D86 Board's Expanded Use of Committees Criticized, Meetings to be Taped

At a meeting that featured a public comment criticizing the public accessibility of District 86 board committee discussions, members of the board of education agreed Monday night to begin recording the smaller-group meetings that have become common during the first five weeks of the new board’s tenure.

Since the board’s reorganizing on May 6, there have been two meetings of the board’s Facilities Committee (May 9 and May 31), one of the Ad Hoc Committee (June 3) and one of the Finance Committee (June 13).

There was only one Finance Committee meeting in 2013 before the new board was seated, and there were no Ad Hoc Committee or Facilities Committee meetings during that time.

In all of 2012, there was one Finance Committee meeting and one Ad Hoc Committee meeting.

Facilities and Finance meetings have so far not taken place at public-friendly times. All three have been held on Fridays. The Facilities Committee has met at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., while the recent Finance Committee meeting was held at 6:30 a.m.

Public accessibility to the committee meetings was an agenda item on Victor Casini’s president’s report Monday.

No board members were against videotaping the meetings.

Ed Corcoran, who chairs the Facilities Committee, said that he is indeed for recording the meetings but acknowledged the pros and cons.

The pro, Corcoran said, is board transparency, but there could also be “the con of people not wanting to speak on a committee level—which is really a working group that doesn’t take any action whatsoever—[and] to not be willing to brainstorm in public on camera.”  

Kay Gallo said she doesn’t think that would be an issue for any of the board members.

“I don’t hesitate raising my opinion and I don’t think any of the [seven] of us hesitate either whether the camera is rolling or not,” Gallo said.

Before the board discussion, Hinsdale resident Linda Burke brought up the topic of committee meetings during the public comment opportunity.

Burke singled out the Facilities Committee’s discussion of the re-bidding of summer projects and said the committee system makes the board appear less transparent.

“There appears to be an aggressive effort by the new board members … to move a very important discussion under the radar to days and times that are technically open to the public but that no one can get to,” Burke said.

The new board has discussed informally the possibility of eliminating the twice-monthly Committee of the Whole meetings in favor of the smaller committee meetings. To this point, though, no action on such a change in practice has been formally proposed.