Cameras are in place in the meeting room of the Clark County School Board, and its first meeting video will be aired live on the Internet when the school year begins in August. Board members Carolyn Edwards, left, and Mary Beth Scow and the rest of the board meet bimonthly at the Greer Education Center in Las Vegas.
Saturday, June 28, 2008 | 2 a.m.
In preparation for the switch to live video broadcasting of Clark County School Board meetings, Vegas PBS staff members have been taping the board at work so they can make recommendations. Producer/directors Mark Williams, left, and Kevin Robinson work the equipment that will be used to record the meetings. The School District has spent about $125,000 on equipment for the chamber and another $12,000 in staff time on the project, which goes live for the first time in August.
Clark County School Board members, get ready for your close-ups.
After lengthy delays, the School Board plans to begin broadcasting its meetings live on the Internet beginning with the start of the academic year in August.
Plans are also in the works to air reruns on one of the two educational channels shared by Vegas PBS, UNLV and CSN.
The School Board’s bimonthly meetings are held at the Greer Education Center on East Flamingo Road at Eastern Avenue. The meeting chambers hold about 150 people. Typically the audience is small, unless the School Board is voting on a hot issue or a campus has been threatened with attendance zone or calendar changes.
The public would benefit from more people witnessing the board in action, the district’s advocates and critics say.
With an operating budget of $2.1 billion, the Clark County School District is the state’s largest recipient of tax dollars. It’s also the state’s largest public employer, with a workforce topping 35,000.
“Everyone should see how the district is supervised and how decisions are made,” said Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas. “Conversely, board members need to know that they are being observed by the public at large, not just the handful of individuals who are normally present.”
The state’s two next-largest school districts, Washoe and Carson City, broadcast their meetings, and so do the Las Vegas City Council and the Clark County Commission.
During the 2007 legislative session, Segerblom authored a bill that would have required the Clark County School District to broadcast its meetings. The language was downgraded to a recommendation after the district argued it needed time to study the logistics and expense of such an undertaking.
Airing its meetings live on the Internet is good progress, Segerblom said Friday. But he’s still looking forward to the first TV broadcast.
One question asked by legislators during the 2007 session was why Vegas PBS wouldn’t be able to broadcast School Board meetings.
There’s long been confusion over the relationship between the district and Vegas PBS, said Tom Axtell, the station’s general manager. While the School Board holds the franchise license for the station, Vegas PBS is an independently operated affiliate with its own governing board.
Channel 10 is the region’s sole PBS affiliate, and is required to carry the national network’s schedule of programs on the same day they are distributed, Axtell said. That leaves little room for flexibility when it comes to airing local material.
And currently there’s no available airtime on the “EduCable” digital channels, 110 and 111, which are used to broadcast college classes and other educational programming.
With the cuts to the state’s higher education budget, it looks as if UNLV will have fewer staff members available to produce its own programs, which could mean time slots on one of the “EduCable” channels could be freed for School Board meetings, Axtell said.
Clark County is one of eight school districts that hold television-broadcasting licenses. Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, carries some PBS programming and airs its Board of Education meetings. But, Axtell emphasized, the Los Angeles area has three other PBS stations.
“When you’re the sole-source station like us, you have to draw the line and say that public meetings belong on the public access or educational access channels,” Axtell said.
Albuquerque and Spokane, Wash., also have school district TV stations with PBS affiliation, but neither carries school board meetings because each is the community’s sole source of PBS programming, Axtell said.
The district has spent about $125,000 equipping the School Board chambers for broadcast, plus another $12,000 in staff time. The annual cost of the broadcasts will be about $19,000, Axtell said.
Similar to audio recordings of the School Board meetings available online, the broadcasts will be indexed so people can search for a particular agenda item without having to scan the entire meeting.
School Board member Carolyn Edwards has advocated for broadcasting meetings since before she was elected in 2006.
The broadcasts may require the School Board “to refine the way we conduct our meetings,” Edwards said. “We need to make sure we’re doing things in a way that the public can easily follow along.”
In fact, Vegas PBS staff has been videotaping School Board meetings so that Axtell and his staff can make recommendations for improvements before the system goes live.
As for whether the School Board will develop a loyal viewership, Edwards thinks plenty of people are interested in the proceedings but can’t attend at 4 p.m. every other Thursday.
“This is a good first step,” Edwards said. “And it’s long overdue.”
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