“Learned and legal presenters on The Brown Act strongly caution members of publicly elected boards around the use of electronic communication and blogs on topics of the agency’s business. A board’s work must be accomplished at a publicly noticed meeting. Forwarded messages and postings from various board members may create a serial meeting or reveal confidential information from a closed session meeting when collectively reviewed.”

I guess she doesn’t consider the many actual Brown Act violations she was party to with the previous board to be a problem, but she does worry about a theoretical future violation when members use blogs.

Is she a little bit off here or what?

In contrast to what this group says, MDUSD Board President Cheryl Hansen, Trustee Barbara Oaks and WCCUSD Board President Madeline Kronenberg all told me that they view School Resource Officers as a positive presence on campus. However, they all agreed that more counselors would also be beneficial. WCCUSD also uses a conflict resolution program called “restorative justice.” As MDUSD seeks for ways to cut down on disproportionality in suspensions and expulsions, it might want to consider restorative justice as well. Kronenberg said the program has dramatically reduced suspensions and expulsions in that district.

Lawrence is showing that social media can be used responsibly by trustees as an effective way to communicate with district residents.

Also, I spoke to WCCUSD Board President Madeline Kronenberg yesterday and she was mentioning the important work that district’s Safety Committee is doing. I said MDUSD doesn’t even have a safety committee. Kronenberg proudly said WCCUSD has more committees than most districts and that she really enjoys attending committee meetings because that is how that district involves the community in its decision-making. She said WCCUSD posts all of its committee meetings and agendas online and that trustees who are liaisons to the committees regularly report back to the board about the committee work. I told her that MDUSD, on the other hand, doesn’t let the community at large know about many of its committee meetings or report about them to the board. The superintendent’s report on the Graduation Committee will be a nice change. The next step, if the board is willing to insist on it, is to post agendas and minutes for ALL committees, including the Equity Advisory Team, Technology Committee and Bay Point Master Plan Committee.

Although former Trustee Gary Eberhart requested that committee meeting agendas and minutes be posted on the district’s website, it appears that his requests were ignored by district staff. I wonder if that ever came up during the superintendent’s performance evaluation.