Transparency

In the next few days, I will share with you my answers to the questions that were asked at the March 23rd Candidate Forum hosted by the Germantown Area Chamber of Commerce. In some cases, I will also share some of my responses to questions that were shared with us that were not asked. In this case, this is a question that was not asked during the Forum. For many of the answers that I share, it will not be the transcript of what I may have said. Q: Lack of transparency by the current board has been a consistent, ongoing complaint from constituents. What specific steps would you take to conduct business in a more open way with the community you serve? I have advocated for every meeting to be live-streamed (if possible) and if that isn’t possible to be recorded for later consumption. This was mention last night at the March 22 Board meeting by Mr. Loth. Back in January, I had emailed Mr. Stousland and Mr. Soderberg to record the 1/25/21 Finance committee meetings because of the important topics of the possibility of selling the admin building as well as the plan that was discussed regarding the fund balance.

Since 1/1/2016, there are only 4 Finance committee meetings, 4 building committee meetings, 1 personnel committee meeting, and 1 Ad Hoc Committee meetings available for viewing in EduVision.*

We should start publishing plan and review documents with action/review items and dates. We need to lay out a plan and act on it appropriately like other higher-performing school districts do. We should be able to point to that documentation when someone asks what the board is doing? * The Finance Committee meeting from March 22 and the Transportation Committee meeting from March 23 recordings were made available today. These two meetings are not included with what I listed above. This could be a positive move that I've been advocating for in a move to better transparency.