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Abstract
School districts are both big businesses and a form of local governance that is part of American democracy. When a crisis makes a district's democratic face relevant, the organization will experience a dilemma that does not occur in business-only organizations. This study examines the public meetings of a school board in the western United States as it confronted a multimillion dollar error. After reviewing the organizational crisis literature, background is provided on the district, the crisis, and the method—action-implicative discourse analysis. The district's crisis, the paper shows, was constructed through six discursive practices. Each is identified and illustrated. Because school boards are democratic bodies, they depend on having citizens willing to attend and speak out in public meetings, and they depend on a smaller set of citizens willing to run for and serve in these elected, unpaid school board positions. In crises, these two groups of citizens will have partially competing needs. As a result, local governance organizations will experience a dilemma regarding how to design their public participation. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research on organizational crisis and public meetings, and practical implications for citizens and elected officials.
An earlier version of the manuscript was presented at the National Communication Association in Chicago in November 2004.
An earlier version of the manuscript was presented at the National Communication Association in Chicago in November 2004.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Timothy Sellnow and two anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback on earlier drafts.
Notes
An earlier version of the manuscript was presented at the National Communication Association in Chicago in November 2004.
1. Taken from the superintendent's comments reported in the December 20, 2002, minutes.
2. Header information includes the meeting date and the transcript line number. The line number provides a rough sense of how far into the meeting an excerpt occurred; 700–800 lines equal an hour's meeting time.
3. Statistics about the number and size of Colorado school districts were found at http://www.cde.state.co.us/index_stats.htm
4. The key source for this description was the St. Vrain school district website. An overall description of the school district is found on this website (http://www.stvrain.k12.co.us).
5. This description is based on analysis of the St. Vrain minutes and meetings from November 20, 2002; December 12, 2002; and January 8, 2003; and from the minutes on November 11, 2002; and October 23, 2002. These three meetings were the center of public attention. In the meeting that followed these three (January 22, 2003), only three citizens spoke during audience participation.
6. See Note 8; quote comes from November 15, 2002, Open Letter.
7. Meetings are broadcast on a local TV channel, and tapes are available through the public library.
8. Analysis draws on the following documents, most of which were downloaded January 17, 2003 (URLs include the above district address followed by /boardofeducation/budget/ and the document name): Message from Dr. Randy Zila, Superintendent of Schools (zila_speech.htm); November 15, 2002, Open Letter to St. Vrain Valley School District Communities (open_letter.htm); Undated Open Letter to St. Vrain Valley Communities for the St. Vrain Valley Board of Education (open_letter_boe.htm); St. Vrain Financial Recovery Plan Parameters (svvsd_financ_recovery.htm); Road to Recovery (recovery/jan_14_03.htm); Looking Ahead (looking_ahead.htm); and Budget Implementation/Monitoring Policy, Legal Reference = C.R.S. 22-45-102 (the URL for this document is http://www.stvrain.k12.co.us/boardofeducation/policyframe.htm). In addition, the Boulder Daily Camera had information about the school district (see http://web.dailycamera.com/extra/svsd), and three articles from The Denver Post were particularly useful (Frates & McQueen, Citation2002; McQueen, Citation2002a, Citation2002b). A Lexis-Nexis search uncovered 19 relevant stories in The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News in the four-month period from November 2002–February 2003. In that same time period, the Boulder Daily Camera ran 105 stories.
9. Meeting numbers are taken from the board of education's website, which gives meetings and agendas.
10. One citizen spoke during public participation in the two meetings prior to the public announcement of the budget crisis.
11. The estimation of attendance is based on inspection of the videotape segments in conjunction with a report from the school district main office about seating capacity of the board room.