NA-FC school corporation cautiously accedes to heightened transparency. May this spread far and wide.

It's a WikiLeaks world in 2015, and transparency as a concept finally is seeping into the consciousness of the New Albany-Floyd County School Corporation. This is a welcomed development, even if there are many miles to travel.

Transparency, as used in science, engineering, business, the humanities and in other social contexts, implies openness, communication, and accountability. Transparency is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed. It has been defined simply as "the perceived quality of intentionally shared information from a sender".[1] For example, a cashier making change after a point of sale transaction by offering a record of the items purchased (e.g., a receipt) as well as counting out the customer's change on the counter demonstrates transparency.

Monday's article in the Courier-Journal sets the stage:

Floyd Co. school board to discuss transparency, by Kirsten Clark

New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corp. board members will vote Monday whether to make audio recordings of its meetings and other public documents more accessible to the public ...

... (Rebecca) Gardenour also said that she — along with the state’s public access counselor’s and attorney general’s offices — believes the board needs to be releasing documents made available to board members in the days before its public meetings. These documents, which often include information about upcoming action items, are considered public documents as soon as they are released to board members, she said.

“The school corporation has acted as though they’re not public until they vote on them,” she said. “That’s not true. Once they’re sent out, that’s public information.”

During the meeting itself, school board member George Gauntt objected to the posting of audio recordings as risky, because they'd be prone to tampering, presumably by Double Nought Spies or DJs-a-sampling.

(We pause to roll our eyes)

For meeting coverage, go to the News and Tribune: NA-FC Schools approves transparency measure.

Rebecca Gardenour, board president, said posting the audio from meetings isn’t out of the ordinary for boards to do.

“You do know that school corporations across the United States do this? They have audio recordings, they have it on TVs, so this is nothing new,” Gardenour said. “I haven’t heard anything about any of these things being abused in any way. This is nothing new, this is what school corporations are doing.”

Needless to say, NAC offers kudos to individuals and institutions urging and enabling transparency. Team Gahan might deign to take a memo.