Broadcasting of Los Gatos Union School District Meetings

Looks like starting next school year, trustee meetings may be televised or broadcast via Internet adding more transparency to local education issues.

By a unanimous vote, trustees Tuesday evening voted to consider the plan, which would begin meeting transmission in the 2012-13 school year.

Trustees could formally adopt the plan during their June 5 meeting.

LGUSD Director of Technology, Assessment and Accountability Maggi Reser presented three plan options that included publishing meeting recordings to the district podcast server using current setup, contracting with a video broadcast service to record and broadcast the meetings and pursuing a volunteer organization for the task.

Reser explained that district technician John Keating has already designed a system to record the audio portion of the meetings.

The district has been using the Garage Band software that allows users to create music, podcasts or in this case, audio recordings, Reser said.

"The audio recordings were meant to be used for a backup to make sure the meeting minutes were accurate," said Reser.

She added that the district could provide the public with links to the audio recordings on the agency's website.

Reser also noted that in addition to making the audio recordings available, district technicians were working on producing a podcast that would coordinate the board's slides with the audio.

She said that the district would research the cost of using an outside agency to help with the plan, which could cost between $5,000 and $10,000 per year.

Reser suggested that hiring a volunteer agency to make recordings would result in no control over the process and a possible "lack of integrity" in the recordings.

When trustee Chris Miller asked if there had been any investigation into the possibility of "live streaming, including video", Reser said that she could investigate that and bring information at a future meeting.

Trustee Doug Halbert suggested that audio and slides pulled together would be good to pursue and emphasized the importance of maintaining the recordings' integrity.

Miller suggested that if district meetings are being recorded, then the agency is obligated under the Brown Act to make them available to the public.

Three district parents commended trustees for their transparency goals in wanting to televise and broadcast their meetings.

Trustees Tina Orsi-Hartigan and Scott Broomfield were absent.