Our View: Opening meetings to a wider audience is a good thing

Transparency in government is important.

That’s why we’d like to applaud the Cloquet school board and superintendent Michael Cary for deciding this week to continue livestreaming school board meetings.

Yes, the pandemic is over and many — but not all — school districts and other governmental bodies have stopped making their meetings available online.

That’s too bad. Because livestreaming a public meeting tells your constituents that you want to be both accessible and transparent. That you have no secret agendas. That you don’t fear people being able to watch your meetings and find fault or find out exactly what you said.

Of all places, schools should want to encourage people to be good citizens and educate themselves by attending. Those who have something to say usually attend in person — they find a way to get there. But when a meeting is also available online, people don’t have to get a babysitter to attend a meeting. If a parent wants to watch the meeting on the next day because they have a hockey game to go to, they can. It allows them to be good citizens and fulfill other obligations without making difficult choices. Online meetings are handicapped accessible too; just ask our editor, who covered the Cloquet school board and city council from her bed while recovering from surgery this year.

Cloquet school board members were happy to hear how many people have been watching their meetings on YouTube over the past two years: attendance has varied from a low of about 35 to more than 200. What a wonderful and relatively simple way to get the community more involved.

On the flip side, we worry about school districts — specifically Wrenshall at the moment — where the board has struck a fairly adversarial tone with “the press” as well as residents who criticized its actions.

Wrenshall school board meetings are no longer available for viewing on Facebook like they were during the pandemic; citizens must attend to see the meeting in its entirety.

Then there are the “special” closed meetings that the Wrenshall board set for May 11: one for pending litigation, another for preliminary considerations of allegations against an employee. We hope the board understands it isn’t legal to have discussions during a closed meeting that lie outside the specific legal reason for making the meeting secret.

We also appreciate that principal Michelle Blanchard knew she could request her evaluation remain open to the public, which our reporter attended and found most surprising (see "Wrenshall board holds off on principal negotiations" in this week's paper).

Even if a school board forbids its members and staff from speaking with the press, it can’t forbid anyone from attending a public meeting, or writing about what is said there.

We’d like to encourage all of school districts and cities to take at least one simple step toward greater transparency and accessibility for all by live streaming meetings, if they don’t already. And for residents who still can’t find the time to attend, please know we will continue to cover local government on your behalf.

We welcome your input to the Pine Knot News community newspaper. Send your thoughts, letters, or news to [email protected].