Fayette Co. Board of Education

The FCBOE and their forgotten "Rolls Royce" software

Tue, 07/01/2008 - 4:07pm
By: sniffles5

Yesterday, someone on these blogs (his/her name escapes me) lamented the lack of transparency in the Fayette County School Board.

A quick perusal of the FCBOE website reveals precious little information communicated to the public: we can access cryptic agendas (LINK) and insultingly brief "recaps" (LINK).

I did a little research to see what other county boards of education were doing. I found that Dekalb County has invested in Rolls-Royce-class board meeting software called "Eboard". Eboard allows any sort of public board to manage to defined goals, and permits citizens to review detailed agenda items and understand things like costs involved, vendors involved, action items that need decisions, etc. It is truly phenomenal software...take a look (HERE) for a good example of how to do a board meeting correctly.

I got to wondering why the heck can't Fayette county utilize a great tool like this?

Guess what?

We already have this software installed on the FCBOE website!

Dekalb county uses about 80% of the features of Eboard...chances are very good that if a citizen WANTS to find out about a particular meeting agenda item and how it relates to the county's education goals, it's out there.

Fayette county, on the other hand, uses maybe 5% of the features of Eboard. It seems to be mostly a repository of press releases. How discouraging!

We've had this fantastic software up and running since February 2008 but we've only scratched the surface of what it can do!!

  1. Board goals? UNDEFINED.
  2. Abstracts of agenda items? UNDEFINED.
  3. Costs associated with proposals? UNDEFINED.
  4. Votes on agenda items? NOT KEPT.

a sad FCBOE Example

I can't tell you how disappointed I was to learn that we had a fantastic solution readily available to us but have opted not to use it. It's almost as if the current Board of Education WANTS to keep citizens in the dark.

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You Can Thank Marion Key for the E-Board Stalling
Submitted by dorthea on Tue, 07/01/2008 - 4:55pm.

Three of the board members have tried at each annual retreat to get Bob Todd and Marion Key to agree to using E-Board. But since both of them did not want to use computers, they disagreed. It wasn't until the board of distinction process proceeded that they HAD to agree to use it, because in order to be a board of distinction you have to use e-board....it's part of the transparency so desired by the public. That was obtained in February. Unfortunately the uploading of most of this stuff is controlled by GSBA and not entirely done by local staff.....I know.....I'm one of them. We could have been using this tool two years ago but Bob and Marion kept us in the dark ages. Now we're in the process of uploading everything.

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Dorthea..lets play nice on the playground or Cal will make
Submitted by buckstopshere on Wed, 07/02/2008 - 12:20am.

you miss recess!! That is just not true! Remember how the FCBOE (SMITH, SMOLA & WRIGHT) or should we say the 3 amigos like to spin things!!Good grief, Bobb has not even been back on the board for 2 years yet. Remember Dory that facts are facts and the truth is the truth!
The only reason the 3 Amigos wanted to be a board of Dysfunction was for political gain. All you have to do is apply and start putting things on the webpage to make it look like you are informing the public. Why are you secretly dumping the policies/by-laws without any public input? Certainly not for the public's benefit!!

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