District Weighs Virtual Board Access; 'Could Extend Sessions By 20 Minutes,' Says Clerk

WAUKESHA — The Waukesha School District's governance and administration committee will vote next month on a pilot program that would let residents attend monthly board meetings remotely over Zoom, a change district clerk Pam Oslowski says could add 18 to 22 minutes to the average session.

Oslowski's office ran the feasibility study after three residents asked at the September meeting why they had to drive to the administration building on West Avenue to watch trustees discuss boiler maintenance schedules for forty-five minutes. The study tracked audio delay, screen-sharing setup time, and what Oslowski's report calls 'the chat box effect,' in which remote viewers submit written comments at a rate nearly triple that of in-person speakers.

Eighteen to twenty-two minutes, specifically

The report, a 14-page document Oslowski presented to the committee on October 13, breaks the added time into three categories: technical troubleshooting (6 to 9 minutes), increased public comment volume (9 to 11 minutes), and what the report labels 'transition buffer,' the time it takes a trustee to confirm a remote speaker can be heard before yielding the floor (3 minutes, flat, every meeting, no exceptions).

'We modeled this against our April and June meetings, which already ran long because of the referendum discussion,' Oslowski said. 'Even stripping that out, you're looking at a meeting that used to run 52 minutes now running somewhere between 70 and 74. That's before anyone's microphone cuts out.'

Committee chair Trustee Carl Deneen said he supports the pilot but wants language in the resolution capping remote public comment at three minutes per speaker, the same limit applied in the room, after a resident testing the district's Zoom account during a September dry run spoke for eleven minutes about drop-off lane signage before a staffer could mute him.

"I'm not against progress. I just don't think progress should run past nine o'clock on a school night."

— Carl Deneen, governance and administration committee chair

A November test run, with conditions

If approved, the pilot would run for the November and December meetings before the full board decides whether to make remote access permanent. Oslowski's office is recommending a 100-person Zoom cap, a five-second audio delay built into the livestream to catch profanity before it reaches the district's YouTube channel, and a rule requiring remote speakers to state their name and the street they live on, mirroring the in-person sign-up sheet.

Resident Denise Fahrbach, who attended the September meeting to raise the drop-off lane issue in person, said she'd use the remote option going forward if it's approved, mainly to avoid the parking lot at the administration building, which she described as 'two rows short of what it needs to be and has been since at least 2019.'

'I don't need to be in the room to say the same thing I'd say in the room,' Fahrbach said. 'I just need to not drive around the block four times first.'

Not everyone is sold on the math

Trustee Deneen said the committee considered a shorter trial, limiting the pilot to a single meeting, but Oslowski's office advised against it, noting that a one-meeting sample wouldn't account for the rise in comment volume expected once remote access becomes general knowledge rather than something only the three original residents know about.

'The first meeting is never the real number,' Oslowski said. 'Word travels. By meeting three, everyone who's ever wanted to complain about the boiler schedule from home will know they can.'

The committee's vote is scheduled for its next meeting, on November 10. If approved, the district plans to publish Zoom access instructions on its website at least one week ahead of the December session, along with a recommended browser list, after the September dry run also surfaced compatibility issues with at least one resident's web browser from 2019.