{"id":68,"date":"2023-10-01T22:05:59","date_gmt":"2023-10-01T22:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/10.1.1.187:8989\/?p=68"},"modified":"2023-10-09T22:15:30","modified_gmt":"2023-10-09T22:15:30","slug":"long-winded-trustees-the-need-for-time-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/10.1.1.187:8989\/2023\/10\/01\/long-winded-trustees-the-need-for-time-limits\/","title":{"rendered":"Long-winded Trustees: The need for time limits."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Round Rock ISD school board meetings are too damn long!<\/em> \u2014 This was the focus of a discussion that I had with other community members early in 2023, which led me to start tracking the amount of time that is attributable to individual Round Rock ISD trustees. For the meeting following that conversation, I threw together a quick app for tracking their time and worked out some kinks. Shortly after the meetings in April, I created this report<\/a> and published it on this site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What did the report show? It showed what we all already knew \u2014 An overwhelming majority of the time attributable to Trustees in meetings was attributable to two Trustees as seen in the chart below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fast forward to the September 21, 2023 meeting. After getting through the pledges, student & staff recognition, and public comments, Trustee Weir made a motion to limit time to 45 seconds per question and 2 minutes for a closing statement on each topic. As expected, Trustees Bone & Weston took issue with this motion. Trustee Bone went on a 5+ minute rant against the motion, claiming that her colleagues don\u2019t take agenda items seriously, grandstanding about her experience doing \u201creal business,\u201d and complaining that her 1st amendment rights were being violated as seen in the video below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
I have continued tracking the time for every meeting since April (tracking data coming soon). Meeting after meeting, it\u2019s the same outcome \u2014 a couple of Trustees spend their time grandstanding about themselves or going on long-winded tirades about issues that we\u2019ve heard them talk about over and over again. Even with time limits set by the board to try to move conversations along, two Trustees dominate the amount of time spent on certain topics in meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n