A more engaged DPS board? And more on school recommendations
As of this week, the Denver Public School Board meetings are now being streamed live on UStream, for your viewing pleasure from the comfort of your computer, or as an app through your smartphone.
Tested from my Droid on Thursday, the phone app did drop the stream often, but when it held it, the quality of the video and sound was good.
As I sat at Thursday’s board meeting — the first streamed online — and then listened to board member Jeannie Kaplan raise a question brought to her attention through an email from a constituent, I wondered about the two communication modes working together soon. Imagine, as you watch the board meeting live, you send a quick note to your board member bringing more questions to their attention, perhaps allowing them to raise another viewpoint during their discussions.
An opportunity at the very least, for sure.
Board member Andrea Merida, who is already big on community engagement through Twitter, Facebook, and her own blog, suggested the idea of the live stream to the district.
“This is constituent engagement in a real-time and innovative fashion,” Merida said. “The great thing about Ustream is the real-time chat that flows along the right of the screen. We can quickly gauge reactions to votes, conversations, etc. in ways that no survey or focus group can match, and it allows for an immediate, cost-effective transparency.”
On another note, my story from the meeting focused on one of the staff recommendations to close an alternative charter school. District staff however presented a multitude of recommendations to the board about new charter school applications, re-designed school boundaries, and other charter contract renewals.
Of three new school applications, the district reccomended only one for approval, Sims Fayola International Academy, which if the board does approve, would be the second all boys school slated for far northeast Denver. The first, Miller-McCoy Academy for Mathematics and Business, was approved in June.
Among location recommendations is that Creative Challenge Community – a new performance school approved in June – be co-located at Merrill Middle School. This recommendation has already been building steam in the southeast Denver community, and did raise some discussion on Thursday. Look for a story on this next week.
Monday, the board will host a special meeting just to hear from the public about all of those recommendations, before the board is set to vote on them on Nov. 17.