Edmonds Beacon - Your Hometown News Source

Edmonds School District Superintendent Rebecca Miner and the school board have released the following message on its website regarding public speaking for the April 25 meeting:

The Board and superintendent are grateful for all the feedback we have received both through email and through written and public comments at the special meeting last week.

Almost 2,500 people watched our live stream, and as a part of our board meeting, 91 oral public comments were made and 70 written comments were received. Additionally, the board and superintendent have received over 350 emails regarding the proposed budget.

As a part of each regular business meeting of the board, we conduct business necessary to maintain operations of the district and also have informative presentations. At the special meeting last week, the board wanted to hear from as many of you as possible regarding the proposed budget reductions for the 23-24 school year.

As we continue to support district operations, at future meetings, we need to ensure that we are allowing for public comments while also retaining a safe environment for the presenters (including, at our upcoming meeting, elementary students), staff, and community members who attend our board meetings

At the special meeting, the district staff were not able to adhere to established fire code capacity limits, and for that reason we are making some changes for the upcoming board meeting.

The next school board regular business meeting is scheduled April 25 at 6:30 p.m. The agenda is posted on BoardDocs, and will contain a link to submit written comments only. This link will remain open until 3 p.m. the day of the meeting.

Anyone may submit written comments, with no limit to the number of comments that may be submitted. These written comments are sent to all board members and are posted to the meeting agenda so they become a part of the record of the meeting available to anyone to view.

At the business meeting, one hour will be scheduled for oral public comments (in person and virtual combined) prior to the board discussing the proposed educational reduction plan.

Because of the anticipated number of requests to speak, the comments will be limited to two minutes per speaker, and the 30 speakers will be selected by lottery.

To indicate interest in speaking, which you may do either in person or virtually, you must do one of the following before 4 p.m. on Monday, 4/24:

Use this link to request to speak: https://bit.ly/3N8CtMu. Note: the link does not work for all.

Come to the district office if you cannot use the link above to request to speak.

Call the district office at 425-431-7000 to request to speak.

On Tuesday morning, speakers will be randomly selected from the list. Those selected will be notified by Tuesday at noon via email or phone. Those not selected to speak will not be notified. As a reminder, those not selected to present their comments orally will be able to submit written comments as indicated above.

Doors for the board meeting will open at 6 pm, with a line designated for those wishing to be admitted. Individuals wishing to attend will be admitted on a first-come-basis up to capacity for the board room and adjacent conference rooms. For safety reasons (fire code), we cannot allow additional people to enter the building.

Once we have admitted members of the public to capacity levels, we will let others in line know capacity is full. Livestream will be available. We are unable to change the building location due to technology needs for meeting live stream and recording functionality.

We deeply appreciate the engagement from our community and are glad that we can offer a variety of ways for interested parties to provide input and attend or observe the meeting.