Yesterday, someone on these blogs (his/her name escapes me) lamented the lack of transparency in the Fayette County School Board.

A quick perusal of the FCBOE website reveals precious little information communicated to the public: we can access cryptic agendas (LINK) and insultingly brief "recaps" (LINK).

I did a little research to see what other county boards of education were doing. I found that Dekalb County has invested in Rolls-Royce-class board meeting software called "Eboard". Eboard allows any sort of public board to manage to defined goals, and permits citizens to review detailed agenda items and understand things like costs involved, vendors involved, action items that need decisions, etc. It is truly phenomenal software...take a look (HERE) for a good example of how to do a board meeting correctly.

I got to wondering why the heck can't Fayette county utilize a great tool like this?

Guess what?

We already have this software installed on the FCBOE website!

Dekalb county uses about 80% of the features of Eboard...chances are very good that if a citizen WANTS to find out about a particular meeting agenda item and how it relates to the county's education goals, it's out there.

Fayette county, on the other hand, uses maybe 5% of the features of Eboard. It seems to be mostly a repository of press releases. How discouraging!

We've had this fantastic software up and running since February 2008 but we've only scratched the surface of what it can do!!

1. Board goals? UNDEFINED.
2. Abstracts of agenda items? UNDEFINED.
3. Costs associated with proposals? UNDEFINED.
4. Votes on agenda items? NOT KEPT.

a sad FCBOE Example

I can't tell you how disappointed I was to learn that we had a fantastic solution readily available to us but have opted not to use it. It's almost as if the current Board of Education WANTS to keep citizens in the dark.