BOE member remote attendance

[Kimberly Tully]

I'm looking to get a sense of how BOE's are handling remote attendance of board members at meetings.  Are all members attending in person?  Are some attending remotely?  

[Dr. Mary Ann Costello]

We have have been in-person. My doctor has advised me that I should be remote since no one has to provide proof of vaccination to attend and the rate of infection in our county is very high around 11%. I do not want to open my home for participants to drop in, so I have risked my health to ensure my safety since I live alone. I will be out of State for the holidays, so I will publish the address and have a relative who is a retired State Trooper present.

[Carol Popolow Abraham]

We are also back to in-person meetings as of July. We have had two meetings now where people have refused to wear masks (the most recent this past Wednesday). The three audience members refused to leave even with police insistence. We recessed the meeting for 10 minutes. The people still would not comply so we closed the meeting. Fortunately, we had made the decision in October to move the non-agenda public comment section to the very end of the meeting in order to be able to conduct board business before mayhem ensues, so the only thing we missed was the last speaker of the evening. I would love to go back to remote meetings if this persists. I'm not sure if my fellow trustees will agree.

[Heidi Cambareri]

We resumed in-person meetings in June, after confirming that all trustees were in agreement with the change. Like Robbin, we have faced issues at 2 meetings with attendees from the public who refused to wear a mask. In both instances they disrupted the ability to conduct the meeting to the extent that police had to be involved. All trustees are in-person and attendees must be in-person to comment, but the public can also watch a live stream of the meeting. We have allowed a trustee to participate by zoom on an emergency basis to meet quorum.

[Sarah Carrier]

We have been meeting in person, generally. Given the flexibility to meet remotely until Jan 15, we have had two short special meetings via zoom, but our business meetings and work sessions have been in person.

[Ed Fersch]

We have also been meeting in person as long as school is open for in-person learning. The problem arises when a member is in quarantine. Open meetings law says that a member may attend remotely as long as their address is posted and others can attend from that location. This makes no sense if illness is the reason for the remote attendance. Why should a public servant invite others into their house? There needs to be a change in open meetings law to allow a board member to participate in a meeting remotely without publishing an invitation for others to come to their residence. NYSSBA members approved advocacy on this at our annual meeting a few weeks ago.

[Karen Burka]

We are meeting in person. Our view is that as long as our schools are fully open for in-person learning, our board should meet in person. If our schools are safe for students and staff, then they are safe for us too.

[Robbin Griffin]

We returned to remote meetings after people outside our community came and refused to mask up or leave. A security officer could not get them to comply. Having a student on our board, it was decided to meet remotely for the time being. This decision best serves our taxpayers as they can watch a live stream meeting and are able to email questions that go directly to every board member. Each board member sees the question and I direct them to the Superintendent for a response. This is keeping with our in person practice. We have had complaints from 2 residents who felt deprived of their ability to “ grandstand “ for their audience. We also save cleaning costs by not utilizing space in our building and we are not paying for additional security at this time. Remote assures the safety of our student and allows us to maintain compliance with the masking requirements. We plan to return to in person in January.
As an aside, most everyone in our district has found greater efficiency in remote mode and report that attendance of committee members has increased. We also have greater community participation based on viewership.

[Matt Metras]

We have been fully in person meetings since July 2020.

[Bill Grau]

We are fully in person. We were using zoom so community members could attend remotely if they wanted, they can attend in person too. We had little to now remote attendance so we stopped zooming.

[Steven Hartman]

Kim, we have been having meetings in person. Unfortunately two meetings went remote as community members did not want to comply with the mask mandate.