(The Center Square) – The Caddo Parish School Board struggled Tuesday night to implement newly approved meeting procedures, with members, administrators and legal counsel repeatedly stopping the meeting to clarify how the revised rules were supposed to work.
The confusion came just hours after the board approved policy revisions during a special session that changed how consent agenda items and public comment are handled.
At the beginning of the regular meeting, board members attempted to establish a new process for placing items on the consent agenda before quickly abandoning it after questions arose about how the revised rules should operate.
“This is a new procedure to me as well and we’re all growing together,” Board President Don Little said during the meeting.
The board initially attempted to allow members to designate consent agenda items at the start of the meeting before attorney Reginald Abrams advised the board to revert to its previous process.
“Our recommendation is that we do just like we’ve always done,” Abrams told the board.
The board later realized it had begun processing consent agenda items before opening the legally required public comment period.
“Oh, wait. I think we have to go back because we missed the visitor section,” said board member Jessica Yeates.
Abrams confirmed the mistake, prompting Little to tell the board to “forget what just occurred.”
Much of the confusion centered on newly adopted rules allowing members of the public to speak on consent agenda items before the board votes on them. The revised policy guarantees speakers at least two minutes per consent agenda item.
Board members and attorneys spent several minutes debating whether speakers would receive separate time periods for each item or one combined speaking period.
The confusion intensified when citizen speaker John Glover attempted to address eight separate agenda items, including three items placed on the consent agenda under the board’s newly revised procedures.
Board members and attorneys then spent several minutes publicly debating how much speaking time Glover was entitled to and when those comments were supposed to occur during the meeting. Abrams advised that because three of Glover’s requested topics were on the consent agenda, the newly adopted policy required the board to provide “no less than two minutes” per item before the consent vote, creating at least six minutes of speaking time under the new rule.
The exchange exposed widespread uncertainty among board members over whether the time was a minimum or maximum allotment, whether comments should be grouped together, and whether speakers could still address the same issues during the general visitor section.
“It’s no less than two minutes,” Abrams repeatedly reminded members as the board struggled to interpret the language it had approved earlier that day.
Upon realizing that Glover would get a minimum of 16 minutes to speak on eight consent agenda items, Little referred to it, seemingly jokingly, as “a citizens filibuster,” a comment Glover called “disrespectful.”
Glover then used her public comments to directly criticize the board’s handling of the policy revisions, accusing members of weakening transparency and limiting the public’s ability to understand what the board was approving.
“You created this with not a lot of attention to the public,” Glover told members during the meeting.
She said the board’s earlier special session had effectively circumvented the traditional Executive Committee process, which she said historically gave citizens earlier notice and opportunities to speak before controversial items reached the full board agenda.
“What you’ve done is you’ve taken away my right to have the opportunity to speak to them as they should have been spoken to,” Glover said.
She also accused the board of placing items on the consent agenda without publicly explaining them beforehand.
“How was it that the public was supposed to understand what you put on consent? You gave no explanations. You gave none,” Glover said. “Yet because what? We elected you all. You don’t deserve – we don’t deserve – to hear an explanation of what you’re deciding on our behalf?”
Board member Terence Vinson openly acknowledged the board itself appeared unclear on the new procedures.
“We voted on this and approved it and it’s so confused,” Vinson said. “It seemed like we don’t even know what to do.”
