SANTA ANA : School Board May Televise More Meetings

Citing a “positive response,” the school board today will consider televising all of its meetings.

Only two Santa Ana Unified School District board meetings have been televised this year. The first was in January, a discussion of fallout from Orange County’s December bankruptcy filing.

The second was the most recent meeting, Oct. 10, and it broadcast a sometimes angry discussion of the district’s “Vision Statement” of goals.

A school district report said there was a positive community response to the broadcast of that meeting, though Assistant Supt. John Bennett said it was not overwhelming.

“It was just a few people that came up and said, ‘We felt it was a nice effort by the board so that we could be informed,’ ” Bennett said. “It wasn’t someone calling in and saying, ‘Hey, it was better than the late-night movie.’ ”

The school district has not determined how much it would have to spend to broadcast all meetings, and officials said they may wait until later this year, when the board moves to new offices better equipped for cameras, before committing to the project.

The two previous school board meetings were shown on cable Channel 55 for free, Bennett said. But Comcast Cablevision, which broadcast the shows, provides free cameras and operators to the school district for only a limited number of hours a year, officials said.