Plymouth-Canton School Board Members New and Old, to Meet Saturday

Three members of Plymouth-Canton Community Schools' board of education have planned a meeting with the four newly elected board members for what some are calling a "School Board 101" session.

Current school trustees Judy Mardigian, Barry Simescu and Adrienne Davis are scheduled to meet with the four who will take office on Jan. 1: Mark Horvath, Mike Maloney, Sheila Paton and John Barrett. The meeting, which will include interim superintendent Jeremy Hughes, will be led by Karen Cross, director of leadership for the Michigan Association of School Boards.

Davis, reached by phone Friday afternoon, said the session is intended to be a review of governance.

"It's review for some, new for others, in a more relaxed atmosphere," she said. "It's all above board and acceptable. This is not a practice that's uncommon when people want to get a jumpstart on a new year. I think it will be an opportunity for us to come together and not specifically, say, set policy."

Cross said in a phone call Friday afternoon that the retreat topics will include roles and responsibilities as well as operating procedures. With four new board members, "It will be helpful for everyone to review and get on the same page with respect to how they work with each other as a board-superintendent governance team," she said.

School Board 101

Simescu said this type of "School Board 101 training covers what you should and shouldn't do on the board, that kind of concept. It's a program available to all Michigan Association of School Board members and it's usually a 4- or 6-hour session on a Saturday. They are scheduled throughout the year."

He said he's taken such classes in the past, as have other school board members.

Mardigian said that while she's taken similar training, she looks forward to everyone on the board "hearing it all together. Then when you get into an area where ...." she paused. "It's easy to say a board member micromanages but there are definitely shades of gray in this work."

She said the workshop will give the board a touchstone when work starts in earnest in January.

Horvath, a former school board president, said he looks forward to the training, adding that he wants to get to know all the board members and understand what their major concerns are for the district's future.

Aiming at Transparency

He said that while no public notice of the meeting was necessary -- because a quorum (enough current school board members to vote on an issue) won't be present. But Horvath said a meeting notice should have been posted and the meeting should be considered public. He said lack of openness has hurt the board's reputation.

"We've got to get away from this 'two people meeting in Panera and saying I'm going to vote this way...'" he said, adding later, "That meeting absolutely, positively should be public. Forget what the (Sunshine) law says ... I don't want to keep pointing to the past, but you can talk with the folks I served with in the past; you had to work pretty hard to convince us to have a closed meeting. That's the way it should be. I'm spending other people's money."

Steven Sneideman, who lost his seat in the last election, said he was aware of the event but "I was not invited. At one time, I received some information about it, but it turns out I wasn't supposed to be on that list. I think this board needs to do a lot of work on operating procedures and code of ethics, making sure they are on the same page. You can change the players but that doesn't change the underlying issues."

The meeting is set for 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Schoolcraft Community College's VistaTech Center, in room W210C.