I made it by the School Board meeting last night. I wanted to see what the new Board looked like. From appearances, it is much more attractive than its predecessor. Laura Chardiet and Nancy Goldberg are far better looking than Steve Gourley and Scott Zeidman. Of course, that’s not saying much.
Looks aside, I wasn’t impressed with the meeting. It seems that buzzwords are going to be the norm for this group, led by newly elected President Karlo Silbiger.
Mr. Silbiger gave a long, self-indulging, presentation about how his new Board is going to get things done, and (get ready for the buzzword), how things are going to now be “transparent.”
In the Silbiger way, he makes a habit of trashing others, in this case the prior Board, by talking about what he will be doing or what he has done. From my standpoint, the prior Board was not only transparent, but also effective.
Webster defines transparency as “free from pretense or deceit.”
Is Mr. Silbiger really telling the public that the prior Board was pretentious? Worse yet, is he accusing the prior Board of deceit?, Is he serious?
Transparency alone is not enough. A Board can have multiple public meetings, but if the Board is ineffective, transparency is of no assistance. Let’s hope that Mr. Silbiger’s Board will do something other than have public meetings, appoint numerous committees, contemplate and pontificate on what could theoretically, and potentially, be done at some time in the future. We’ve had that before and don’t need it again.
Mr. Silbiger’s transparency claim involved the budgeting process, namely the cuts. Mr. Silbiger apparently claims that the prior Board was not transparent in this process. Mr. Silbiger is mistaken. The prior Board had no fewer than a half dozen public meetings involving the budgeting process, and more than a dozen public meetings involving the budget. It got so bad that the members paying attention could recite Mr. Gourley’s mantra: “The budget is in flux.”
Numerous meetings were standing room only, as employee after employee addressed the Board, explaining how valuable their positions were, and urging the Board to cut somewhere else, namely administration. If that process wasn’t transparent, then nothing was. Of course, Mr. Silbiger was a member then. At least in public, he never asserted that the budget process needed to be more transparent. Why now?
We shouldn’t be surprised, should we?
Mr. Hanson may be contacted at GregAHanson@yahoo.com
