BY DARRELL HALEN

About two years ago, Windham School Board members moved their monthly workshop meetings to the town’s planning department meeting room.

There, the workshops aired live on Windham Community Television.

Now members are moving the workshops back to their original site, the School Administrative Unit 28 building, in an effort, they said, to improve their ability to get work done.

The move, however, may mean that some workshops may not be seen by cable TV viewers.

“I can tell you that a lot gets done in a workshop,” said school board member Al Letizio Jr. at the board’s April 3 meeting. “A lot of what appears on camera to be disagreement or haggling or a spirit of uncooperativeness – a lot of that is worked out in workshop time.”

Letizio advocated that the board return to its former practice of holding one workshop meeting at the SAU office and one televised business meeting each month.

Beth Valentine, Bruce Anderson and Beverly Donovan voted with Letizio to make the change. They will try it for six months and then evaluate it.

Donovan, however, raised concerns. She chaired the board when members decided to move workshop meetings out of the SAU office and over to the planning department meeting room.

Donovan said the move was done because “people were begging for more information at the time” about the town’s high school building project.

“To go back – are we going to have people wonder what’s going on?” Donovan said. “Are they not going to get the information they’re used to? They’re not going to crowd into that little room at the SAU.”

Letizio, a former member who rejoined the board at the beginning of the year, said he believes returning to the old practice would help the board get work done.

The current way creates more meetings and longer meetings and will potentially burn out the school district’s staff, he said.

“It’s still a public meeting, just not held in a formal fashion,” he said.

The discussion to change the location came up after school board members agreed to bring in a mediator to help ease tensions among members.

“I think it would do a lot to improve board relations we’ve talked so much about tonight,” Letizio said. “I’ve never seen this type of format and consternation on the board. I think it would take a giant leap to alleviating it.”

Valentine complained that it’s difficult to hear and make eye contact with people in the planning department room.

And it’s difficult to speak frankly with volunteers, she said.

“I don’t think this is very conducive to getting things done,” she added.

Letizio originally suggested that workshop meetings at the SAU office not be televised. But member Barbara Coish said it would be illegal for cameras to be barred from the workshops.

“Absolutely, they can be there,” she said. “And if we’re there, they certainly should be welcomed to tape the meeting.”   

Coish abstained from voting.

“I guess it was a protest,” she said a few days after the vote.

In the planning board meeting room, microphones hang from the ceiling. TV equipment is stored in an adjoining room where one volunteer can sit and televise meetings.

Not all school board workshops were held there. There were times, according to officials, when the room, which is used by other groups such as the planning board and board of selectmen is not available.

Jim Daddona, the town’s cable studio coordinator, said the SAU office is not equipped to carry workshop meetings live. But he said he will have the workshops taped if he can get volunteers to cover them. They would use a camera, tripod and tapes.

The recordings, he said, won’t be readily available for viewing; there could be a lag of two days to a week. Daddona would have to get the tape back from the volunteer and transfer it to DVD before it can air.

“It makes it less timely for people to watch it,” he said.