Automated Recognition In Your Boardroom.

As a school superintendent, you have undoubtedly watched as members of your board of education wrestle with the ever-increasing problems of school finance, policy generation, and pressure groups.

You probably also witnessed an elevated level of discussion about these critical topics at meetings of your board. And you even may have watched painfully as a member of your board with something important to say has had trouble getting the attention of the presiding officer.

In fact, board members may become so intent on being recognized to speak that they miss out on some of the pertinent discussion. I have a simple and economical answer for this issue.

Keeping Order

Our school district developed a computerized system whereby each school board member has a system button directly in front of him or her on the table. This button is hard wired to a specific key on the computer keyboard. The letter A is connected to the button by the first school board member, B is connected to the second member's button and so forth.

When a board member wants to be recognized, he or she presses the button. The computer program checks to see which letter has been activated and displays the person's name on the TV monitor in front of the board. This monitor also is used for making presentations to the board. If more than one board member has pressed a button, the computer displays their names in the order the buttons were pressed.

After recognizing each speaker, the president presses the button, deleting that member's name from the list. The others automatically move up when the top name is erased.

This procedure allows all board members to be aware of the order in which they will be recognized. It also lets them concentrate on the discussion in progress.

The computer program was written in AppleSoft BASIC on the Apple IIE with 48 kilobytes of memory. It took less than three hours to complete. The program could easily be developed by a programming instructor or it could be done by a student as a programming project.

Since the computer we use is an older Apple model, it no longer was being used in our instructional program and the cost of supplies was under $50.

This simple bit of technology may not seem worth the effort, but I guarantee it removes a major nuisance in running a productive school board meeting.