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Elimination of TV broadcasts proposed
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By CHUCK CLEMENT, Staff Reporter
| 02/05/2010 |
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The Madison School Board will consider changing school district policy on how its board meetings are recorded and stored on Monday night.
The new policy will retire the requirement to broadcast school board meetings on the public access channel and other television outlets.
Current school district policy has both regular and special board meetings recorded. Copies of the recordings are distributed to Madison's cable and wireless broadcasting firms and the television public access channel available to school district residents.
The new policy eliminates language stating that the district will distribute videotapes of the meetings to media outlets. New policy language was inserted that announces the meeting recordings will be posted on the school district Web site at http://madison.k12.sd.us.
The changed policy no longer requires recordings that are made during special school board meetings; the policy will state that only regular board meetings are recorded. It also strikes language stating that the recordings will be provided by the school district "as soon as reasonably possible after each regular school board meeting for broadcast" by media firms.
Another section of the policy strikes language stating that "videotapes" are not official records and inserts the term "streamed recordings" in place of videotapes.
The revised policy also has other changes. Recordings will not be made available for public access in the superintendent's office. In addition, the requirement to keep recordings on file for one year was eliminated.
Those sections were replaced with the creation of an archive of school board meetings that are accessed through the district superintendent's Web page.
The school board members will consider those policy changes and others during their meeting at 6:30 p.m Monday in Room 117 at Madison Middle School.
Other policy changes deal with announcements for meeting locations, Internet-use agreements, in-town bus stops, bonded employees, equal employment and board votes.
Language specifying that Room 115 in the Madison Middle School serves as the location for regular meetings was removed. The policy will instead say that the regular meeting place will be specified in the agenda.
All students and their parents will need to file Internet-use agreement forms, not just students and parents in kindergarten, third, sixth and ninth grades.
Bus stops at the former Washington and Lincoln elementary schools were eliminated. Bus stops were added at Living Hope Wesleyan Church, St. Thomas School, and the intersection of N.E. 4th St. and Division Ave.
The district's bookkeeper and activities director were added to the district business manager as personnel who need to be bonded.
The policy assuring job applicants that they will have equal opportunity employment had marital status removed from the protected groups. In addition, protections were extended to applicants related to their religions and disabilities.
The policy for board votes has motions passing with four affirmative votes from a seven-member board. The old policy specified five votes from a nine-member board.
The board members will also consider:
-- Personnel actions that include the hiring of Vince Schaefer as district superintendent and the resignation of Carolyn Benjamin on Jan. 19.
-- Approving an application for home-schooling a student.
-- Discussing the 2009-10 school calendar. The board members will consider making March 22 a makeup snow day instead of a teacher in-service day.
-- Considering changes to the 2010-11 district calendar.
-- Approving BHI Construction Inc. of Harrisburg as the contractor for partial replacement of the middle school roof.
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©Madison Daily Leader 2010
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