Virtual Board Meeting Tips

Over the last month, we’ve been attending virtual board meetings of schools in Minnesota to learn more about how they are responding to education under the current circumstances. During that time, we’ve naturally learned some operational and public participation lessons captured below. If you have your own positive or negative issues pop up during your meetings, please share with us so we can compile and share tips with other schools!

Operational

• Roll Call Votes. Most schools followed the Open Meeting Law’s requirement for virtual meetings to use roll call voting. It increases accountability!

• However, voting via text chat isn’t helpful for audio-only members. We get it, roll call voting is a pain when each board member needs to mute and unmute themselves. There are always one or two people who don’t realize they are voting while muted! Typing votes into text chat may violate the spirit of Minnesota Open Meeting Law.

• Record the minutes in real time. One of the advantages of digital meetings is the ease of looking at the same information. Consider using Google Docs or an online Microsoft Word document to record the minutes so people can view and make any corrections instantly, capturing the discussions accurately in the moment.

Public Participation

• Public Call-in. One way to avoid Zoom bombing is to limit members of the public to calling in on a muted line. Generally, this worked well. However, remember to…

• Allow guests to download and/or view meeting documents. There were instances where we couldn’t follow along with the conversation because we couldn’t view the documents that were being discussed.

• Make it easy to join. Many schools post the meeting code on their website. Some schools have provided a contact email to request an invitation. If using the latter, make sure that all of the correct information gets sent. We have asked for the information to join some, but only received the board packet without the meeting code.