Clovis school board meetings to be televised

Clovis Municipal Schools board meetings will be televised beginning July 23, CMS board members were told at Tuesday's June board meeting.

The CMS governing body, under state mandate, will join other school districts in televising or providing audio of their regular sessions.

The mandate comes from section six of Senate Bill 137 from this year's state Legislature.

District 7 State Sen. Pat Woods, R-Broadview, described SB137 as amending the New Mexico School District Campaign Reporting Act.

"The bill deals with the training of school board members, new guidelines regarding the dismissal or contract extension of superintendents and the airing of meetings with public access," Woods said.

CMS Superintendent Renee Russ wrote in an email that the airing of future meetings will be done in the same manner as during the pandemic, which is to provide a Zoom link for those wishing to join online.

"Attendees will be required to display their first and last names and to keep their cameras on in order to remain in the meeting," Russ wrote.

Russ noted agendas will have links for virtual attendees to submit written comments prior to the meeting or to request to participate virtually during the open forum portion of the session.

"Each meeting will be recorded and these recordings will be available on the district website," Russ wrote.

Recordings of the webcasts shall be posted on the district's website within one week of the meeting's conclusion and shall be available for at least three years following the date of the meeting.

In other business at Tuesday's board meeting:

• Board members elected new officers for the year.

Cindy Osburn is the board's new president, Sharon Epps is vice president and Paul Cordova is secretary.

Ninth Judicial District Judge Ben Cross administered the oaths for the new board officers.

• Deputy Superintendent of Academic Services and Leadership Carrie Nigreville gave a presentation to the board on the CMS internal computer network's security filter.

Nigreville said the system "protects students through monitoring those on the CMS system."

Nigreville noted the system had about 11 million searches in the past school year.

"Just over 1,600 were flagged, 12,000 were blocked, 92% of the alerts happened after school hours," Nigreville said.

The "flagged" items included messages regarding drugs, suicide and other issues the system identifies as concerning.

Alerts of concern are forwarded to proper personnel for further investigation, she said.

Nigreville reported activity the security system dealt with in the 2023-2024 school year doubled from the 2022-2023 school year.