The Echo

Warren to put school board meetings on cable TV

Published: Saturday, May 22, 2010
By Norb Franz
Macomb Daily Staff Writer
http://www.macombdaily.com/articles/2010/05/22/news/doc4bf71a9843039662006791.txt

Broadcasts aimed at improving scrutiny of schools

Top decision-makers in six Macomb County school districts will soon get more public exposure and scrutiny.

The city of Warren’s government cable television department plans to record and broadcast meetings of local boards of education. Using city cable crews, Warren will show the elected school officials and top administrators in action, with cable subscribers in the city able to watch from the comfort of home.

“Taxpayers have a right to know what decisions every unit of government is making on their behalf and how their tax dollars are being spent,” said Mayor James Fouts. “Televising school board meetings brings instant transparency and immediate accountability.

“I feel it’s our obligation.”

Fouts said he ordered the city’s Communication Department to begin recording board meetings in response to residents who feel disconnected from board members and school district issues.

The mayor contacted the superintendents in the Fitzgerald, Van Dyke, Warren Woods and Warren Consolidated districts about his plan, hoping for their cooperation. Of the four, only Warren Consolidated televises its board meetings, showing regular sessions live followed by two replays later on the district’s public access channel.

On May 17, a two-person cable crew with one camera recorded the 2 1/2-hour meeting of the Van Dyke school board. The meeting is scheduled to be televised at 8 p.m. Thursday and 10 a.m. May 29 on Warren’s city channels on Comcast and Wide Open West.

Warren Communications Director Lark Samouelian said the production went smoothly.

“My staff felt it was totally unobtrusive,” she said. “They’re used to being like flies on a wall.”

No tapings have been scheduled yet in Fitzgerald, Warren Woods or Warren Consolidated.

City officials say they only intend to record regularly scheduled board meetings, not special sessions or workshops that also are open to the public.

Superintendent Barbara VanSweden said board members in the southwest corner of the city have questioned the timing of the city’s interest in recording meetings and is expected to discuss the issue further.

In Warren Consolidated, board meetings have been televised since 1997 on the school public access channels. That effort has led to the public being better informed on school matters, said Superintendent Robert Livernois. Meetings are shown live and again on a taped basis two days later and one week later.

Fouts is not pleased with the technical quality of the Warren Consolidated broadcast and told Livernois the city will step in and do a better job if the district can’t improve. Livernois acknowledged the tapings are “very simple in nature” and don’t compare to network television, but work just fine.

“One of my concerns is the duplication of effort that might not be in the best interest of the resources of taxpayers” if city production begins, said the district’s top administrator, adding that he would offer a DVD of the district’s own recordings to city officials for playback on city government channels.

School boards are not required by law to televise their sessions, but under the Michigan Open Meetings Act must post a meeting notice publicly.

Fouts hopes to eventually add the school boards in the Center Line Public Schools and East Detroit Public Schools — both of which include small portions of Warren — to the city cable department’s programming.

“We’re looking at it as a long-term relationship and not just barging in,” Samouelian added.

The mayor hopes easier and wider access by the public to school board meetings will help residents learn and understand local school issues; increase public input in district decision-making; spur more people to file as candidates for school board; and increase voter turnout for school elections.

In Macomb County, voter turnout for school board elections historically has been low, even in contested races. In the May 4 election in the Center Line Public Schools, only 7.5 percent of the district’s registered voters showed up at the polls as five candidates competed for two board seats. In the L’Anse Creuse Public Schools — located in most of Harrison Township and parts of Chesterfield, Macomb and Clinton townships — fewer than six out of every 100 registered voters cast ballots to decide which two of six candidates should make personnel decisions, set policy and determine the expense of millions of dollars.

In the Fitzgerald school district, where a proposed tax increase was on the May ballot, less than 11 percent of voters participated while rejecting the $68.6 million bond proposal by a 3-1 ratio.

Fouts, who served as a councilman for 26 years before voters elected him to the top post in city government in 2007, retired years ago as a high school government teacher in Warren Consolidated. He said his career as an educator was not a factor in his directive to the city’s cable department to record school board sessions. However, he feels school boards operate in relative obscurity while the majority of property taxes goes to school operations.

“Right now, it’s a hidden entity,” he said. “When public officials know they face the scrutiny of taxpayers, their decisions are going to be more cautious and more deliberate.”