Livingston Today

Changes could be coming to the Brighton Area School Board.

The school board changed the structure of how they hold their board meetings at its Jan. 9 meeting, which can be viewed on YouTube.

They had new members sworn in, Jennifer Marks and Andy Storm, and reelected Roger Myers as board president for the third year in a row, though trustee Bill Trombley was a close second choice.

Before beginning the business part of the meeting, Superintendent Matthew Outlaw thanked the board members for their service and hard work.

“I just want to say that being on the school board is a thankless job. They're not compensated for this. They do this out of the goodness of their heart, and they do it because they care,” Outlaw said in the meeting. “They put in all kinds of time, and each one of them has different expertise, and they are instrumental to what we do as a school district. So I just want to say thank you to the board of education on behalf of the administration and the school district. Thank you for volunteering your time and for everything that you do for the youth of this community."

The school board members moved to accept their set dates for their official business meetings for the year of 2023. They will still have other meetings that will arise throughout the year, as needed, but at the beginning of the year, they set specific dates for routine business meetings.

During the discussion on this, board member Alicia Reid brought up the idea of having two official meetings each month instead of just one. Currently the board does one official business meeting where they vote, and then they have a committee of the whole (COW) meeting as a workshop before the next official meeting. Because they are already meeting every two weeks, member Reid suggested turning both into official meetings, as there are often items that they need to vote on at the COW meetings.

The notion was backed by trustee Angela Krebs, who added that they could always cancel the meeting if there was no official vote being held.

Trustee Andy Storm brought up the idea of subcommittees, which has previously been brought up by members. The board actually had planned to discuss subcommittees vs. COW meetings in February and chose to deal with this two-meeting-a-month plan separately.

The board did vote to move to two meetings a month, with the exception of March, July and December, during which they would only hold their first meeting of the month.