Trustees plan earlier meetings at schools

Trustees have moved the start time of four meetings up by a half-hour when visiting elementary schools.

SAUGERTIES, N.Y. » Trustees have moved the start time of four meetings up by a half-hour to keep sessions from pushing deep into the night when visiting elementary schools.

The change adopted during a Board of Education meeting Tuesday will set start times at 6 p.m. on Oct. 10 at Cahill Elementary School, Nov. 14 at Riccardi Elementary School, Dec. 12 at Morse Elementary School, and Jan. 9 at Mount Marion Elementary School.

“It would help keep our regular meetings (to) a tight and tidy time,” Trustee Katie Emerson Hoss said. “It would also allow us to promote different innovations with regards to teaching and learning.”

Officials noted that while board meetings ordinarily start at 7 p.m. there are often presentations that take an hour before business can be conducted. The conversation Tuesday about moving start times for the four sessions itself took 26 minutes.

Some board members noted that closed-door sessions that exclude the public have included discussions about how to conduct more efficient board sessions.

“Often times some of our business items are much larger in terms of the discussion and they should warrant a better discussion on a more complex dialogue among our board members,” Trustee Krista Barringer said. “So I have followed up on a suggestion that was made at our board retreat, which is that we set quarterly workshop meetings (that) would not be business meetings but would allow us to insure that those items ... have a full time to discuss and we’re not trying to cram it into a three hour meeting.”

State Committee on Open Government Executive Director Robert Freeman has said several times the practice of “retreats” by Saugerties school board members to discuss goals, self-evaluations, and hiring practices is out of compliance with the state law.

Board President Robert Thomann said the issue of efficient meetings will be discussed in another closed-door session.

“There’s plans to do a board retreat workshop at some point in August and I think we’ll revisit this,” he said.