ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The USD 480 school board could soon be taking another step toward streaming its meetings.
The board revisited discussion of the matter during its most recent meeting Monday evening, with the discussion taking up the majority of the meeting.
“There were multiple questions brought to us, including about costs and equipment and some of those details,” Board President Alan Brown said.
“In talking with Larry Dobbs, along with some engineers, the initial estimate for everything we would need would be between $35,000 and $40,000,” Director of Technology Rusty Tuman said. “That would be for a 14-microphone wireless system, meaning everyone would have their own microphone, along with some extras in case one goes down. I also requested three monitors so we can keep track of the sound levels and those, because like I said at the last meeting, the sound is more important than the visual. There are some details to be finalized, but the estimate I received was between $35,000 to $40,000. When we’d talked about this back in 2020, the estimate was $30,000 to $35,000. And this system would be able to be used with other events and other stuff the district might want to stream, so it would be versatile.”
“With the other districts that are streaming their meetings, what kind of numbers are they seeing, or could we look that up?” board member Sarah Thompson asked.
“I would need to go back through some archives and look at that,” Tuman said. “But I will say, the football game got a lot of views – there were 433 views and we had 120 concurrent viewers at one point in time. I know that’s not a board meeting, but we definitely have people who watch the USD 480 YouTube channel. And I can look at some of the other area schools to see what their board meetings’ viewing numbers are, like Dodge City, I’m sure they have archives that are easily accessible. With our YouTube use, we’ve done well with that because we know what will draw people in, and we also know what the guidelines are as far as copyright and all of that. And with the games we stream, I know the quality is much, much better, and that’s because we upgraded that infrastructure, which was very much needed.”
Discussion continued for several more minutes, with many other questions being asked.
“I also feel we would need to take into consideration the students whose parents don’t sign a media release for them,” Brown said. “Like with the Good Things part of our meeting when we have students and teachers talking, I want everyone to be able to be shown.”
“That’s something we would coordinate with the teachers and building offices,” Superintendent Stephen Linkous said. “Darin [Clark] was recently working on a project and had to take photos of some of the students, and that information was available as far as who had a media release and who didn’t.”
Brown also expressed interest in sharing the board’s agenda before the meeting.
“I know I had talked about this before, but I would like us to do a video or podcast or something to let people know what’s on the agenda and possibly encourage more people in the community to attend the meetings,” Brown said. “I think we could do that after pre-board to let people know what will be on the agenda, because I think there’s almost too much reaction – i.e., if there’s something on the agenda you’re interested in but didn’t know about it, you don’t go to the meting and then you miss all the discussion. I also think that would also help as far as the transparency and being more open to the public. I remember when the newspaper was daily, the agenda was able to be printed in like three editions, but since it’s not a daily anymore, that’s not the case, and I would like to see what we could do to help get more word out about the meetings actually happening and encourage people to attend.”
“I know this was said at the last meeting, but if we’re going to start streaming the meetings and doing all of that, we need to have the right equipment and make sure everything functions properly as far as sound and picture,” board member Nick Hatcher said. “There is nothing more irritating to me when I’m watching something online than hearing a bunch of other background noise that messes with my understanding of what’s being discussed. I know the estimate seems kind of high, but I’d rather us have a good system than cheap junk that’ll need to be replaced frequently.”
“I absolutely agree with that, we definitely need a good system, otherwise people will be disappointed if the quality of the video and audio isn’t what it should be,” Brown agreed.
After several more minutes of discussion, the board agreed to bring the matter back as an action item at its next meeting Oct. 21.
After that discussion, the board moved on to the agenda’s new business, during which they unanimously approved the renewal of the district’s ClassLink subscription in the amount of $55,378.86 for three years as well as a quote from First Wireless, Inc. in the amount of $17,720 for the purchase of two-way radios. The board also unanimously approved a Memorandum of Understanding with Newman University and concluded the meeting by approving the recommended rate for SPED Life Skills and Specialty Paras at $18/hour.
