Remote Board Meeting Participation

LEGAL BRIEF

What do you do when a school board member cannot attend a crucial public meeting in person? Perhaps the member is recovering from surgery or finally found time for that three-week Caribbean cruise.

Worse yet, what if multiple board members are unavailable to attend a meeting in person where the board must take time-sensitive actions, threatening a lack of quorum?

Until recent times, the board member had to miss the meeting or, at best, connect via telephone. Sometimes public meetings would have to be canceled due to a lack of quorum.

The widespread adoption of remote meeting technology has helped solve the problem of when board members and other important meeting participants are unavailable to be physically present in the boardroom but who otherwise are available to participate.

I have attended school board meetings where board members were in Hawaii or ill at home or hunkered down in their home office with their cat strolling across the screen. In each of these circumstances, the board and its board members were nevertheless able to conduct the important business of the school district by allowing flexibility for remote participation. But superintendents should be aware of the legal and practical considerations for ensuring that meetings involving remote participants are successful and lawful.