An issue that comes up every so often is the fact that some Board of Education members participate in meetings online and some in person. It is understandable that some folks, especially teachers, have a bone to pick with this as it was the Board that was insistent on returning teachers to face-to-face teaching in the classroom before the majority were able to be fully vaccinated against COVID. It is easy from that standpoint to see Board members’ actions as saying, “in person for thee but not for me.”
But let’s zoom out to look at the practice of online/hybrid meetings as a whole. The pandemic was certainly the cause of their proliferation. But, several years on, I can see many good reasons for offering the option in a variety of settings. Why? Because it removes obstacles to participation.
Streaming public meetings and religious services (with replay available) opens a door to engagement not simply to the immunocompromised, but also addresses other challenges. For example, community members may not be able to attend in person because:
- they are caregivers of young children, the elderly, or disabled
- they themselves are elderly or disabled
- they don’t have adequate transportation
- employment commitments make getting to the meetings difficult or impossible
And there are probably more that I am not thinking of at the moment.
Allowing the option of remote interaction has been a boon in health care and mental health treatment as well. I’m not suggesting that it works for everything but it absolutely has shown its worth over the last several years.
Yesterday, while participating in an online church service, I heard the words, “As we move away from the pandemic…” and it made me wonder if there is now a push to “move away” from accommodations that were instituted because of COVID without evaluating whether they may have enduring value. As so often is the case, “the return to normal” isn’t normal for everybody. The people who were being excluded from community life pre-COVID were often simply invisible to “normal” folks.
I have spent quite some time bemoaning the fact that the CA Board often makes decisions without hearing from the whole of the community because certain chunks of it are never “in the room.” That concept is broader than the Columbia Association or the Board of Education. Online participation allows more (and different) people to be in the room and that is a good thing.
When I hear people say they want to go back to normal what I hear is that they are just fine without having those people in the room.
We may have “discovered” Zoom meetings and streamed events because of COVID and boy, many of us are probably sick of them. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something there to be learned beyond the avoidance of sickness. Removing obstacles to participation is good for everyone.
I’m not so keen on going back to normal if it means going back to forgetting about the people who don’t fit in.
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