Our big member drive goal is adding coverage of ISD 197 school board meetings. We need 40 new members to get there. Join now.
Why cover school board? To give the community transparency and awareness about what’s happening in School District 197.
Why it matters: Some people have complained about not knowing what the school board is doing. In recent years, that included COVID issues, the high school name change, and recent middle school schedule changes. Consistent coverage of school board meetings would better inform the community.
What we’ll cover: We’ll give recaps of every meeting, the regular televised meeting as well as the non-televised work sessions. This will include mundane details as well as the controversial stuff. Much like our City Council coverage, we take the approach of covering everything that happens as opposed to cherry-picking the juiciest news items.
What it’s not: This isn’t a negative commentary on the school board itself. In fact, the current school board has made strides to be more transparent, including creating their own video recaps, emailing agendas, and sharing more info. But the fact remains that people are uninformed, and a third party can do a better job of sharing what decisions are made and the context behind those decisions.
Timeline: If we reach our goal of 40 new members, we’ll start coverage in February. Why so long? Every school board meeting between now and January conflicts with West St. Paul City Council meetings, making coverage difficult. So we’ll start in February. (But stretch goal: If we hit 50 new members, we’ll add school board coverage now.)
Last chance: We’ve talked about covering ISD 197 school board meetings for two years now. If we can’t reach the goal this time around, it’s probably time to give up and move on to something else.
