Q & A: Jennifer Abell, school board member, Charles County, Maryland

Jennifer Abell has quite a story to tell. The Maryland local school board member has been kicked around for blogging, which happens to the best of us. But the culprit in this case was a fellow board member. Earlier this year at least one of her colleagues reportedly was displeased by Jennifer's immediate posting to her blog the minutes of her board's monthly meetings. Maryland's Baynet.com, in a November 2007 update, picks it up from there:

At one point the Board and Vice-Chair Bobbie Wise, in particular, sought legal means by which to punish Abell and restrain her from broadcasting any public information before it came through official channels. Wise preferred to have all school system information posted to the official school system website or announced to the press by Chairman Donald Wade. Board Attorney Eric Schwartz informed Wise that Abell was legally allowed to post non-confidential information. However, he also suggested a method of punishment: the Chair could refuse to formally recognize an offending board member when she signaled her wish to speak during a meeting, silencing her unless she spoke out of turn.

All this punishing and restraining. What kind of school district is this!

Anyway, it was Municipalist himself who moderated the forum at a national conference that Jennifer refers to below as having inspired her to take the leap. Municipalist could not be prouder!

Charles County, located in Southern Maryland, has a population of 133,049 and is considered part of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The school district enrollment is 26,669 students.

What is the history of your blog? What got you started? The concept of starting a blog began after attending a session at the National School Boards Association Conference in Chicago in April of 2006. They actually encouraged board members and superintendents to have a blog-site and dialog with the community and the session even covered the how-to's. What a wonderful way to reach out to the public. After months of pondering the idea, and a plea from the public to be more transparent, it came to fruition and Ready Willing and Abell was born.

What are your goals for your blog? My blog was started as a personal endeavor to try and be more open and transparent to the public providing as much information and knowledge as possible, engage the community, answer questions, state my opinions and to receive my constituents input on important issues and hopefully with everyone's cooperation, come up with solutions and innovative ideas for our school system.  In addition,  at the time I began my blog, the Board meetings were being held at an inconvenient time for the public to attend, the meetings were not being televised, and the minutes from the meetings were not reaching the public for a month or more.

How has the experience changed you or your work, if at all? The experience has enabled me to receive valuable input from the public on upcoming agenda items, gaining valuable insight prior to an official vote.

What are you some of your favorite moments of your blogging days? What some of your worst moments? One of the worst moments of blogging occurred after the election in 2006.  Some of my fellow board members were very disgruntled with my blog and tried to take legal action to have it ceased.  We even had a work session on changing the board's code of conduct.  The legal advice was that they could censure me (announce publicly that they disprove of my actions or that the chairman of the board could simply "overlook" me when we are discussing issues.) My First Amendment rights trumped any Board of Education Code of Conduct, and the blog stayed.  I believe my fellow board members have become accustomed to my site now and don't feel as threatened by it.  While none of them have ventured to post on it (unless it was anonymously), I do know some of them read it on a regular basis.

My favorite moment is the satisfaction I feel from being able to assist someone else and the occasional thank you.

What advice would you give other school board members considering blogging? DO IT!!!  You owe it to your public that elected you and put you in office!  It can be simple and free (such as mine) or you can go elaborate and pay a small fee.  It's easy and very rewarding.  Contact me and I will be more than happy to assist you.

[UPDATE: Jennifer will speak at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando March 29, 2008 in a session I am hosting on school board members who blog.]