Information on the new Granville-Whitehall football program, virtual participation in board meetings and updates on the school’s track and free lunch program were discussed at the July 5 Granville Board of Education meeting.
Following a question in the “public comment” session of the meeting by Granville town historian Erik Pekar on what the team name, mascot(s) and uniforms of the newly merged Granville-Whitehall football program will look like, superintendent Tom McGurl provided as much information as he knew.
“So, color schemes, I believe we are using their maroon and our gold. I have not yet seen the jerseys but I’m told Florida State University, they’re very similar to theirs,” McGurl said. “We are going with Granville-Whitehall for at least this first season and then after that we’ll look at the kids involved if they want to rename the team or if they want to have their own mascot.”
NYVTmedia was unable to obtain a picture of the uniforms by press time.
The board tabled a decision for a later date that would allow up to four board members to attend a meeting virtually, according to New York State Open Meetings Law.
Board president Audrey Hicks requested the drafted resolution go to the board’s policy committee before the board took any action. Board member Ed Vladyka also spoke on his personal stance on the collaboration of the board as a unit in-person.
“I’m the type of person that believes that this body functions at its best when the vast majority of its members are actually here in-person,” Vladyka said. “The way this document is laid out, it allows four members at any given time to be virtual with basically any reason they want to be virtual. All you have to have is a quorum and it gives you a very broad term of why you can be virtual.”
Board clerk Ashlee Zinn said if the new resolution were to pass, notice coming in under 48 hours of a meeting commencing that a member will be remote for extraordinary circumstances will not require the listing of the board member’s location while participating in the meeting.
However, if the board member states he or she will be attending a meeting from a remote location more than four business days prior to a scheduled meeting, then the location of their meeting area, which must be accessible to the public, must be listed.
“For example, if you’re at the Marriott and you want to do it in your hotel room, you have to let the front desk know that you’re doing it so if anybody asks to attend that they will be directed to your room,” Hicks said.
“Which we have done in the past,” Zinn added.
“I’ve done that myself,” Vladyka said. “My concern is tightening up the reason why people are virtual.”
The drafted resolution requires any virtual attendee to be “heard, seen and identified” for all segments excluding executive session.
Additionally, McGurl provided brief updates to the deterioration of the track and the community eligibility program for free lunches.
“The community eligibility program, that’s the free-lunch program, we have been reauthorized for the next four years,” McGurl said. “That’s great news for the community, people have definitely enjoyed that over the last couple years now,
“The track, the engineering firm was here from the insurance company, they have looked at it and they feel it is a water/moisture related issue. They feel another more specialized engineer needs to be involved in looking at this so the insurance company is working on ensuring a more specialized engineer on our behalf to come out and look at it… the track, I was out on it, does look to be the same as the last time I was out there so I don’t think we’re seeing as much shifting right now which is great news.”
