Delegations at Meetings of the Board of Education
Members of the public are welcome to attend any regular, special, and/or other meeting of the Board of Education.
Limited Public Forum
In providing a time for members of the public to address the Board, the Board of Education has created a limited public forum only for the discussion of matters relating directly to the operations of the public schools of McDowell County. Persons wishing to address the Board of Education about some other topic or subject shall not be granted time to speak during the delegations portion of Board meetings.
The following guidelines will be followed relative to the delegations portion of meetings of the Board of Education:
The Board of Education requests that problems and/or concerns about school operations be presented only after the speaker(s) has made reasonable efforts to resolve the matter of concern at the school level and central office level. A school-level remedy should first be sought through communications with the building principal, and if those efforts are unsuccessful, the matter should then be brought to the attention of the appropriate administrator at the central office. If all of these efforts fail, the speaker should consider filing a citizen’s appeal, if appropriate and applicable, prior to publicly airing their concerns during the delegations portion of Board meetings.
Any person or group of persons wishing to speak as a delegation shall register by signing a form provided by the Superintendent no less than 15 minutes prior to the commencement of a meeting of the Board of Education in which he/she/they desire to address the Board of Education. In order to permit others with different concerns to speak and to use the limited meeting timely efficiently, associated persons with similar concerns should appoint a single spokesperson rather than speaking individually on the same topic.
All such persons registered to speak as a delegation shall be given no more than 5 minutes to address the Board of Education.
Provided that, by majority vote of the members of the Board of Education in attendance, the 5-minute limitation referenced above may be extended for a specific number of minutes.
In no case shall the delegations portion of any one meeting of the Board of Education exceed one hour in length.
Where there are more persons registered to address the Board of Education than can do so under the foregoing time constraints, each registered person wishing to address the Board of Education will be given a pro-rata share of the one-hour time period referenced above.
In no case shall members of the Board of Education hold any discussion with delegation speakers or give any direct responses to questions posed by delegation speakers, except as to logistical matters and to ask clarifying questions so as to fully understand the information that the speaker is relating. Nor shall members of the Board of Education deliberate about the relative merits of matters presented by delegations speakers unless the subject of the same is listed on the public agenda of the Board of Education. Provided, that members of the Board of Education, if they desire, may ask the Superintendent to consider placing matters raised during the delegations portion of the meeting on some future agenda for consideration by the Board of Education.