At recent public meetings and forums about the issue of Act 46 and school board consolidation, questions have been raised about whether or not appropriate public input had been sought and whether there had been actual opportunities at public meetings for people to comment.
The Act 46 study committee, made up of representatives from each school board plus members of the Washington West Supervisory Union executive board and staff, had been meeting since late this summer to address the issue of whether local voters should vote to merge their school boards early or whether it made more sense to wait until the Vermont Agency of Education imposes the mandates on all schools.
On the issue of public comment, specific concerns were voiced at a public meeting last week about whether the public had had the opportunity to weigh in on the articles which would be adopted by local communities to bind their boards together.
The Act 46 study committee welcomes the public to their hearings along with The Valley Reporter and Mad River Valley Television – both organizations have covered and aired these meetings extensively.
The Act 46 study committee has set up a way for people to comment on consolidation and its various components, including the articles, via email.
But is that really public comment? Shouldn’t there be a public aspect to public comment? Isn’t part of a participatory citizen democracy about participating and commenting in public in front of your fellow voters? Isn’t there something important about standing up and being heard not just by the governing body or committee but also by the public?
Isn’t interactivity somehow essential to public discourse? We listen to our neighbors speak and we react and comment based on their words. We stand up in public and are not afraid to hide behind a keyboard and computer screen and in so doing, we stand behind our words and opinions. Isn’t that public comment?
Are those emails to WWSU public? Can the public read them? Are they cataloged? Are they part of the public record, which public comments given at a public meeting would be?
The Act 46 study committee has done yeoman’s work – and they have not done their work in the dark. But given that select boards and school boards always have a very specific “Public Comment” section on their agendas, perhaps this committee should do so as well.
