Sep 22, 2021

Getting USD 308 board and public into buildings seen as positive

Posted Sep 22, 2021 12:45 PM

By NICK GOSNELL

Hutch Post

HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The USD 308 Board of Education had its first September board meeting at Lincoln Elementary earlier this month and the idea is to get the board and the public into the district's buildings.

"We really want USD 308 to be unified and supported all together," said Marissa Meis with USD 308. "What better way to do that than to actually get into our buildings and allow the community to see the amazing things that our schools are doing. This allows our principals and our administrators to really take the reins on and give tours. Lincoln was so cool, because they have a community garden. Board members were able to take home some vegetables from that garden and you wouldn't be able to get that if we were only holding our meetings at the administration center."

Meis said there really haven't been any technical issues with streaming the meetings when they go on the road.

"There's always some staging effects that we have to do to make sure that everything looks good and make sure that everybody's still able to see and hear, but our technology department is so amazing," Meis said. "We're able to make sure that the setup is good at each school and we're excited to do it."

Despite some struggles earlier this school year, the district is continuing to put its meetings on Facebook.

"We are still streaming through Facebook," Meis said. "That is the most known way that we are streaming. We didn't want to shift it and people not be able to find it. We decided Facebook was still the best way to go, but because of that previous meeting that we did have some technical issues with, we have some new backup strategies to make sure that our meetings are backed up in a separate place, so if, for whatever reason our stream goes down or something like that, we are able to recover it."

The recording of the August 9 school board meeting was originally taken off the social media site without the district's knowledge.