Springs Will Televise Meetings
The Springs School District is poised to hire LTV to film its school board meetings, joining East Hampton and Sag Harbor as districts that promote wider access to the meetings.
A contract with LTV had been discussed in past years but never brought to fruition. According to Barbara Dayton, the school board president, encouragement from Loring Bolger, chairwoman of the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee, spurred the board to action.
“It had been in the back of our minds, and it was great that somebody else specifically requested it and had the information that we needed,” Ms. Dayton said on Tuesday. “Other community groups do it. It’s appropriate for Springs to do also.”
Ms. Bolger, reached by phone, credited a Springs resident, Martin Drew, for giving her the idea. She then polled the Springs C.A.C., and said its members were overwhelmingly supportive.
“I think it solves a lot of problems,” she said. “The Springs School and the Springs community have a somewhat rocky relationship. . . . By having the school board meetings televised, everybody can make up their own minds about issues.”
Another good reason to call in LTV, Ms. Bolger said, is that the school board and the advisory committee sometimes meet on the same evening, a problem for residents who like to attend both. Monday night was a case in point; she postponed a scheduled C.A.C. meeting to next week in order to attend the school board meeting and speak about the LTV contract.
“I was very pleased with the outcome,” she said.
For $50 per hour, LTV sends a cameraman with one stationary camera and several microphones to meetings. Morgan Vaughan, LTV’s executive director, yesterday called the charge “a bargain-basement price to cover our expenses.”
“I’m really excited about being able to film the Springs School Board. I know it’s something a lot of people want in Springs,” Ms. Vaughan said. “It’s pretty hard to say that the school districts don’t have an impact on the lives of everyday people. I think it’s completely imperative that people see the process, and not everybody can make it to these meetings.”
Filming will begin either at the board’s next meeting, set for Nov. 21, or the one following, on Dec. 19. The films will not be edited, Ms. Vaughan said. They will be aired at a to-be-determined time on channel 22, and will also be available on demand on the station’s website, ltveh.org.
In other announcements at Monday’s school board meeting, an online filing system called BoardDocs is soon to be launched on the district’s website. Tim Frazier, vice president of the board and an assistant principal in the Southampton School District, which uses BoardDocs, recommended it.
“He said it just makes communicating and updating things so much easier,” Ms. Dayton said. “One piece of paper isn’t a great expense, but how many times do you do that over the course of a year? Having this will allow people to get many of those documents electronically. This certainly gives us more options.”
The system costs $4,520 in its first year and $3,420 each year thereafter.