Moultonboro School Board July 2008 Meeting Minutes

Click for Moultonboro School Board July 2008 Meeting Minutes

Note from the MCA: Questions were raised at this meeting regarding attachments and minutes mentioned in the minutes being made available online so readers could follow the full context of the meeting.

An excerpt of the discussion follows. The MCA questions why advance publication of important items such as the monthly budget report would not be available online so the public could review them and be better prepared to ask questions. It is not acceptable in a "transparent " school district to not publish this data for fear of the public asking too many questions or playing " electronic ping-pong". For the benefit of our citizens a copy of the monthly budget report will be posted on this site in the next few days.

Jim Leiterman read an e-mail he sent to the School Board dated July 6th, requesting additional information be added to the District website, and asked for a response from the Board. (A hardcopy of Mr. Leiterman's e-mail is available in the SAU office). Mr. Blackadar explained that minutes from all Board subcommittees and Board appointed committees are in the process of being posted. Minutes will be an overview of each meeting, not a verbatim transcript. Mrs. Whitley added that the eighteen page monthly financial report would not be posted on the website. When Mr. Leiterman asked why it would not be posted, Mrs. Whitley replied that she did not want to see staff involved in answering questions via 'electronic ping-pong', and would rather have hard copies of the reports available at each meeting where questions could be answered by the Board. Al Hume asked Mrs. Garry if the Advisory Budget Committee had met yet, and she replied that they had not. Mr. Leiterman expressed his disappointment that a discussion of the pros and cons of a proposed electronic Board agenda was not contained in the May minutes. Mr. Blackadar explained that the electronic agenda was being proposed as an alternative to the amount of paper generated for each Board member's packet. The Board will continue their practice of making hardcopies of agenda packets available to the public at each meeting.