School board moves to one meeting per month

CLINTONVILLE – The Clintonville Board of Education will be switching from two meetings per month to only one meeting per month, except for during the months of April, June, August, and October.
The board approved the change at its reorganizational meeting April 27.
Clintonville Superintendent Troy Kuhn told the board that he contacted several school districts to find out how many school board meetings their district conducts each month. He said the majority of school district have only one school board meeting per month, with a second meeting, if one is held, designated for “committee work.” Most school districts also have “consent agendas” as part of the meeting agenda. Clintonville does not currently use consent agendas.
“This is your (board’s) choice, but I did create two options,” Kuhn said.
The first option would be to make no changes to the board’s meetings schedule. This would have school board meetings held the second and fourth Mondays of each month, unless noted otherwise. There would be only one meeting held in November and December.

The second option would be for the district to have one school board meeting each month. Two meetings would be held in the months of April, June, August, and October because of the decisions the board needs to make those months. A second meeting could be scheduled during a month that was scheduled to have only one meeting held if there are enough agenda items to warrant a second meeting.
“I would say if we are going to go down to one meeting, that we also would consider a consent agenda because otherwise we’re going to be here three or four hours,” Kuhn said.
Board President Ben Huber said that some of the recent board meetings have been long meetings, and the meeting will be longer if there is only one board meeting most months.
“I don’t want to sit here until midnight,” Huber said.
Board member Christopher Hoffmann said a “hard stop” could be implemented in which the meeting would be adjourned at a specific time. If there were still items on the agenda, then another meeting would need to be scheduled that month.
Huber said he also would consider that.
Hoffmann said he would be in favor of switching to only one board meeting most months as long as the board could switch back to two meetings per month if it found only one meeting wasn’t working for the district.
Board member Jason Moder said switching to only one board meeting most months would save the district money.