Policy 1310: Public Commentary and Feedback - Adopted 4/2/205
Public Commentary
Public commentary, typically scheduled near the beginning of all regular meetings of the board, shall be limited to an accumulated time of 45 minutes. At all other meetings of the board, excluding closed sessions, public commentary will be limited to 30 minutes. This limit may be extended at the discretion of the President.
Persons who wish to address the board, and have officially signed up for public commentary, shall be allowed to do so.
In-Person Meetings: Speakers must be present during the public commentary period for all meetings held in person; no write-in comments will be accepted for in-person meetings.
The Ann Arbor Board of Education will provide necessary and reasonable aids and services to individuals with disabilities by contacting the Ann Arbor Board of Education at boardofed@a2schools.org or 734-994-2232.
Electronic Meetings: Comments for sub-quorum meetings (i.e. committee meetings) held solely electronically must be submitted in writing and will be read aloud by AAPS staff within the timeframe allowed. Anonymous comments are not allowed.
The time limit for public commentary (45 or 30 minutes) will be evenly distributed among the number of speakers, and each speaker will be assigned an equal share of time in which to address the board. The maximum time for individual speakers will not exceed four (4) minutes. Exceptions to this time limit may be made at the discretion of the President, or through board action.
Those who wish to address the board during public commentary time must sign up at least 4 hours in advance of the meeting (i.e. by 3pm for a 7pm meeting) through the online Public Commentary Sign Up form.
Speakers will be placed on the public commentary list on a first-come, first-served basis and announced in that order. The list of speakers will be made public following public commentary time.
Speakers may not cede their time to others, and failure to speak will not increase the time allowed to other speakers. No speaker will be allowed to address the board more than once during the same meeting.
Each speaker should announce their name, community of residence, and whether they represent any organization or agency.
Speakers should take into account the rules of common courtesy and refrain from making personal attacks against employees, volunteers, students, parents, community members, or members of the board. If the comments constitute a complaint against an employee, the employee has the right to request a closed meeting. Speakers are encouraged to present complaints about a specific employee, board member, or student through proper channels established under board policy before requesting board consideration. At no time should a speaker reference a specific individual by name when speaking on an issue of concern involving personnel or students.
Members of the board and district employees will not answer questions during public commentary. However, previously stated board policies or administrative rules and regulations and corrections or clarifications to matters of fact may, be explained. A board member may, with the President's permission, ask a question of a speaker; otherwise, no dialogue is expected.
Feedback
The district will continue to solicit and provide an avenue to collect regular electronic feedback from the community. Written feedback can be submitted by electronic form, which will be available on the district website. This feedback will be collected on an on-going basis. The feedback will be collected until 4 hours prior to the meeting, at which point the feedback will be extracted and distributed to the board prior to each regular board meeting. Any feedback provided after 4 hours prior to the start of the regular board meeting will begin the collection process for the following regular meeting. The results of the feedback collected will be published in BoardDocs under a separate section on the agenda for public review.
