[Editor’s Note: Second of two parts. See “How to Improve School Board Meetings — Gourley Makes a Suggestion,” Dec. 31.]
School Board members and watchers had to know this was coming, didn’t they?
Two-time former City Councilman Steve Gourley’s reputation for hard-hitting assertiveness and no-nonsense meetings must have rung bells across the schools community, signaling that the cavalry was riding into Irving Place.
Early skeptics who were so positive that the occasionally acerbic, always entertaining Mr. Gourley did not have a satisfactory background or bank of pragmatic knowledge in education slinked away in the first hours of the autumn campaign.
They were routed by both the force and forcefulness of Mr. Gourley’s wrenchingly logical arguments.
During the 10 weeks or so of campaigning, Mr. Gourley must have heard 200 times the complaint that meetings run too long, that important business is strewn throughout the evening, with an accent on late, and the course of meetings is allowed to meander.
He already knew that. But he filed it away for post-election application.
Welcome Home
On the night last month that he and fellow School Board rookie Scott Zeidman were sworn into office, Mr. Gourley hardly conducted himself as a stranger in a strange land.
He has served on enough boards in the last almost 30 years to comprehend protocol and its nuances as well as the founding fathers of every organization.
New and old friends alike agreed that he either had come home or he was sure acting as if he had, even if, technically, he was a stranger.
Not for long, though.
Tiptoeing is not encased in his DNA.
He made it clear he did not get himself elected in order to take his seat like the greenest schoolboy and wait until he was spoken to.
Just after the swearing-in, he walked over to the seat of his wife Sharon. Taking her by the hand and drawing her into a standing position, he proudly introduced her to everyone in the crowded Board Room.
Soliciting Opinions
On Monday of this week, the newspaper asked Mr. Gourley his impressions of his new workplace.
“One meeting is too soon,” he answered.
Barely pausing, however, he quickly added, “Still, I have some perspectives from my prior experience that I think can help.
After studying the culture and history of the School Board, Mr. Gourley has isolated one nagging problem from which numerous others spring:
“Not only do meetings go on too long,” he said, “but without focus.”
As he was leaving the Board Room that evening, a man told him, “That is the shortest School Board meeting I can remember.”
Mr. Gourley expects to hear something like that regularly, starting with the first meeting of the new year, next Tuesday at 7, in the Board Room on Irving Place.
In Search of a Palliative
In the general course of Board meetings, there is too much meaningless, aimless chatter and gasbagging, he indicated.
Discipline is needed. He said in the first installment of this series that all significant Board business should be confined to the hours of 7 to 9 o’clock so that families and others who commonly depart at that hour will not miss anything.
If business is not concluded during that window, Mr. Gourley wants it put over until the following meeting so that pertinent matters will be conducted and concluded by a decent hour.
Time to Consult
Mr. Gourley plans to talk over his ideas with his four colleagues before making many pronouncements.
“I hope to clarify my feelings with the other members so that hopefully we can get some consensus,” he said.
He cited three troubling areas:
Official information needlessly repeated.
Observations by Board remembers that are repeated and compounded by colleagues.
An insensitively organized agenda that either is wrongfully assembled or is allowed to wander without regard to family priorities and the clock on the wall.
Wasting Time
For one illustration, he cited a financial report issued by Asst. Supt. David El Fattal at last month’s meeting. Everybody in the Board Room, including the tiny audience, was familiar with the document, Mr. Gourley said.
There was no need, he felt, to consume everyone’s precious time by methodically regurgitating what everybody knew.
“Completely wasted exercise,” is how he branded it.
Not Complex
Curing what purportedly is wrong is not complicated, he insists.
Fixing it “really is a very simple process,” said Mr. Gourley, who tends to wrap up his suggestions in tidy packages he is convinced are easy to understand — and adopt.
As predicted last summer, Mr. Gourley remains the dynamo of his younger days. With his driven personality as a premier attraction, audiences should start to grow for School Board meetings.
