Go green! Go online! Check out Agenda Online
Published: April 1, 2008
With the recent passage of new Brown Act requirements for distributing and posting documents related to items on open meeting agendas, school district and county office of education trustees have a new reason to consider subscribing to CSBA’s Agenda Online service. This powerful and environmentally friendly tool makes it easy for school board members and the public to access important material and to comply with new Brown Act requirements that will become effective July 1.
Senate Bill 343 will change the rules for making documents relating to agenda items available for public inspection. The new law requires that when a document classified as a public record and relating to an open session agenda item is distributed to the board less than 72 hours before the board meeting, the document must also be made available for public inspection. In addition, every board meeting agenda must list the address designated for this public inspection. The documents may also be posted on the district’s Web site.
It’s a potentially daunting requirement that could be expensive and time-consuming for districts that still rely on “snail-mail” and paper to distribute agenda material.
“Agenda Online gives districts and county offices an efficient and cost-effective way to keep school trustees and members of the public informed about any supporting documents that are distributed after the agenda has been posted,” said Martin Gonzalez, CSBA’s assistant executive director in charge of Governance and Policy Services.
“We want to make sure that our districts and county offices understand how Agenda Online can help them comply with public-meeting disclosure laws and at the same time save districts time and money,” Gonzalez said.
Agenda Online uses a special symbol to identify agenda items that were updated less than three days before the meeting, and the service makes these updated items available to the public and board members at the same time.
CSBA is hosting a number of presentations at county offices of education throughout the state in the coming months to tout the benefits of paperless agendas and to show how districts can “Go green! and Go online!” These demonstrations will also show how districts and county offices can access and edit sample policies and policy updates using CSBA’s GAMUT Online service.
The list of Agenda Online clients now includes more than 30 school districts throughout the state. Among them are Davis Joint Unified School District, Beverly Hills USD, Hemet USD and Menlo Park City School District.
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For a complete list of upcoming Agenda Online and GAMUT Online presentations and more information about these services, visit www.csba.org and click on the proper icon under “Resources” in the right column.