A vote to make public comment rules more lenient was deferred to the governance subcommittee at Tuesday’s school committee meeting.
The concept was suggested by Member Luisa de Paula Santos at a January 16 committee retreat, where she expressed a desire to hear from more stakeholders at committee meetings.
Tuesday’s motion, brought forward by Members Santos, Elizabeth Hudson and Richard Harding, may allow public commenters to exceed the three-minute speaking limit and speak on items not explicitly listed in the meeting’s agenda.
Most committee members echoed their support for the motion at Tuesday’s meeting, with Vice-chair Caitlin Dube “fully in support of the spirit of this motion” and Member Arjun Jaikumar “strongly in support of this change.”
Despite committee support, the vote will be deferred to the governance subcommittee where specific changes to public meeting structure can be discussed in more detail, committee members said.
“There are a lot of changes that people want to discuss making to meetings,” Hudson said at Tuesday’s school committee meeting. “There is a desire amongst some other members to refer this to our governance subcommittee where we can discuss those changes more holistically together as a group.”
Jaikumar suggested a “report out date” to ensure the changes are made soon.
“I would not want anyone to think that we were following the CIA playbook of sending something to a subcommittee to bury it, because I don’t think that’s the intent of any of the other members, and I do think this is a change I would like to see happen … sooner rather than later,” Jaikumar said.
The chair and vice chair of the committee have yet to announce which members of the committee will serve on which subcommittees, and no timeline for the public comment vote has been established, Hudson confirmed with Cambridge Day on Wednesday.
Harding spoke to the limits of the public comment portion of meetings, noting that commenters are often “the same people speaking the same rhetoric.”
“I’m okay with the referral, but I just want to say that part of this is about making sure that everybody has equal access,” Harding said. “We [should] also talk about how we’re going to take public comment to … communities that are most affected and closest to the pain around the lack of student achievement for their children.”
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