Hamilton school board debates video-recording policy, explores increased transparency

HAMILTON >> After going two years with less transparency, the Hamilton Township Board of Education is revisiting its video-recording policy and considering whether it should be expanded.

The school board debated the issue at its Jan. 24 public meeting after the Rev. Joseph E. Woods, senior pastor of Saint Phillips Baptist Church, asked the board whether it is open to videotaping and broadcasting key portions of school board meetings that currently do not get aired.

The school board used to videotape and broadcast entire school board meetings in full, but the board changed that policy on March 21, 2016, when it decided to turn off the cameras at school board meetings except to record presentations and pomp and glitter ceremonies.

Longtime school board member Richard Kanka explained the rationale for why the board restricted its video-recording policy, saying the cameras invited people to come to board meetings for the specific purpose of lashing verbal abuse upon the school board members.

Kanka has served on the board for the last nine years and “sat here and listened to people during the public comment throw racial epithets at the board, besmirch all our reputations,” he said at the Jan. 24 board meeting, “and all they did was scream about that they were allowed to go up there and speak what they wanted. First Amendment right, so to speak.”

Kanka recalled a prior committee meeting that devolved into what he called “a horror show,” saying members of the public had treated him and his colleagues “very, very poorly, and all we were trying to do was help out and bring the concerns of the public to the board.”

“It just put a bad, bad taste in my mouth,” Kanka said of that prior experience.

The school board’s restrictive video-recording policy appears to have deterred rabble-rousers from making public comments at board meetings, but it also had the effect of shutting the public out from seeing certain aspects of school board meetings that are informative and full of substance.

Recognizing the downside to its current policy, the nine-member school board at its Jan. 24 meeting appears to have reached a consensus that more aspects of the school board’s public business should be videotaped and televised and streamed online so that more members of the public are kept in the loop.

Kanka said the public atmosphere at school board meetings “has gotten a lot better since the cameras were taken away” but is willing to embrace an idea that school board member Cameron J. Cardinale floated — turning the cameras back on for a limited trial run to see how it goes.

“I don’t mind videotaping the whole thing,” Kanka said, “but if it gets out of control again, I can’t deal with that, because I’ve dealt with it for over seven years up here, and it was really bad. … We had a couple bad apples come up there and ruin it for 90,000 citizens in this township, and that’s a damn shame.”

“That was the past,” school board member Susan Ferrara said in response to Kanka, adding she oftentimes had engaged in “taking the board to task” as a member of the public before she won election to the Hamilton Township Board of Education.

“Taking us to task is one thing,” Kanka said, “but throwing all the bombs at us, that’s another thing. Personal attacks on each board member, that was ridiculous. And the people that were doing it didn’t care. And when the cameras went off, the people that were doing it aren’t here no more. If they come back, I’d say shut them off.”

Four school board members — Ferrara, Cardinale, Albert Gayzik and Jessica Young — at the Jan. 24 meeting said they wanted to revisit the video-recording policy after Woods asked the board where it stood on the issue.

“I am all with Pastor Woods,” Ferrara said. “I am ready to turn the cameras back on.”

Other board members voiced concerns with videotaping public comments.

“I think the concern with the people on the board that did not want the cameras to go back on … was because of the drama that happened with the beginning public comment and the end,” school board President Susan Lombardo said. “Board members have to act like adults no matter what we’re doing, and we should, but I think the cameras aggravated it for those particular portions.”

School board member Anthony Celentano said certain members of the public played to the cameras. “Once they’ve seen themselves on TV,” he said, “it was like a show.”

Although the school board currently restricts what gets aired on TV and what gets streamed online, the school board’s official camera man records the audio of entire school board meetings. Any member of the public can submit an Open Public Records Act request seeking to obtain a copy of the audio. The Trentonian on Friday received an audio CD of the Jan. 24 school board meeting under an OPRA request.

The township school board appears open to videotaping and broadcasting entire school board meetings in full except for public comments, but the board declined to amend its video-recording policy at the Jan. 24 meeting. The board encountered a proverbial roadblock on the issue after being advised of legal concerns over compliance with ADA or the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Hamilton Superintendent of Schools Scott Rocco and school board attorney Patrick Carrigg are expected to iron out the legalities so that the school board can hold an up-or-down vote at its upcoming Feb. 28 board meeting on whether to change its currently restrictive video-recording policy to something that is more transparent.