By John McLoone

The Hastings School Board’s Policy Committee will investigate bringing public comment back to the beginning of school board meetings.

The board had a first reading of changes to its Policy 206 which governs public comment to the school board. Currently, the board listening session is held ahead of the board meetings in a nearby room, in front of specific board members on a rotating basis. People sign up to speak and address the board member or members present.

A change to state law moving through the legislature will prevent public bodies from holding data on people speaking at meetings. The first part of the change to the policy is for that, which was a topic of discussion at last Wednesday night’s meeting of the ISD 200 Board of Education. Moving back to the policy committee when it meets in early April is bringing the listening sessions back before the entire board.

The new policy will assign speakers a laminated number that will be called. In the past, getting information on the

Rendering courtesy of Wold Architect.

speaker was used to identify if the person was a district resident and speaking on a district issue.

“I know even before the new board members were seated in January, there was a discussion of how we do these listening sessions?” policy committee chair Director Stephanie Malm said. “How do we do public comment? Do we revert back to having public at the board meeting, you know where all of us are here, and they can sit up there, and we do it for 15 minutes. That’s something that I think we need to have a broader discussion of.”

Board Director Lisa Hedin explained the state law change proposed.

“The reason for inclusion of the provision about collection of data is driven by a piece of legislation currently going through the State Legislature that would prohibit collection of that data,” she said. “This is about being ready to respond to an anticipated legislative shift. The broader question about what the time and manner of public engagement should be, that’s a separate question for a different time.”

Director Carrie Tate said it’s important to bring public comment back before the entire board.

“I would like to have the discussion around adding public comment back, and I think it’s important from a trust aspect and even more from an optics aspect to have the folks have the opportunity to address us all at once,” she said.

The proposed policy change also will allow people just to speak to items on the agenda for that evening’s meeting.

Tate said the school board association recommends open forum at listening sessions.

“Their recommendation is it allows for either on the agenda items or not. I’m wondering why we would go this strict of a policy at this time?” she asked.

Malm responded: “This is one of those policies that if you were to look from one district to the next, it is going to be vastly different, and it’s really up to the particular board on how they plan to manage public comment. With the past board, that’s just how we decided for the flow of the meetings. Quite frankly, we usually didn’t have anybody show up at public comment. So we thought, let’s do a listening session. We can condense the meeting, and it’s still the opportunity for people to come in if they want to. Maybe we’re at a time where we need to look at that.”

The discussion and change to bring the listening session back at the beginning of the board meeting likely will take time and discussion.

“To make that modification within the next month, I think that’s a pretty high expectation because it’s not going to be as straightforward as maybe you’re thinking versus what I’m thinking versus what Lisa’s thinking. So, I think we need to get past this privacy consideration. Get that in there and then move to the public comment portion of that and what the actual platform looks like,” said Malm Making comments specific to agenda items ensures the board hears commenters on those things first.

“If the public wants to speak on that before we go to a vote, we want them to have a priority,” said Malm. “I think we need to as a policy committee and then as a board talk about that a little further.”

Tate said, “I totally agree with that. I know tonight nobody came to do listening session, so priority doesn’t really matter, it being on the agenda or not. I guess in general I oppose not being able to allow folks to speak in listening session to something that’s not on the agenda.”

Malm suggested a change could be that people speaking on an agenda item would have first priority and those with other discussion items could come after.

Hedin said these matters need to be policy discussion topics, since the policy change before the board was actually to strike collecting information, such as what the person is speaking to the board about.

“It’s just a more complex conversation,” she said. Board Chair Brian Davis directed the overall discussion to move to committee prior to it coming back for a board workshop and ultimately before the board.