Massena — The Massena Central School District School Board will move to approval of consent agendas rather than individual action items in an effort to reduce meeting length.
Board President Paul A. Huggett made the proposal at Thursday night’s meeting, which lasted nearly two hours. He said having multiple action items approved under his one umbrella “streamlines school board meetings.”
“This is one of the ideas we touched on and discussed at the school board retreat,” Haggett said. “Basically, what the Consent Agenda does is bundle many of the day-to-day approvals that go up on the agenda that normally don’t require much discussion into a single entity that can be approved at the start of the meeting. Items are approved early, so you don’t have to approve them individually, which saves meeting time.”
He said agenda items for consent could include business manager and financial reports, meeting minutes, district contributions and policy readings. Mr. Haggett now reads out the title of each policy.
“For example, if you have 10 or 12 policies, you don’t have to read them all to let them know what you approve. “We can move on to the problem,” he said.
Individual items may be drawn from the Consent Agenda at the request of Board members.
“It is important to note that any item on the Consent Agenda that a member of the Board has questions about or wishes to vote on another vote may be withdrawn prior to approval of the Consent Agenda. Just vote,” Haggett said.
“It’s also worth noting that all consent agenda items will be linked to the printed agenda document as they are now. It’s probably a little more important to go through everything that’s part of the consent agenda to see if you want to pull something out and talk more about it,” he added. I got
Personnel actions could also be included, but board members suggested keeping them separate. Board members may request that individual personnel actions be taken off the list and discussed separately.
“This can save a lot of time in meetings,” Haggett said.
Board Vice President Amber L. Baines said she supports the move to a consent agenda.
“I think I’m the one who asked about doing this because I think a long meeting would be less productive. So I’m going to look into the consent agenda and see if board members can withdraw the option to vote individually. I thought, ‘I thought it was a good idea,'” she said.
Board member Kevin F. Peretta said a consent agenda was used for the Co-operative Education Services board meeting and it worked well.
“I think it was kind of a foreign concept to most of us when the facilitator mentioned it,” Haggett said.
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