The February 14th Olympia School District (OSD) board retreat at the Avanti High School library lasted 6 hours and started with a Dare to Lead workshop and ended with a discussion on cutting public comment time. Vice President Maria Flores was not in attendance due to a family emergency, but President Jess Tourtellotte-Palumbo planned and ran the meeting. This is the third retreat in a row that Tourtellotte-Palumbo planned.
The Dare to Lead session was led by Amy Leneker and began with a values exercise. The board and Superintendent Patrick Murphy used words from a list to describe what they value most. Integrity and service were the words that overlapped the most. The board also participated in partner exercises and exchanged their reasons for joining the board.
Following a lunch break, Mary Fertakis from the Washington State School Director Association (WSSDA) led the board in a discussion about their operating protocol and public communications. OSD Communication Director, Conor Schober, joined to discuss updates to both the district’s website and the board’s document repository BoardDocs, which will incorporate the board’s policies and procedures and be more user-friendly. While discussing communications from the board, Director Fullerton brought up the idea of disconnecting from social media as a district, while Fertakis asked about any local news sources that report on the district. Director Seidel cited some sources (not by name) that only use AI to go through the transcript (our method, fair reader, is pure brain power and unrecommended levels of meeting attendance).
Other communications topics included moving board meetings to schools regularly, student representative communication, staff communication with the board, and public comment processes. The board looked over various policies in the 1000 series and compared them to policies at North Kitsap, Whidbey Island, and Bellevue. In the current 1620P procedure, Fertakis recommended rewriting part A. ‘Staff Communication with the Board.’ With an awkward final sentence stating that all OSD staff were entitled to communicate directly to the board, the first line reads that ‘All official reports to the board from principals, supervisors, teachers, or other staff members shall be submitted through the superintendent.’ Director Seidel claimed that the line was added when staff members were sending data that contradicted the official board data. The revision is dated 02.08.24, during the 23-24 school closure talks.
Fertakis recommended moving the operational policies and procedures to policy 1005-Key Functions of the Board, a policy not used by OSD. The last item of the day regarded “Public Attendance & Comment.” The policy revisions were taken from the Bellevue School District policy, enacted shortly before they closed 2 elementary schools in 2023. Bellevue School District is currently in binding conditions with the state.
The comment revisions include:
- One half hour time for public comment at the top of a meeting.
Currently, there is no time limit and there are 2 comment periods, at the top for agenda items, and at the end for any board comment. - Discretion of the president in choosing revisions to individual comment times.
Currently, though 3 minutes is most common throughout the year, time has been cut to as low as 1 minute at the president’s discretion. - Online only sign up only, starting 2 days before the meeting for 48 hours.
Currently, only 8am-4pm the day before a meeting. - Use of a digital randomizer for all speakers, who are not OSD students, so that speakers who have not spoken within 30 days are prioritized.
Currently, students are first priority and the rest is first come-first served. - A 10 speaker maximum.
Currently, no maximum.
The revisions, which were done by President Tourtellote-Palumbo and Director Seidel were brought up at what was called a ‘quiet time’ before budget discussions. Both Director Lamont and Director Fullerton had issues with further barriers on making public comment, but acknowledged the need to have a policy more in line with other government bodies like city council and the county commissioners. Neither Seidel nor Tourtellotte-Palumbo was familiar with our current sign up procedure, thinking there was a 24 hour period of time that the community could use to sign up for public comment. No actions were taken and no revisions were considered first readings.