Public Participation at Board Meetings: What Should Your Board’s Policy be?

On Board Online • March 31, 2014

By  Courtney Sanik
Policy Consultant

True or false: By state law, school boards must allow the public to speak at a designated portion of their meetings reserved for this purpose.

Answer: False. Although most school boards routinely include a public comment opportunity in their agendas, there is no legal obligation.

School board meetings are meetings of the board of education that are required to take place in public; however, they are not actually meetings of the public. Rather, they are business meetings held to conduct board business.

Although public comment periods are not required by law, NYSSBA’s Policy Department recommends that boards permit public comments in the interests of transparency, accountability and community relations.

Each school board has the prerogative, through policy, to set the rules for how their meetings will take place, including any public participation portion.  NYSSBA recommends having a separate policy on public participation to provide a framework to incorporate public comments in a structured, productive way.

Furthermore, it should be noted that at any time, the board can consider a motion to change the participation rules for a particular meeting.  While this may be appropriate under certain circumstances (it’s most often used to extend the comment period), it is better to have a well-designed board policy that anticipates common dynamics at meetings.

The agenda for a given meeting should clearly indicate when public participation is permissible. Most boards follow one of three common formats. Boards may choose to:

• Allow for public comment on agenda items before official district business is discussed.

• Allow for just one public comment time after the board has concluded its business.

• Allow for two public comment sessions, one specific to agenda items and one for general comments toward the end of the meeting.

Some boards have two meetings a month where one is a business meeting and the other is a “workshop”; these boards may choose to allow for public comment at the business meeting but not to do so at the workshop.

Under the state Open Meetings Law, the public must be allowed to attend either kind of meeting, or generally any meeting of the board, if a quorum of the board is present. (For this reason, whispering at the board table or passing notes can violate the Open Meetings Law.)

There are exceptions.

The public can be excluded from attending and listening only during a properly convened executive session to discuss certain specific topics specified in law, such as litigation or discipline of students and staff. To accommodate the public, the size of meeting rooms can be important. During budget season, a Code of Conduct public hearing, or when another hot topic is on the agenda, the board should consider moving the meeting to a larger venue if available.

The board’s participation policy and implementation of the policy should reflect that the goal is not to exclude voices but to have an orderly meeting.

Through policy, the board can establish rules that can avoid common issues involving public participation. For instance, the board can limit the amount of time each person or representative of a group can speak (usually two to three minutes) and the total amount of time that will be devoted to public comment (perhaps 30 minutes).

Sometimes an issue arises that many people want to address. Your board can have a policy that guides the chair in handling such a situation. One measure might be that if a large number of people are present to comment on the same topic, the chair would have discretion to ask or require them to select a spokesperson for the group.

A number of simple rules can help make public comment periods consistent with an orderly business meeting and will be appreciated by members of the board, the administration and the public. For instance, board policy can specify that people who wish to speak sign a register before the public comment session with their name and contact information, and that they must be recognized by the chair before being allowed to speak.

Such a policy also serves to make it a violation of board rules to shout out, jeer or disrupt a meeting. The chair can enforce such rules by reminding the public about them, issuing warnings, deciding a certain person will no longer be allowed to address the board, asking the person to leave or having a police officer or other marshal remove the disruptive person. Having a written policy to follow can be helpful in such situations.

The board should also explain in policy what is and is not allowable to comment on during public participation sections for legal or other reasons. For example, the board should not permit public comments related to personnel issues, whether positive or negative (refer to On Board article "You Can't Say That!" on page 5). Some boards disseminate these rules by printing them on the agenda, placing them in a brochure or posting them on the district website.

Another pitfall related to public participation involves responding to questions posed by a speaker. The board does not have to answer questions posed during public comment. In fact many boards make it part of policy that they will generally not answer questions at the meeting to avoid providing misinformation or impulsive reacting, but instead have the superintendent reply after the meeting.

How good is your board’s policy on public participation? It may be wise to review it at a time when there isn’t a controversy so that it can be evaluated analytically and not in reaction to a particular incident.

If you would like a sample of NYSSBA Policy 1230, Public Participation at Board Meetings, email policy@nyssba.org or call 800.342.3360 and ask to speak to a member of the Policy Department.