Posted live, recorded on Youtube
By Bert Lehman
The Clintonville School Board will continue to live stream its meetings and keep them available on its YouTube channel.
Board members made that decision when they met on May 8.
In addition, the board also approved recording any open session action after the board comes out of closed session if there is a vote on any action item other than adjournment.
Superintendent Troy Kuhn told the board very few people watch the school board meetings live, but a lot of people watch the recordings of the meetings.
He added that it doesn’t matter to him whether the district live streams school board meeting or not. But he said the board needed to be aware that with the recordings of the meetings available on the district’s YouTube channel, the possibility exists that the recordings could be manipulated.
Student privacy concerns
Board President Ben Huber said one of the difficult things about live streaming is if a student’s name is accidently mentioned during a meeting. He said one way to avoid that would be to eliminate the live stream, but record board meetings, and then make them available once it is verified no student names were mentioned that shouldn’t have been mentioned.
Board member Glen Drew Lundt asked Huber if he wanted the recordings edited in those situations.
Huber said in situations when a student’s name should not have been mentioned, the name could get “bleeped” out of the recording.
Board member Laurie Vollrath said she liked the idea of board meetings being recorded, but not necessarily live streamed.
Kuhn said he doesn’t have time to review meeting recordings.
“If you want me to be 100% honest, I kind of feel uncomfortable going in and taking out excerpts,” Kuhn said. “If something happened, you need to acknowledge that something happened as well.”
Open meetings
Because a school board meeting is an open meeting, Lundt said he preferred that the meeting recordings not be altered at all.
For the protection of board members and the school district, Kuhn said legal experts recommended not live streaming board meetings. Instead, districts should record meetings to refer back to.
“But that doesn’t mean we have to,” Kuhn said. “That’s a recommendation.”
A motion was made to record but not livestream the school board meetings.
Prior to the vote, board member Chad Dobbe asked how recordings would be available to the public.
Kuhn said if individuals wanted to listen to a recording of a board meeting, the individual would need to make an open records request.
The motion failed by a 3-3 vote.
Lundt made a new motion to continue live streaming the board meetings as the district has been doing, but to also include the open session portion after the board comes out of closed session if there is an action item other than adjournment.
Lundt said his goal was for the district to be as transparent as possible.
That motion passed unanimously.