Parents Air Desire for Televised Board Meetings

After years of shunning the bright lights and television cameras, Conejo Valley school trustees could soon be ushered onto the small screen by insistent parents.

A community-based coalition plans to ask the school board in the weeks ahead to consider televising its twice-monthly meetings, especially now that the board gathers on the same night as the City Council.

At the same time, another group is preparing to take matters into its own hands, quite literally. Its members are training to use hand-held video cameras to film the board meetings and broadcast the taped shows on public-access TV.

Both groups argue that it is good government to open public meetings to as many residents as possible. In Ventura County, school boards in Simi Valley, Camarillo, Ventura and Oxnard already broadcast their meetings on local cable channels.

“Parents can’t get to meetings, but they are really, really interested in what goes on,” said Cheryl Heitmann, whose coalition is raising the same issue she brought up three years ago in her unsuccessful bid for the school board. “Especially in a school community where kids are home doing their homework, the parents can’t really leave.”

Conejo Valley Unified School District trustees say they don’t oppose the idea, but they have not taken any steps to make it a reality.

The city’s cable franchise specifies that the school board can use an education access channel at no cost. And a decade ago, the City Council offered to let the school district rent facilities equipped for televising meetings. The school board declined the council’s offer, opting to keep its meetings at district headquarters.

Last year, school officials investigated the cost of wiring their own facilities and found it would take $50,000 to $100,000. Board members have not formally addressed whether to make the investment.

The thought of inexperienced camera operators in their midst, though, could force a decision.

“I think we’d rather have control over what’s being done,” said school board President Dolores Didio, who said she doesn’t mind the idea of a broadcast. “We’d want to make sure it was quality . . . and didn’t appear amateurish. If we did it ourselves, we could ensure it would be done objectively.”

But Suzanne Duckett, for one, is tired of waiting for the board to act.

She and a handful of residents are learning the workings of news-broadcast-quality cameras provided for free by cable company TCI of Ventura County. The idea came to her after she saw messages broadcast on public-access channel 8 for Thousand Oaks City Councilwoman Elois Zeanah during her campaign last fall against a recall attempt.

Duckett is also known for her regular televised appearances at City Council meetings, to which she has brought crystal balls and other props to illustrate her contention that some council members act as pawns for developers.

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If school trustees won’t wire their board room for television cameras, Duckett and two or three friends plan to tape what goes on and broadcast the meeting on the city’s public-access channel. They have a training date with TCI on Feb. 7.

Duckett said she recently started going to school board meetings after becoming interested in developer fees paid to the school district by the Woodridge housing tract.

“And I was shocked at what goes on, . . . at their arrogance,” she said.

The issue took on added urgency for her when the school board switched its meetings from Thursday to Tuesday, the same night the City Council meets.

“It obviously says the public is not welcome at the school board, and they absolutely don’t want public input,” she said. “I knew we would have to do something ourselves to show that all is not well with the school board. . . . We’re just going to have to make a nuisance of ourselves.”

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Didio said the board always welcomes community involvement. Trustees changed the meeting day to earlier in the week, she said, because it gave the school district staff more time to answer questions and get things done before the next meeting.

Legally, the residents have every right to film the board, as long as they don’t block fire exits or disturb the proceedings, said Assistant Supt. Richard Simpson at a recent meeting of parent school site representatives.

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If the board chooses to pursue the broadcasts, they have several options.

The district could pay to hook up wires, cameras, overhead lights and a sound system, not to mention support the continual maintenance expenses and fees for someone to film it. When the City Council meetings went live in 1986, the basic setup cost about $96,000 to implement its own channel.

School trustees could also take the council up on its offer of a camera-ready board room. But trustee Richard Newman said he doesn’t particularly like the idea of moving board meetings to the Civic Arts Plaza.

“People expect us to hold our meetings in our own facilities,” he said.

As another alternative, the school district could pay city staff members to tape the board’s meetings at school district headquarters for $900 a session, according to Shirley Cobb of the city’s media services.

A less expensive option, which has been informally suggested by trustee Dorothy Beaubien, would allow students to do the camera work.

The video class at Westlake High School could film the meetings, a boon for the students who would receive some practical experience and for the “parents and the community who could see what is going on,” she said.

Still, Beaubien is concerned that other trustees may reject the idea because of the cost.

“It comes down to, do we want to televise our meetings or put our money into the schools?” she said.

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Trustee Elaine McKearn said she would like the meetings to be broadcast. Newman said he sees potential benefit. And trustee Mildred Lynch said, “It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

Beaubien said she is not yet ready to direct the superintendent to put the item on an upcoming meeting agenda, although she said it could happen in the near future.

The sooner, the better, said Councilwoman Zeanah. The longer the school board waits, the longer the community must live in a “cover of darkness,” she said.

“I hate to say this . . . but I am convinced that public agencies really want to manipulate public opinion and the press. . . . But if meetings are televised gavel to gavel, it’s harder to manipulate, because then, the public has a window on government.”

Not all of Thousand Oaks’ voters are keen about the board being on TV.

“The real issues would be bypassed and it would become a three-ring circus like the City Council,” said Bruce McCandless, a parent representative at Redwood Middle School.

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Critics fear that broadcasting the meetings--including the public comment period--would encourage self-aggrandizing speakers to take the floor.

In July, City Councilman Mike Markey proposed blacking out public comments from the broadcast because of remarks he considered slanderous.

“It opens up the possibility for grandstanding . . . from special-interest groups,” agreed Norm Walker, president of Simi Valley Unified School District’s board, which has been televising its meetings at the City Council chambers for more than five years.

So what? asked Zeanah. Public comments, she said, are the “barometer of the community’s pulse.”