Seeking a friendlier school board

Although the Lawrence School District Board of Education has six meetings scheduled for the current school year — two more than the minimum of four required by the state — many Lawrence residents think there still aren’t enough

meetings.

Penny Schuster, the PTA president at Lawrence High School, said there used to be two meetings a month so that if an issue arose, it could be addressed immediately. “Now there’s too much time in between meetings,” Schuster said. “So things that happen aren’t addressed until after they occur.”

School board President Murray Forman said that school board meetings aren’t the sole source of information for the community, and that the administration is always accessible and has a website residents can use. “In terms of the board, this board has been more transparent than any other board,” Forman said. “The notion that the number of board meetings correlates to information is not true. The board is always willing to meet emergently, so the current schedule is more than adequate to handle the district.”

Nicole Di Iorio, a lifelong Inwood resident who lost her bid for a seat on the school board last year, said her biggest concerns with the current board are the absence of public-school parents and a lack of transparency and communication with the public. “Not only aren’t there enough meetings during the school year,” Di Iorio said, “but the meetings don’t make a difference when board members are texting on their cell phones during the public-comment portion of the meeting.”

Di Iorio added that residents are given two minutes to ask questions or make comments during the public-comment session, but trustees do not respond to them. “The district has hired security that stands next to whoever is speaking and times them for two minutes,” she said. “It puts fear into those who want to speak when you have two men in black suits standing next to you.”