Rockingham County School Board Electronic Meetings Joe Hill Director of Math and Technology February 28, 2000

What’s involved... Each School Board member has been assigned a laptop computer. Board business will be conducted using these laptops and information downloaded from the RCPS website. The current practice of mailing packets to Board members will be eliminated.

RCPS Administrators’ Responsibility Post all files (previous meeting minutes, agenda for upcoming meeting, documents for discussion/action, etc.) on the RCPS website several days prior to Board Meetings. Files will normally be posted in format of MS Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint).

School Board Members’ Responsibility Download and review files prior to Board meetings. Organize files on your laptop so that you can retrieve files as needed. Bring laptops to Board meetings and open the files for the meeting.

Advantages to Electronic Meetings Reduces paper Allows Board members easy access to files from previous meetings. Board members can review files as their schedules allow instead of waiting on the bulk mailing. Provides the public with an easy way to access documents.

Special Notes... Non-public documents will be e-mailed directly to Board Members. For a while, meetings will be conducted using both paper and laptops. Eventually the paper copies will cease. X

What if a Board member is unable to download the files? A copy of the meeting’s files will be brought to each Board meeting on a 3.5” diskette.

What if a Board member forgets to bring his/her laptop to the meeting? Members will able to share. Laptops are also being provided to Dr. Kidd, Dr. Kennon, and Mr. May.

How do RCPS staff members get their documents posted? They must send them as e-mail attachments to Dr. Kidd or Mrs. Dofflemyer. Dr. Kidd or Mrs. Dofflemyer will forward the documents to a special e-mail conference called “SchoolBoard” which actually posts them on the web.

Can someone else post documents to “SchoolBoard”? No, only Dr. Kidd, Mrs. Dofflemyer, and the RCPS Technology Staff have network rights to post to this conference.

What if someone wants to make a presentation and doesn’t forward his documents to be posted? No problem…he can still bring paper handouts. But he should understand that these paper documents may not be easily accessed at a later time, unlike documents which have been posted to the web and downloaded.

Where do you go to find the files? Visit www.rockingham.k12.va.us Select the General Info section Select Documents for School Board Meetings The current meetings’ files will be shown as attachments to the documents which are on the desktop. Previous meetings’ files are also kept archived on this site.

The Rockingham County School Board... A Board that clicks..