Attendance at a school board meeting is required.

Attendance at a school board meeting is required. A Board of Trustees meeting is another name for a School Board meeting.  While attending the school board meeting, consider the following questions:  watch one 

Who is at the meeting (school administration, teachers, elected officials, community members, etc.)?

Who is not at the meeting?

Why might some of these groups/people not be in attendance?

What agenda items are discussed?  What decisions are made?  

Who proposed agenda items?  Who makes decisions?  What groups do the most speaking?

Are the people most impacted by these decisions present during the meeting?

Consider the interactions between different stakeholders (administrators, teachers, elected officials, community members, etc.)

After attending the school board meeting, select a population that you noticed absent or underrepresented at the meeting.  Consider why that population was absent or underrepresented.  Identify one possible reason for why this population was either absent or underrepresented and consider ways you could eliminate or work around this barrier to include this population and/or share the information from the meeting with them.  

—For example, if you notice that parents are largely absent from meetings, and you consider maybe their work schedules prohibit them from attending, how can you crea a way to get the information discussed at the meeting to them in an effective and efficient manner? 

PART ONE: Crea a different way to include or convey information to a group that was either absent or underrepresented at the school board meeting.  This could be in the form of a podcast, youtube video, flyer, website, etc.

PART TWO: Escribe dos o tres page identifying a group that was either absent or underrepresented at the school board meeting and think about what obstacles/barriers may have prevented them from being at the meeting.  Then create possible solutions to either create access to the meetings and/or the information discussed during the meetings.