Issue or illusion:
Oconee County candidates discuss lack of school board transparency
Issue or illusion:
Oconee County candidates discuss lack of school board transparency
“Open government is essential to a free, open and democratic society.”
Chances are, not every American can quote the preamble to the State of Georgia’s Open Records Act . However, as part of one of the largest democracies in the world, they certainly feel its impact, even on a local level.
Why it’s newsworthy: Over the past few years, residents of Oconee County, Georgia have persistently found issues with the openness and transparency of its Board of Education. November’s general elections, in which two of the five positions on the school board will be contested, may present an opportunity for change.
The two candidates running for Post Five on the County Board of Education, Democrat Katie Green and Republican Brock Toole, have especially differing views on how to improve the transparency and communication of this governing body.
The award-winning Oconee County Schools Board of Education uses a SIMBLI/eBOARD system to provide extensive information on board meeting dates, policies, agendas and minutes, resources and more in an effort to be transparent with their operations. Meetings are also broadcast live and recorded and uploaded on the Oconee County Schools YouTube channel.
However, concerned parents, local journalists and even current running candidates have had concerns with the Oconee County school board’s limited transparency and communication with its stakeholders. Here are some examples, both past and recent:
The OCS Board of Education is a small team of five, but it is responsible for everything from establishing goals for their public schools and setting performance standards to advocating for students and parents, according to the National School Boards Association.
Clare Norins, associate clinical professor at the University of Georgia School of Law and director of the school’s First Amendment Law Clinic, said that the impact of the school board also goes beyond parents of the children who attend these schools, as every resident’s taxpayer money goes into funding these government bodies.
“I think people underestimate how much local government really impacts their day-to-day lives,” Norins said. “In some ways, it's much more relevant to people than national politics, even though people tend to follow national and not local elections.”
According to Norins, having open and easy access to information on a local level is integral to having a “true representative government.”
Jaylene Katt, an Oconee County parent with two children in the system, said that this ease of access is what she sometimes feels is missing with their school board.
“We still have that small-town feel here, which I do love, but it also feels a little bit like ‘the good old boys club,’” Katt said. “I would really like us to get a little bit more away from that and just have things more out in the open and conversation.”
Katt said that she does not necessarily think the school board doesn’t have her children’s best interests at heart, but that as a parent, it is her duty to ask questions and be more involved.
“We’re not there to disrupt or cause issues. We want to complement the process and also be aware of what’s going on with our children,” Katt said.
While Toole and Green both have similar views on the importance of open communication between the school board and its community, their visions for how to facilitate that communication differ.
For Green, who is running from the Oconee County Democratic Committee, she said what stands out to her is the lack of two-way communication between the board and the people.
For example, although the public can sign up for three-minute slots to speak at one of the board’s two monthly meetings, board members can choose whether they want to respond or not, and Green said she often sees them go with the latter.
Green said this limited responsiveness can make it especially difficult for the community to make sense of more complex matters like county budget reports.
Some of Green’s ideas to improve school board transparency and communication include better utilizing social media to keep people informed on what is discussed at meetings, arranging town halls every few months to give residents more opportunities to ask questions and organizing more community engagement events like school functions and sports to foster better connections.
Green also discussed the idea of using more informal communication methods which may be more accessible and “less overwhelming” for parents, such as having a board member plan to be at a library for a few hours and invite residents to drop by with any questions they have.
In particular, Green said that her unique experience as an almost thirty-year long educator gives her a special understanding of school standards and the workings of the Georgia Department of Education that she would bring to the board.
Oconee County Republican Party candidate Toole, on the other hand, having worked for over four years in the school system as chief operations officer, said that he does not see a lack of transparency from the school board.
According to Toole, what is interpreted as a lack of openness from the school board is actually a struggle to disseminate dense amounts of information, combined with residents possibly asking “the wrong questions” to “the wrong people.”
Toole said that if residents asked “the appropriate questions” and filed open records requests for what they had confusions with, then the misunderstanding with the school board’s transparency could be cleared up.
However, describing himself as a natural “communicator,” Toole said that he believes in always being available and willing to listen to questions and concerns, responding to public inquiries in a timely manner and speaking up at school board meetings if he sees the need—all of which he plans to do if elected to the board.
As the November elections get closer, Oconee County residents are having increasing discussions about government transparency, but Norins said to take this with a grain of salt.
“The party in power in the moment is going to be often more resistant to transparency,” Norins said. “But when they're out of power or out of office, then they're big transparency and access advocates, and that's nonpartisan—both sides do that.”
According to Norins, the key for governments to improve transparency and trust is being affirmative in their efforts and taking that one extra step to communicate.
“There's all kinds of ways that even go beyond what the law mandates in terms of open records and open meetings, that can still really facilitate transparency,” Norins said.