Here’s an excerpt from the Carolina Public Press article:
The board that oversees Western North Carolina’s largest school system is about to make its public meetings more public.
After months of studying and debating the matter, the Buncombe County Board of Education voted Aug. 8 to pay for video coverage of its regular meetings, both online and on television.
At present, the board archives audio recordings of its meetings on its website, but in an unwieldy format. The official recording of one recent meeting, for example, was sliced into 17 different digital files, making listening to a full session something of a chore.
Soon, full videos of the meetings will be broadcast and archived online and appear on Charter Cable Channel 16, a TV channel reserved for educational programming that’s also used by Asheville City Schools, Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and UNC Asheville.
Under a plan prepared by Jan Blunt, director of communications for Buncombe County Schools, the school system will hire an outside contractor to produce the broadcasts, which could start as soon the board’s next meeting, on Sept. 5.
The arrangement is likely to be temporary, however. The board plans to have Buncombe Schools staffers take over the broadcasting sometime next year, when the board begins meeting in a multimedia-equipped auditorium in the county’s new STEM high school, which is slated to open in August 2014.
It is always a good idea for an important Board to give as many people as possible access to view their meetings at their convenience. As I said in the interview by Jon Elliston, I am very pleased that this has come about.