review it. - Okay. -

206So you want us to take a stab at narrowing this down and? - Yeah, unfortunately between the NISBA one and what we have, there's no red line, on any of these policies, I'm not sure where to begin. - Yeah. - So it sounds like for the last few policies, we've dunk it back on you unfortunately Thomas. - I don't mind at all. We went pretty far, but I think even we thought we weren't gonna get this far in this meeting today, so I think that's where we stopped at our last policy. Thinking that was what we were gonna do. - So take this, condense it, red line it, incorporate it, start from this and then we'll compare that to the existing. - But on prohibitions, I think that it's just not true that any use

207not permitted by this policy is prohibited because for example we're not waving into this, the religious use matter. - That's not to say that we might not though, at some point. - You're saying it is prohibited. - You're saying it's prohibited, yeah. - It's not permitted. - You're permitting a fairly small number of things. And then what actually is prohibited is a pretty short list, it seems like it might be worth referencing it especially since it's covered. Meeting sponsored by a pullover organization, that's kind of useful guidance for people. - Let me ask you this, does that mean SPNC can't have a room? I'm not trying to stop them. - That's a fair point, they probably shouldn't be allowed to. They are absolutely a political organization, they are a political party. - Meetings sponsored by

208political organizations. - Yes, are they a political organization? - They are a party. They're a party not different from the republican party or the democratic party. - Those are established parties, so what party are they? - They are a non-partisan party. They nominate their own candidates. - But is that under a civic organization rather than a political organization? I would say they're much more being a civic. Because they're not politicians. - Interesting, it's interesting. - You're volunteers. - Well, they're not electing anyone. - Right, they're suggesting. - Party members making a nomination. - We technically run on the non-partisan line. - They are a civic organization, but so is the republican party and the democratic party. - They're also a political party, specifically identified as such. - But this just called political organizations, it doesn't

209use party. The language here. - Political organization. - They're clearly a political organization. - That denies being one. - It's not in our current policy by the way. - Yeah, it's not in our current policy. - It's not in our current policy. But if that's by law, we're supposed to-- - It's not clear if it's by law, because it appears above the NISBA note. - Oh, here, right, maybe used for political means, with the use that's authorized by the voters, which I don't think we've ever asked shall ESPNC be allowed to hold meetings on, oh my God, can you imagine? - But it's a legitimate question of whether they should be allowed to. Now that we have frequently in the village and the schools contested elections. - It's titled, it all suggests it's a committee.

210With a civic responsibility. - Titles don't really get there, right? - The republican party and the democratic party. - They still could hide the word party and be a party, in your title. - They also use the word system, right, they'd like to pretend that they're more than they are, they're a nominating committee for a non-partisan party. - What's the party? - There's a name for it, right? - I really don't know. - I mean part of a recognized-- - But again, political organizations, that's what it says, not political parties. - If they were doing the mayor. - The CNC does it. - Or the-- - Why is the mayor any different than a school board member, I don't think it is. - They mayor is not-- - Same, less political. They aren't running on

211a republican or democratic line. - Where does the CNC meet, do you know? - Village hall, I think. - Same issue, really. - School laws don't necessarily apply. - I know, but they have a parallel issue. - But if the Scarsdale Voters party wanted space in village hall and they were said no, that would seem to be favoring-- - Absolutely. - When you say you're a voters' party to me, that's redline, I get it. - I guess the question is... So the law allows us to do this, Scott, you were reading? But it has to be approved by voters. - Yeah. - It's the note above it. Which is on the bottom of the box, previous page I think. - Did I miss discussion you guys had just way back on point number two as

212a condition? - The group generally serves other needs, that one? - Yes. - No, we didn't discuss that. - Does that seem as limiting to you as it does to me? Like that so many of these that use our facilities might not do that? Like Scarsdale adult school? - So I think because these are, the facilities belong to the Scarsdale community, and particularly the Scarsdale tax payers, I think the general sense is that these aren't open buildings to the broad public, they're open buildings when available to the Scarsdale public, community. - Which it says, welfare of the community. - Right. And so I think that's where it's trying to limit it, and saying beyond that, it can't just be any organization within the community, but there should be some benefit to the children, the community

213in general, or something like that. Using public school facilities, it's like the PTC. If you wanted to do, the scouts, if you want to do something that has a component of either children or community building or you know, that's the threshold for being able to use public school buildings. - So Scarsdale adult school would have to fall under the community. - Absolutely, yeah. - It's certainly not for the needs of children. - No, but it's something else. - No, no, I'm not suggesting we shouldn't. - And SPNC, supports the welfare of the community. - I'm just hung up on the political part of that, not-- - Yeah, but even outside of that-- - They're serving the community. - It serves the community. - As a civic group. I'm kidding, Chris. - But like ISOs, I

214think are all good, those are other needs, recreational needs of kids. - They're non-profit, so that's-- - And it's also under recreational needs of kids. - The political thing, the essential element is are you discriminating or not. If we would be perfectly happy to have the Voters' Choice party meet here to choose its nominees for school board, then I think it's fine to have SPNC here. But if we were going to say no, then of course we should say no to everyone equally. And all this other stuff, the religious stuff, I guess, you know, it hasn't been an issue here, right? - Yet. But some day it could be. Other community groups could be. You could have the boy scouts as something that people would object to as being too exclusionary, you know, and it's

215gotten a little more open, but... They're still not open to everybody. - All right, so what are we gonna do? - I'll work with Dan, once I spent some time with Dan, I'll come on through this. - And I think probably when it comes back to us, Thomas, let's include this regulation or what's effectively the regulation because if we do make any changes, we might want to make changes in the regulation, we might want to do that all at once. - Does everybody really comply with this? Does SPNC have a limited liability policy? - SPNC has never-- - I think it has to be submitted with the application. - Yeah, SPNC has never used our building until I think more recently, have they? - No, years. - It's been here for as long as I

216can remember. - Yeah. - At least a decade. - They used room 170 for the six Sundays. - At least a decade, I agree. - Okay. I'll tell him, I'll have to check on my question, and make sure that-- - They might have insurance. - They used to use like the girl scouts-- - That's what I remember. - But as far as I remember-- - And then I thought they had to switch over here, that's why-- - Chris and I went there-- - Because they had contacts. - What, exactly, six years ago now or so? So at least that long, but it was definitely a couple of years before that at least. - Yeah. - They used to be meeting here. - But they have tried, I know they have tried girl scouts and lost

217it. There were times when they would go there instead or more conveniently. - I know there was an issue last year, but we don't need to take up time from the schedule, but no, I don't think it was related to the use permit. - All right, so we're gonna-- - All right, so specifically ask about SPNC use. - Right, which Dan may not even be completely up to speed on, but SPNC is. Scarsdale Edgemont. - There's other communities outside. - The question, I mean clearly we all support it, right? And we don't intend to have the district discriminate against others, so the real question for Dan is, should voters have to approve this. - That's right. - The answer would be yes if they're a political party, right, because that's-- - If, an organization. A

218political party. The policy says political organizations. No, I'm serious. - Yeah, I hear you. - It's an odd thing, but maybe it should have just gone on the ballot. - So now we would need to, the board will come up with its own proposition for this matter. - To authorize the use of schools for political organizations. - But then any political organization who wants to, if someone wants to rally against a bond that we're having, where we actually set up and everyone's sat in a meeting, where you can have as long as you want? - It doesn't sound so good. - You're shaking your head, but it doesn't sound so good. - That's the tricky part. - And you don't want to just authorize SPNC when there are other political parties in town. - But

219the voters actually, I think when you do, I think you do limit it to a specific thing when you're doing it as a proposition now, or a petition? - That's a proposition. - Proposition. - The board shall allow the community to-- - And we can come up with our own propositions. - So you could limit it to that and then you don't have to worry. - Limit it to what? - To asking about the SPNC. - No, you can't do that. You can't have a proposition authorizing the school district to open its rooms to pro NRA groups or to anti-abortion groups. - No, but I think-- - You can't pick here. You can't pick here your preferred political speech. I'm pretty sure you're gonna find this as an all or nothing. If you're gonna open

220it up, you can set rules, you can set, you know, fire safety limits and liability insurance and stuff. But there's no way you're gonna let some public, some political organizations in and not others. - That would seem to be right. Right and the note here says, district facilities may be for political meetings if the use is authorized by voters. Not, you know, that seems to be political meetings in general, right. - It sounds like political speech. - Yes political meetings or no political meetings and then whatever falls from that. All right, so this policy will not be in effect by next week or whenever, when the SPNC starts to meet. - In our current policy, yeah. - Right, our current policy doesn't limit it. - Exactly. - But if it's, we should just be aware

221of that. - Right, it's probably not an authorized use-- - By the voters. - What does that mean, so we probably shouldn't be, if they're a political organization. - So how are we gonna confirm that? - He's gonna ask Dan, I'm sorry. - But then we'll... - The answer is yes. Then I guess we're kicking them out. - I don't know. - Well, we haven't asked the voters for approval. - We'll get an amendment. - Right. - It's a little weird. I don't want to kick them out. - So what is our obligation to abide by our own policies? - You have to, or just suspend them. - So we could suspend them. - And that could be complying with our rules, our own-- - But if it's unlawful. - Yeah, because the law says

222no political, unless... Correct. - I mean we can try, but it's actually, if you don't abide the law, you can't just suspend it. - No matter what you do with your own policies. - You just got to conform with the law, right. - Then we are kind of supposed to move on. - Kind of. - Well. They're gonna be thrilled. - Yeah, they already don't have enough money to do a lot of the things they want to do, let alone now if they have to rent space. - And it's a big room. I mean, it's difficult, that room suits them perfectly. - Yeah. - Wow. - Well, so then-- - Build something-- - We need a determination that they're not a political organization. - Public space are free. - What was the room that we

223have downtown? - Pean center. It wasn't big enough. - Let's start with Dan and whether or not he believes they may or may not be identified as a political organization. - We need a community center. - If they're not, all this is unnecessary. - What's going on with the pool during the winter? - That's what you should go for, pool. - Put a tarp over that. - They rent. - Offer split rooms for the public. - They run their own candidates and contested public elections. - Are we near the end, do you think? - You want to stop? - Well, I have to call Cole out before 11:45 which is-- - So the question is can we do this one quick, three paragraph policy of public sales on school property. That would be what I

224would suggest if we can't. - It looks long. - Do we have our version of this? - If it's not the same, then maybe we will punt. If it's exactly the same, as our current policy. - I think it's covered already by the uses. - No community comment on this? - Yeah, because the policy is as previously adopted. - By the way, this is exactly the same policy. - I don't know why we need it. We've already said what kind of fund raising may occur on school property. - Where did we say that? - In the policies we've just been talking about, the use of facilities. - But you don't have to use the facility, how about if you're just walking. - Yeah, this is about fund raising. - On school property. - But you're

225not actually renting property. So this came up this year. - This answers our booster question. The second paragraph. - It was brought up to me that cheerleading group wanted to raise money-- - Not a booster. - At a 50-50 during the football game. - I see. - And they were shut down at least in their mind because there was a fund drive, and it had nothing to do with the use. They were-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Interesting. - So I'm gonna make this call, to get him out of office. - I think we should just stop because I think this might take more conversation over the next eight paragraphs. - If it starts going to door to door solicitation-- - Yeah. - Even though this was under school, all right. - So, we'll pick

226up. - You're right, it does in a way belong. If the government decides that they just want to do a pizza sale. - This is like one of our most active policies. - And we actually probably want to give guidance on this, the policies. - Okay. It's all off the bat for me. - Yeah, that's why we need to consider all that, which we can't do in the next five minutes. So it's now 11:36, we're gonna move to adjourn this meeting of the committee. Thank you, Chris. - Second. - Pam is second, we are adjourned.