Chris Small has seen them, the meeting visitors who wilt in the heat of the school-board conference room, then nod off to sleep.
‘It’s uncomfortable in the summer,’ said Small, a State College school-board member, lamenting the conference room. ‘It’s often uncomfortable in the winter when you fill it with enough folks’ and the temperature rises.
And when ‘you bring people in here for awards,’ Small added, ‘that’s a zoo.’
The often-cramped, often-overheated conference room has become has become a sticking point — perhaps literally, and otherwise — for the school board. It’s tough to fit more than a couple dozen or so visitors comfortably into the space, where the board issues student awards, hosts community discussions and leads hours-long meetings.
Accommodations for the physically disabled may be another concern for the board. An exterior ramp provides wheelchair access to the conference room, but bathrooms are on the basement level — without any elevator or ramp access.
And so on Monday, the board’s communications subcommittee will recommend that the full school board have a ‘test run’ and hold a work session in the State College Borough Municipal Building, 243 S. Allen St.
It’s roughly a block away from the school district’s administration building, 131 W. Nittany Ave., which houses the current board conference room. The Nittany Avenue building, originally constructed as a grammar school, opened in 1924 and has served as an administrative headquarters for decades.
At a meeting Wednesday, subcommittee members generally agreed that the venue for regular board meetings and work sessions ought to be more accommodating. They discussed several options. One is a permanent relocation to the borough building, which, like the Nittany Avenue building, is wired to deliver live meeting coverage to the C-NET television audience.
Another option: The school board could move the meetings to another school building. But other than the Nittany Avenue facility, no school buildings in the district are wired for live C-NET coverage. (Board member Jim Leous suggested that C-NET, within a couple years, may be able to transmit live coverage via the Internet — a development that could make live coverage an option in any school building.)
A third option is a hybrid model: The board could use the borough building on a temporary basis until live C-NET coverage is available in another school building.
However, board member Penni Fishbaine said she’s adamantly opposed to using the borough building. She thinks it’s important that the board gather in a school facility, she said at the subcommittee meeting.
‘I do not want to be the State College School District of the Borough,’ Fishbaine said, emphasizing that the district serves the entire Centre Region. ‘I want that to be clear to everyone.’
Small, another subcommittee member, appeared open to the borough-building idea. ‘We can be independent from the borough in our actions,’ he said.
More than a year ago, a motion that the school board reconsider its meeting venue failed to gain a second. But subcommittee members seemed confident Wednesday that the idea will gain more traction this time around, when they bring it up on Monday.
A key point for consideration, board member Richard Bartnik said, is that the district administrative offices are likely to leave West Nittany Avenue at some point, anyway — whether through a Memorial Field overhaul or otherwise.
‘Sooner or later, staying where we are (for board meetings) is not an option,’ he said.
The Monday board meeting is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. in the conference room at 131 W. Nittany Ave. It will be open to the public.
Earlier coverage: State College School Board Considers New Venue For Meetings
