MASON CITY – The Mason City school board has already tentatively agreed to video record their meetings for public view, and Monday night, will decide if this will be a permanent practice.
Late last year, the Mason City school board directed school employees at the highest level to begin video recording of their meetings. This was done as an effort by some board members to promote more openness from the district to the public, which some in the community have complained has been lacking for years. Months later, after more prodding from the board, staff finally began to round up equipment to begin to record video of board meetings, and then the recordings were to be uploaded to Youtube. The practice was a sort of “test” to see how the endeavor would go. The board noted that other school districts and public boards had long undertaken this practice.
At the special session of the Board of Education held on February 29, 2016, an action item was passed to pilot video recording of four Board of Education meetings and posting them for the public to view. The Youtube page for Mason City school board is located here. Several videos have already bee uploaded to the page.
Upon completion of this pilot, the board decided then that it would revisit and make a decision about whether to move forward with video recording meetings as a practice.
Why wouldn’t they do this? Unless they have something to hide it would be to their benefit.