Changes to the way the St. Joseph School District Board of Education holds its meetings could give the public more insight into decisions made by members.

“In the past what we’ve done is we have our board meeting on the second Monday of the month but the week before we have all these committee meetings,” said Kappy Hodges, school board member. “One of the hang-ups with that is that when people come to watch the board meeting when you’re using that format is that they see the board just saying ‘okay, okay, okay,’ and they don’t know anything that was discussed during the committee meetings.”

Now, instead of having multiple committee meetings and a school board meeting the board has voted to change its policy to hold two school board meetings each month.  The meetings are now held on the second and fourth Monday every month.

“We decided to try it and we knew a good part of that would be that everyone could get to see the discussion,” Hodges said.

The committee meetings were open to the public before, but Hodges said she didn’t feel much of the public got a chance to see what was taking place unless it was at a board meeting.

“They may not even be aware there were committee meetings even though those meetings, every meeting the board has is posted on the website,” Hodges said. “So to them it just looked like we got up there and whatever the administration recommended that’s what we did and it was set up that way just so it would go quicker but it just gives the wrong impression.”

June was the first month for the change.  The first board meeting which was followed by an executive session went almost until midnight, the second Hodges said went until around 10:30 p.m.

“It takes longer if you’re going to talk about everything all at once,” Hodges said. “But I like it because, A. I only have to go to a couple of meetings a month and B. I really like that the public can see all the discussion that takes place.”

Normally the board doesn’t meet in July but the board voted to hold a work session scheduled for July 13 at 4:30 p.m. and a Special Board of Education meeting starting at 5:30 p.m.

The new schedule will resume in August.  All board meetings are streamed live by the St. Joseph School District online.