The Park City Board of Education has changed its meeting format in an effort to encourage public participation and increase transparency, and there may be more adjustments in the future based on community feedback.
“We wanted to make sure that our board meetings are firstly a forum for productive discussion between the board because the public needs to see how we’re actually making decisions,” explained board Vice President Nick Hill. “The other driver was that historically we have put public comment at the end of a meeting, and that makes zero sense if you actually value public comment as an input to the discussion and the decisions that you’re making.”
Public comment is still slated for 5 p.m., but instead of working through most of the agenda prior to hearing from the community, the school board is implementing a work session format. The changes, which were enacted for the board’s recent February meeting, put items less important for the community before public comment, such as routine reports.
“Then we would do public comments so we can actually hear from people who want to come and talk to us, and then all of the discussion items and decision items follow after public comment,” Hill said. “We’ve often said we want to hear from the public and it’s important to us, but really we’re trying to show that by saying we want to hear from you before we then make a decision.”
The school board also asked for monthly reports to be provided in a written format prior to the meeting for review. Hill said written reports will allow board members to digest the information and come to the meeting with any questions, speeding up the process overall.
“In many cases, we’re not taking a vote on things. It’s just informational,” Hill said. “In those cases, those reports will still be given. They’re still available publicly. Anyone can go in and read those just like we can, but in cases where we actually have something to discuss around them, we then have the information up front to be able to have a better discussion in the meeting.”
Additionally, the school board created a communications committee this year to evaluate the board’s relationship with the public going forward. The committee will also brainstorm how to increase transparency and encourage community input, such as a method of submitting written public comments ahead of board meetings.
“How do we accommodate people who don’t want to actually talk publicly, who just want to give us a written comment but still want to come to a meeting? Or people who can’t come to the meeting at all but still want to give us comments?” Hill said. “All of those things will be addressed going forward, initially by the communications committee, and that will come to the public meeting for us as a whole board to talk about and to figure out how best we make those meetings, what we think they should be and how best we provide the public with the channels they need to communicate with us.”
The communications committee is currently made up of the superintendent, two board members and a member of the district’s communications team, Hill said.
He added the board is also considering a change of venue to accommodate larger crowds and to be more accessible to people living throughout the district.
“There’s a perception that the district office is tucked away in a corner of the district and we go over there and we do our meetings and do we actually know what’s going on in other parts of the district?” Hill explained. “Can people actually get there? Someone working down in the valley or down in Kimball Junction may actually not be able to get to that meeting, but they may be able to get somewhere else. It’s about thinking about other ways of reaching our community.”
The school board has not yet made an official decision to change its meeting location, but Hill said transparency, public participation and accessibility will continue to guide the board’s operations for the foreseeable future.
“I think it’s so important that we show that we actually do want people to come to our meetings, to talk to us, that we do go to the other schools, that we’re seen and we’re seeing what’s going on there,” he said. “Really, all of this is just one piece of a much wider effort to look at our communications and, ultimately, to remove some of the opaqueness, the secrecy, not deliberate secrecy but that perception around how the board operates and how the board and the district make decisions.”