Clover Park School District announcement.
LAKEWOOD, Wash. — The Clover Park School District (CPSD) Board of Directors will hold a special meeting on Thursday, Jan. 5, at 5:30 p.m. The meeting will be held virtually and live-streamed on Zoom and YouTube.
The meeting will called to order and immediately move into executive session to discuss legal matters.
Individuals can attend online by visiting the meeting Zoom webinar link or the district YouTube channel. Attendees will be asked to provide the following password to join the Zoom webinar: 929326 or via telephone at 253-215-8782.
The board meeting agenda and detailed remote access instructions are available on the district website.
For more information, contact the CPSD superintendent’s office at 253-583-5190.
The Clover Park School District notice, dated January 4, announces a special School Board meeting occurring TODAY in this January 5 edition of The Suburban Times. The notice states, “The meeting will be called to order and immediately move into executive session to discuss a legal matter…Individuals can attend online by the Zoom webinar link on the District YouTube channel…The board meeting agenda and detailed remote access instructions are available on the district website.”
First, are executive sessions really available to public virtual attendance?
Second, how long before this notice was the meeting scheduled? I ask because at least twice I have asked the District Superintendent, Secretary and School Board Directors to provide more advance notice of school board meetings, suggesting that since their stated policy and goal is community engagement more than the typical same-day, or one-or two-day, notice would increase community members’ planning time to attend meetings in person or virtually. (Furthermore, a regular school board meeting is scheduled for Monday, January 9, but a notice has not been posted yet in The Suburban Times.) For some unknown reason the District chooses not to provide adequate advance notice of school board meetings despite their stated desire to engage the community.
Third, as directed by the notice I went to the district website to view the agenda; it does not exist. This omission reminds me of the time a District announcement said a document about redistricting options, which was key to the discussion and pending vote, was attached to that meeting’s agenda; it was not.
If the District does not submit timely, accurate announcements it is failing it’s stated goal of seeking community engagement.
Waiting for the last minute to get things done and giving late or little notice to the public (or Board for that matter) is a sure sign of a poorly functioning inefficient District administration. Administration needs to be broken of its “jerk leash” habit of Board and public notice and involvement.
Were Board members consulted on the scheduling? If not, why not? Has this matter come up previously before the Board? If so, why the sudden need for a “panic” special meeting? Why couldn’t this matter be dealt with at the 9 January 2023 Board meeting?
Setting “minimums” (as in meeting notifications/agendas) as your desired performance goals translates to minimums down the line to teachers, students and parents and any academic goals. If minimums are good enough at higher levels then don’t expect maximum results at lower levels.
On Monday I noted (from another community resource) that there was a special school board meeting scheduled for January 5th. This notice came 4 days prior which is an improvement from other announcements. Regular attendees are aware of scheduled dates, but I do believe that community meetings should be well announced, especially to parents. The meetings are noted on Clover Park webpage, I’m not sure if they are regularly announced to parents? I will have to check on this. I think it is important. Additionally many people do not read community papers so are unaware.
I was intrigued about the reasons for this meeting since it was stated as an executive session to discuss legal matters. Having worked in the private and public sectors I would doubt legal business were open for purview secondary to personal privacy issues. I suppose the notice could have been more clear for those unsure.
To those on this forum questioning the meeting – why not directly ask a board member? Additionally, a contact phone number was listed. Two school board members meet regularly with you at CARES where school district business is regularly discussed. One of you previously stated, more than once, that you are neighbors with a school board member. Why not directly approach your known school board friends to query awareness of the meeting? I’m sure both would respond readily though your general letters indicate they are incapable of addressing issues.
Employing a passive aggressive approach by responding to an online and unmonitored announcement is not going to extract much information or response, but it is a perfect way to breed negativity to those reading.
Not to put too fine a point on it but the announcement for the Monday, 9 January 2023 regular Board meeting agenda wasn’t published in the Suburban Times until today, 7 January 2023. The Board and Superintendent had since the 12 December 2022 regular meeting to develop and publish the agenda, nearly a month, but instead waited for the last minute.
If the District waits until the last minute, over a week end, to drop this agenda on the public how can the public be expected to make their 3 minute public comments relevant to the agenda? The public can’t. Perhaps that’s the reason. So much for “community engagement”!
Board members didn’t receive a tentative agenda until 30 December 2022 which was not released to the public, not even as a “draft”, allegedly because it was subject to change. The final agenda was not released to the Board members until Friday, 6 January 2023, at 3.47PM!
Those are the facts. Facts are neither passive nor aggressive: they just are, so deal with them.
If it was an emergency meeting I can understand not receiving much notice. Of course there should be always be notice and awareness of topics. Parents do receive calendars and notice from the district so it appears notices of scheduling are more of non school community issue as well as notice of topics.
It just seemed odd asking about the meetings when you are both privy to the information directly from two board members – board members that meet weekly with CARES. A person stating they have little time to prepare for a meeting if they don’t have timely notice is genuine. Disingenuous is complaining you are unable to attend because of short notice when you are well aware of regularly scheduled meetings, Questions posed to an unmonitored website announcement are fruitless. It would seem the board members with the complaints should be resourceful enough to handle this issue without having someone do the gaslighting for them?
Clearly next Monday’s Board meeting is not an emergency so why the last minute notification which both Board and public continually face? Indeed Directors Anderson and Wagemann have repeatedly asked for more timely release of agenda and meeting minutes which in this instance have yet to be released or approved nearly a month after the 12 December meeting. Unfortunately the Board majority doesn’t think it necessary.
Take a look at the Lakewood City Council: they publish meeting summaries days after their meeting and they meet twice as often! Meeting schedules aren’t good enough: dates change and they do not provide an agenda. It also puts the onus on the public to get engaged with the District rather than the District to get engaged with the public. Do the minimum and you can expect to achieve the minimum. That’s part of the problem this District faces every day.
It would seem that the two board members named require a great deal of handholding. If frustrated by the situation how will complaints by other CARES members to an unmonitored forum rectify the situation? I realize it is a manipulation of the readers so that is why I had mentioned the passive aggressive spin. Provision of an agenda is important, but I also realize CARES real motivation is to have the agenda as they prepare their ongoing strategy to subvert the Superintendent and CPSB. Most recognize that the two involved board members are merely extensions of CARES and not free agents. This does not promote trust and frankly it is embarrassing to see they cannot act independently to solve issues without CARES intervention.
Mentioning someone identified only by initials as being in the shadows for mentioning CARES was a bit of a stretch after the mendacious approach of the initial two questions on this forum. Perhaps, like myself, they have a monitor that alerts when unknown parties peruse their FB, social media or search their history? I removed my surname for that reason when I identified who was infiltrating my info from this site.
As for ironic, surely CARES, a partisan group manipulating non partisan positions of the school-board qualifies as shadowy? Stating issues without murky manipulation is certainly more honest and devoid of elaborate pathology.
Valerie,
You seem to have discovered the shadowy workings of LakewoodCARES and how they create a constant attack on non CARES school board members, Ron Banner and his administration. I encourage you to keep documenting. Things are becoming clearer with every letter they write.
LOL! Is it not ironic that you claim discovery of the “shadowy workings of Lakewood CARES” and yet you fail to use your real name, as I do on everything I publish on the Suburban Times. Come out into the day light “M.D.” and out of the “shadows”. Claiming others do something unacceptable that you yourself do is a form of psychological defense mechanism called “projection”.