SIMI VALLEY : School Officials Reset Public Forum Time

Simi Valley school officials have decided to reschedule the public forum portion of school board meetings, during which anyone can get up and talk about issues that are not on the agenda.

Instead of holding the “open mike” portion of 7 p.m. board meetings first, board members last week decided to have it fall after agenda items scheduled for a vote.

However, agenda items slated only for discussion--and not action--still would come after the public forum.

The board had been scheduled to consider a recommendation by Supt. Mary Beth Wolford to allow one hour of public forum at the beginning of the meeting.

After an hour, speakers would have to wait until the end of the meeting.

The proposal resulted from months of meetings when parents showed up repeatedly and spent hours of meeting time on issues not scheduled for a vote, Wolford said.

Ginny Murray, one of the parents who had been showing up to meetings from September through February, objected to the plan because she said it would limit public input.

The parents were objecting to a plan to add birth control information to the sex-education curriculum, a proposal approved by the board on Feb. 22.

“You will take away the voice of the taxpaying public,” Murray said.

Board members agreed that they did not want to discourage people from raising issues with the board, but they also did not want to keep people waiting who came to speak about an issue scheduled for action that night. The board voted 5 to 0 to approve the compromise plan.

Board member Doug Crosse said the problem is not the time when the forum was held.

“I think the problem is that we’re handling controversial issues,” Crosse said.