Chris Peak file photo
Board of Ed Prez Rivera: Zoom meetings = more accessible.
The Board of Education will continue to meet online only for the foreseeable future — as the board president defended virtual gatherings as more accessible to the public, while a fellow board member criticized the move as less accountable to teachers, students, parents, and staff.
That pandemic-era debate over whether to meet on Zoom or not to meet on Zoom played out Monday night during the latest regularly biweekly meeting of the Board of Education.
Which was held online via Zoom.
Which is the way that all Board of Education meetings have been held since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.
Over the course of Monday night’s meeting, Board of Education President Yesenia Rivera was asked multiple times — first by teachers’ union President Leslie Blatteau, then by Board of Ed student representative Dave Cruz-Bustamante — whether or not the board plans to start meeting in person any time soon.
After all, the full Board of Alders has been meeting in person at City Hall since August 2021. Aldermanic committees have been meeting in person since the beginning of this calendar year.
Nearly all other city boards and commissions, meanwhile, from the City Plan Commission to the police commission to the Board of Zoning Appeals to the Civilian Review Board, still meet online only.
Rivera replied on Monday that she does not have any plans to return Board of Education meetings in person.
“From what I’m hearing from the attorney is I have the right to host the meetings either as remote or in person,” Rivera said. “The fact of the matter is that the meetings are actually more accessible now than they were when we were in person.”
Assuming New Haveners have a telephone and internet connection, Rivera said, the Zoom meeting format allows for more and easier access to the public.
She reported that 120 people attended the most recent online Board of Education meeting. She also said that, at the height of the pandemic in 2020, ed board meetings regularly saw hundreds of people tune in online to watch and participate. At some points, the meetings hit the Zoom attendee cap of 500, she said.
“Those are phenomenal numbers, far in excess of anything we had before when we were meeting in person,” she added.
Watch the full meeting above.
Board of Education member Darnell Goldson expressed concern Monday night about the board not having a plan to return to in-person meetings anytime soon.
“There is nothing to preclude people from attending our meetings remotely while we’re having in-person meetings,” he said. “So to suggest that those 500 people still can’t show up while we’re in an in-person meeting is a little disingenuous.”
Goldson said he hopes one day soon meetings will return in-person and that Board will “come back from behind these screens and actually do what we’ve asked our teachers and our students and our custodians and our cafeteria workers and our paraprofessionals and our bus drivers and everybody else in this school system to do, and that is face the public.”
This is another great example of the arrogance and authoritarian control of this board - from Rivera to board members and the public; and this board to all of us. Just because Rivera has the power, doesn't mean it should be used this way. The meetings should all be in person and online for the same reason we all go to work everyday - to the office vs. working remotely. You make eye contact, you can build bridges in conversations afterward. Besides, it's very easy to be dismissive, harsh and dictatorial when you're sitting behind a computer screen.