LEWISTON — To show the public how it conducts school business, the Lewiston School Committee’s regular meeting this Monday, March 11, will be broadcast live on Great Falls Cable TV, Channel 22.
The meeting will be held at City Hall instead of the School Department’s Dingley Building, because the council chambers are equipped for broadcasting.
The experiment will help committee members decide whether all meetings should be broadcast, as is done by the Auburn School Committee and Lewiston and Auburn city councils.
Committee Chairman Jim Handy said he welcomes “opportunities to expand the accessibility of the work of the School Committee. It is certainly possible that other meetings will be televised. The downside is that it is only aired through one cable provider and not over the air or by the two major satellite providers.”
No changes in the meeting format are expected.
The committee approved the experiment in January.
Superintendent Bill Webster was gathering cost estimates to equip the Dingley Building’s meeting room for live broadcasting. Those estimates will be compared to the low cost of broadcasting meetings from the City Council chambers.
On Monday night’s agenda is the nomination of a new principal at Montello Elementary School to replace retiring Principal Deborah Goding.
Other items include reviewing the 2013-14 school calendar and district goals. There will also be discussion about legislation that proposes phasing out the waiver currently allowing districts to forgo making minimum local taxpayer contributions to the municipality’s state education costs. Lewiston and Auburn are now making less than the minimum payments required by the state school funding formula, as allowed by the waiver.
Also up for discussion is a budget review of the English Language Learner program, the Lewiston Middle School and Lewiston High School.
The meeting begins at 6:45 p.m.
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