WJCC Superintendent Proposes Changes to Meetings, Agendas

By Amber Lester Kennedy Thursday, March 03, 2011

Williamsburg-James City County Superintendent Steven Constantino is proposing changes to the structure of board meetings and agendas in hopes of streamlining the process.

He shared his proposals at the board’s Tuesday meeting, noting that some of the language in his proposals still needed to get approval from Pat Lacy, the board’s lawyer. Constantino hopes his changes will give the board members more time between work sessions and meetings to consider the issues, and also hopes to catalog information items for future reference.

First, Constantino proposes changing the meeting schedule starting in May. Currently, the board has its work session on the second Tuesday of the month and its meeting on the fourth Tuesday; as a result, some business gets carried into the next month. He would instead like to see the board meet for its work session on the first Tuesday of the month and meet for its regular meeting on the third Tuesday.

On occasion, the division has had to put projects out for bid between meetings. In these instances, when the bids come back, the board often has to approve the bids without having much prior information about the request that was going to go out to contractors. Constantino would like to add “placeholder agenda items” for bids so that board members will have an idea of the bid that is going to be released.

He also recommends changing agenda items to give board members more information without having to read numerous attachments, although he said the plan won’t preclude the use of attachments. He also hopes to formally catalog information items for future reference, he said.

He isn’t sure it will be feasible, but he also would like to see the board members approving their meeting agenda at the end of work sessions. That way, board members would have two weeks to ask questions, receive feedback and make adjustments to agendas before voting. Ruth Larson said that would be a welcome change, noting that the members have sometimes received notifications that agendas were updated less than two hours before they were expected to vote on items.

“We want to make sure we have ample time,” she said.

Read more about Constantino’s proposed changes here. The board is expected to vote on the proposal at its March 15 meeting.