School board wants to improve public’s understanding of its work – Coastal Observer

School board wants to improve public’s understanding of its work – Coastal Observer

During talk about budgets, academic achievement, strategic plans and priorities at a workshop last week, the Georgetown County School Board kept coming back to another topic: transparency. “I realized over this past year that transparency is a big deal,” said Chairman Keith Moore. “I know that there is nothing to hide, and understanding can be helpful in these situations right here.” The board adopted a $128 million operating budget with a 3.1-mill tax increase for the fiscal year that began July 1. It passed 6-3. Superintendent Bethany Giles and Lisa Johnson, the district’s chief financial officer, had met seven times with small groups of board members since February. Without a quorum of the nine-member board, those meetings were not subject to the state’s Freedom of Information Act. “I just don’t think we did enough of them,” said Board Member Scott DuBose. Board members said those small meetings were helpful in understanding the budget. But many said they want it to be a year-round process. Board Member Jarrod Ownbey suggested that after small group meetings, board members should reconvene quarterly in public, he said. “Part of the problem that I’ve seen with the community is the lack of communication or understanding of what’s going on,” he said. “They see the end, but they don’t see all of the discussions and what goes into the nuance during that process.” “It’s hard to understand. I mean, there’s lots of this we don’t understand, and we’ve been working with it. So it’s hard for the public to understand,” Board Member Kathy Anderson agreed. Board Member Fallon Bordner said she wants to see a line-item budget rather than a summary so she can see where funds come from and where they are spent to show taxpayers. “People want to see that,” Bordner said. The board then unanimously voted to enter executive session over a discussion of “administrative reassignments,” which was originally listed as discussion of “district organizational structure.” District officials explained the matter as “moving personnel into other positions.” Taylor Smith, a lawyer for the S.C. Press Association, said the district failed to comply with state FOIA that requires public bodies to state the specific purpose of a closed-door session. It would have been enough if officials stated what schools or departments were the subject of discussion. (They were later identified as Andrews High and Rosemary Middle.) “They at least need to name the school,” Smith said. Ownbey, the only lawyer on the board, said he was comfortable with the phrasing since the matter dealt with personnel assignments. It isn’t fair to employees to talk about hypothetical changes in public, he said.  “We don’t even know what’s going to happen,” Ownbey said. Giles agreed  that communication and transparency are important. “In order to be impactful, we do have to establish that public trust,” she said. Giles pointed out that there is a difference between confidentiality and transparency, which people don’t always understand. “There are times when information is heard in other areas, and it’s like, where did it come from?” Giles said. “So we really have to protect certain information for integrity of investigations, integrity of developing plans and for the integrity of ensuring we’re doing what is right by children and all of team GCSD.” On the topic of governance, Anderson called the board to “do better.” “We spend a lot of time dealing with things that basically were not our business,” she said. “We have lost trust in this building. Or maybe we never had the trust.” School board members also represent people who cannot vote for them, Anderson added. “I just want to see us go there and get back on the track of being in unison in what we do and stop going in nine different directions,” Board Member Randy Walker said. Board Member Eileen Johnson said disagreements among board members are healthy. “It means that we are bringing our perspectives to the table and things that we consider very important,” she said. “Apparently the previous boards never said much. They just sort of rubber-stamped everything,” DuBose said.