- February 13, 2025
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Should the Volusia County School Board reduce its meetings to once a month?
At the board's meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 11, Volusia County School Board member Donna Brosemer proposed the board have a conversation about holding one long monthly meeting in lieu of two meetings a month. Currently, the board meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month at 4:30 p.m., with workshops at 12:30 p.m. on certain meeting dates.
After looking at Palm Beach County and seeing its school board meets monthly, Brosemer said she thought that format would allow for board members to examine issues more effectively and give staff time to follow up on directions given by the board.
"It might allow us to get more meat on the bones in our own discussions, because we don't discuss a lot," Brosemer said.
School Board member Krista Goodrich agreed with Brosemer, saying it was something she had been considering as well. She said putting the meetings together every two weeks takes up significant staff time.
"There are very successful school boards that do this once a month," Goodrich said. "There are very successful business boards that do this once a month and even once a quarter in those cases, and that gives our staff the time to go do the job that we want them to do, which is to help our students, not to educate us as board members on all the different agenda items every other week."
The challenge of holding only one meeting a month, School Board member Ruben Colon said, would occur when timely items need approval to move forward in the process, such as change orders. He also said the board wasn't a stranger to long meetings, even in its current format — in previous years, workshops have started at 9:30 a.m. and the board's meeting would run until 10 p.m.
"That was our normal," Colon said.
In regards to information, Colon suggested Brosemer to continue to reach out to department directors to get answers to questions.
However, Brosemer — who said she knows she is in the "early stages of a learning curve — said that the questions she seeks answers to are often information the public needs to know as well.
"If we all get our answers privately, then we don't need to have meetings because we'll already have our questions answered and we don't have to tell anybody anything," she said. "I like to have these discussions to the extent that is reasonable. I like to have these discussions in public because I'm not the only one who doesn't know the answer."
If the board wants to explore only holding one meeting a month, School Board Chair Jamie Haynes said she'd be open to the conversation. But, echoing some of Colon's comments, she mentioned leaving School Board chambers in past meetings as late as 2:30 a.m.
"I don't know that I want to do that regularly," Haynes said. "... You have to keep in mind, it's not just us. It's also all of the staff that would be here for all those hours too."
She also said she would like to avoid having to hold regular special or emergency meetings to get business done. But, one way to switch to a monthly meeting format, Haynes said, is to workshop more topics.
"By workshopping them, we already know how each of us feels on it," Haynes said.. "We get our questions answered. The community hears us talking about it."
