MORGANTOWN – House Judiciary expanded and approved a Senate bill on Thursday that would require all county school board meetings to be open to the public in person and via audio and video broadcast live via a link on the board website. It also would require the boards to archive the audio and video for later public access via a website link.
The bill is SB 493. As Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, said twice during deliberations: “We’re going to require more of local school boards than we do of ourselves.”
The House of Delegates does not provide a video feed in any of its meeting rooms, only on the House floor. And the House does not record or archive any meetings or floor sessions. The Senate provides audio and video feeds of all meetings and floor sessions and archives everything for later playback.
Judiciary passed a version incorporating some House Education additions. One of them is a sentence that caused considerable consternation and lengthy debate of three proposed amendment to the sentence.
The sentence says: A description of each matter voted on by a county board along with how each member voted on the matter shall be published on the county board’s website and remain published on the county board’s website for at least two years.”
Testimony on the bill revealed several issues. One, the wording of the sentence struck many – including Howard O’Cull, executive director of the state School Board Association – as requiring every vote by every board to be a roll call vote.
It was said that many routine votes are taken without roll calls, and often many issues not requiring deliberation are grouped together on consent agendas. One Judiciary member who served on a school board said that board never took a roll call vote in all the years he served.
Some worried that the sentence would require roll calls for such routine things as approving minutes and adjourning.
The first amendment proposed to strike the whole sentence. It failed in a roll call vote.
The next amendment proposed to add a phrase to clarify that only roll call votes would have to be published. It also failed in a roll call vote.
The third amendment actually took the issue a step farther by requiring the votes to be published and available for four years – the length of a board member’s term – instead of two. This amendment was adopted.
Members also approved amendment to another section of the bill. It effectively prevents the state School Board Association from joining the National School Board Association.
The amendment, the sponsor said, stemmed from a letter from NSBA leadership addressed to the U.S. Department of Justice last September that alleged parents were engaging in aggressive and threatening behavior at school, which amounted to “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
Since then, it was testified, about 29 or 30 state associations have disassociated from the NSBA.
O’Cull said that the West Virginia association also voted not to join this year. The association has a post about this decision on its website.
That amendment was adopted and discussion proceeded to the amended bill.
Delegate Chris Phillips, R-Barbour, was not pleased with the House Education additions to the Senate bill. “I think this is kind of laughable. … The rails have come off on the first bill this morning.”
In the spirit of the decision to apparently require all school board votes to be roll call, Pushkin called for the vote on the bill to be roll call. But his colleagues were getting antsy as the meeting was running long and declined to support him.
So SB 493 passed in a voice vote and goes to the House floor.
If the full House passes it, the bill would have to return to the Senate for concurrence with the House amendments, and what the Senate might do remains to be seen.
Tweet David Beard @dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
