Concerns include costs and whether or not it’s a worthy investment
By Michael S. Hoey
Correspondent
The Delavan-Darien School Board discussed recording meetings and/or livestreaming them at its meeting on Monday night. A representative of the parent group called Comets Community in Action asked the board to consider doing so during public comments knowing the item was on the agenda.
Director of Technology Brandon Curless reported what he had researched on options to record meetings. He detailed two quotes from Metro Sound and Video for $15,000 and $20,000 for the video and audio equipment that would be necessary for the district to, in his opinion, offer good quality video production. The higher quote would include better quality equipment. Neither quote includes paying someone to actually record the meetings and edit the videos.
Another additional cost would be offering closed captioning to make the videos compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, something Curless said would be necessary to avoid potential lawsuits.
Board member Doreen Grams said the research Curless did on other districts that do record meetings seemed to show the efforts are not very successful. Her standard for success was that those districts reported very few views of the videos.
Board member Ron Deschner also raised a concern about the low number of views and questioned if the cost would be worth it.
District Administrator Jill Sorbie said it would reasonably take 12 hours per meeting to edit videos and the board meets twice a month, meaning it could require a significant amount of time and cost.
“It could be a pretty large expense,” she said.
Dave Henriott did some quick calculations and said he thought it could cost $35,000 a year to pay two staff members to record and edit the videos, which would just about equate to a teacher’s salary.
“I don’t want to withhold anything from the public, but the public is also concerned about expenditures,” Deschner said.
Deschner said he wanted more input from the public to gauge how much interest there really is in having meetings recorded.
Curless said the district could record meetings with the same equipment it used to record and live stream the graduation ceremony, but that video quality was not very good and the moving around of equipment was labor intensive. He also said that equipment would not be best suited to record meetings in the boardroom.
Giovanna Moses said she wanted to represent both sides of the issue. She said she wanted the board to engage the public and a public group was asking for meetings to be live streamed or recorded because they can’t always attend meetings. Grams said that group could always send one representative to each meeting to record the meeting on their own for the rest of the group.
President Jeff Scherer asked Curless to do more research and said the board would discuss the idea further at a future meeting.
Facility study considered
Sorbie asked the board to consider authorizing a facility study to determine exactly what the district’s footprint is at each property it owns.
She said it’s important for the district to know how much land it owns and if it has enough room to expand if necessary in the future.
Sorbie said the district should evaluate its ability to expand current buildings before deciding whether or not to sell land it purchased years ago for a potential new elementary school that never got built.
She also said a study of areas demographics should also be done to get some kind of projection on if and by how much the district’s population could grow in the coming years.
Business Administrator Anthony Klein said the district could use that information to decide if it would make more sense to sell the land it currently owns and leases to a local farmer and then have to buy land for a new school ten years from now if enrollment increases or if the district should just hold onto the land.
Several board members agreed the study would be important to the district but only if the cost was not too high.
Sorbie was given approval by the board to look into how much a study would cost.
The district will next meet on June 24 at 7 p.m.
The board meets the second and fourth Mondays at the School Administration Center, 324 Beloit St. in Delavan.
The meetings officially begin at 7 p.m., however, a question and answer session is held at 6:30 p.m.
