I attended Thursday's meeting, and you can always spot me, because I am the one not so quietly having a hissy fit every time the board and their lawyers totally disregard accepted meeting protocols.

Will someone PLEASE take them aside and teach them how to conduct a meeting? Will someone please tell them definitions for the words: minutes, discussion and agenda?

You see, the Board and their lawyers think that it is okay to place the approval of minutes in the consent agenda. When challenged, the reply was basically one of, "Well, that is how we have been doing it."

Well, you are wrong, Trustees.

Anyone who has ever chaired a meeting knows you give people time to look over the minutes, ask for a motion to accept or revise them and THEN you move on to agenda topics.

So, let's see. The second question on Thursday had to do with the CONTENT of minutes. Okay, if you only want a bare-boned set of minutes, okay. You do have video. However, it it customary to list ALL motions made, even ones which die for lack of a second.

It is also customary to list major discusiion points made. Again, a separate recording is good, but that should not be the only place of record.

Maybe if the meetings were run like a business, then the DISD would, too. Instead, it often looks like a small-town, do it on the fly kind of group.

"Can we do this?"

"Why not, we make our own rules!"
Or, as a Trustee once said to me, "We can violate our rules any time we want, we made them."

Check out meetings:

Check out Robert's Rules of Order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minutes

Diane Birdwell
NEA Dallas