There is a difference, not always clearly understood, between public meetings and meetings held in public.
Meetings held in public have a formal agenda and attend to the business of the organization. Public meetings, usually conducted by a facilitator, are open to input and questions and answers.
This important distinction goes some way to explaining the Greater Victoria school board鈥檚 reluctance to open its meetings to a kind of question-time free-for-all at the end of the business meetings it holds in public.
Many other school boards allow a question period at the end of meetings held in public and a variety of people with a variety of motivations show up, waiting for question time.
The problem is that with either no or very little notice of the questions, trustees and senior administrators are often caught flat-footed trying to respond in any useful or truly informative way to out-of-the blue questions that focus on some specific practice.
That鈥檚 not to say the answers to specific questions do not exist, just that the situation leaves trustees and administrators fumbling around and trying to come up with something sensible that does not sound like classic brush-off responses.
School board meetings held in public are business meetings. Such meetings usually have a formal agenda intended to update those present on what has happened since the previous meeting. They are not exciting meetings. In fact, more often than not, they are deadly dull.
Recent correspondence is tabled, there are reports from the superintendent, secretary-treasurer, facilities supervisors and individual trustees who chair the many sub-committee meetings that conduct the detailed business of the board itself.
For media folks, being sent to cover a formal school board business meeting is akin to being dispatched to watch the paint dry on highway centre lines as the world whizzes by.
The juicy stuff 鈥� personnel and discipline decisions, major capital decisions, recommendations about the awarding of building contracts or the details of labour-relations negotiations meetings 鈥� are dealt with at in-camera meetings because of the need for confidentiality.
Those recommendations show up at the business meetings to seek ratification by the board as a whole, after all trustees have been brought up to date by confidential memo.
No deep, dark secrets, but every kind of business needs some reassurance of confidentiality as it deals with delicate issues.
There are numerous other committee meetings, different for every district, that deal with education, policy development and ad hoc issues such as transportation, environment, student scholarships and parent involvement and accessibility.
It is at these less-formal meetings, usually open to anybody interested, that questions can be asked and answered, or at least referred to somebody who can research the question and get back to either the committee or the individual concerned.
Too often, the question period allowed by many districts at the end of their business meetings devolves into single-issue advocacy or political opportunities by a single individual looking for a public platform.
There is nothing wrong with that, either, but given the numerous other ways in which that issue can find its way into the system, prolonged rhetoric at the end of a lengthy business meeting is the least likely approach to finding resolution to an issue.
Then there are straightforward questions that simply seek clarification of some issue discussed or decision made at the meeting and asked by people who are trying to understand what just happened. The bigger problem arises as to the optics of recognizing some kinds of questions but prohibiting others 鈥� a no-win.
The Victoria board of trustees already allows union officials and a parents鈥� representative to have non-voting seats at the board table where they are able to take part in discussions. That goes a long way down the path to access for advocacy.
Added to that, the board鈥檚 committee meetings give the public an opportunity to ask trustees questions without any time limit.
School boards already do their best to be transparent. Senior levels of government could take a lesson.
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Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
