Televised meetings underway

The Las Virgenes Unified School District board meetings are now available for viewing on the Internet, on the Calabasas television channel CTV, and at local libraries and city halls.

Deborah Steller, CTV media operations director, presented a proposal to the school board earlier in the month on how Calabasas would videotape, boardcast and later archive the board meetings to residents in the school district boundaries.

The Oct. 11 school board meeting was the first meeting taped by the city of Calabasas. To view the meeting, go online at www. cityofcalabasas.com, find the CTV archives link and scroll down to the Las Virgenes Unified School District link.

A popular feature of the archival system is “jump to,” which allows viewers to jump directly to specific agenda items, rather than watching the entire program.

Calabasas will provide videotapes of the meetings to the cities of Agoura Hills, Hidden Hills and Westlake Village to air on their government access channels, Steller said.

The school board meets twice a month on the second and fourth Tuesdays. CTV will broadcast the meeting on Thursdays. Tapes will be ready for distribution to the other cities within one day and also be available in libraries.

“This is a very generous offer from the city of Calabasas,” said board member Terilyn Finders,

“I think it’s a fantastic public service,” said board member Cindy Iser,

District Deputy Superintendent Donald Zimring said that a link also would be added to the school district website to access the Calabasas archives.

Based on 22 meetings per school year, Steller said the cost to videotape, archive and edit the three-hour meetings would be about $8,500. Providing tapes and DVDs to cities and libraries will add another $3,000 each year.

“The city of Calabasas is willing to absorb the cost of meeting coverage as the city council feels that televising the school board meetings will be a great benefit to the community,” Steller said.

The Las Virgenes district serves 12,100 students in Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Agoura Hills and parts of Westlake Village and Bell Canyon.