T-R PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM Marshalltown School Board members Leah Stanley, Maria Morales and Karina Hernandez discuss goals for the 2025-26 school year. One possible goal is finding ways to keep the board meetings on schedule.

After a brief meeting on Monday, Marshalltown Community School District board members discussed goals for the 2025-26 school year.

One matter members focused on was how to keep board meetings on schedule, while still receiving the valuable information frequently presented.

“The thing is, we have great presentations and great content,” Board Member Zach Wahl said. “It’s hard because it’s good and we need to be hearing it, but how do we stay on task, though?”

Member Leah Stanley said going over a time limit is something people encounter in business environments.

“Certain speakers in a day-long meeting presentation tend to not stick to their time limit,” she said. “It’s something we do a lot of coaching with those individuals so they really understand how much time they have, and they have to allow time for questions.”

Stanley said it is a matter of working with people on presentation skills, so they know how to hit the most important points during their time. She added it is something the board could work on.

Board President Sean Heitmann said that during a meeting, it is difficult to tell a presenter their time is up, especially when they are giving valuable information and people are asking questions.

Board Vice President Sara Faltys said it is one thing if a presentation lasts 25 minutes, and another when the board is engaging the presenter in active conversation.

“For engagement, if it goes another 15 minutes, I think that’s good,” she said.

Member Karina Hernandez agreed with Faltys, adding it’s important to let a presenter know about the time limit out of respect for other people who are waiting to present.

“We have people who are just here to present and leave,” she said. ” . . . If there’s conversation, obviously go for it, but you do have a time limit.”

Superintendent Theron Schutte said the standard time for a presentation is 10 minutes, unless it is a very special subject.

“Educators often want to share a lot of information, especially if they don’t get a lot of opportunity to do that sort of thing,” he said.

Schutte said they try to schedule the agenda based on the presenters. For example, for people who live outside of the district, he said they will try to place them earlier in the agenda. However, things pop up. Schutte said this past year, some of the school board meetings were presentation heavy.

“You can easily eat up an hour to an hour and a half with three or four presentations,” he said. “. . . The thing that is really valuable about our board wanting to learn and know and be able to speak intelligently if approached by somebody from the community about these things.”

Stanley stressed that she does not want to cut recognitions, which can sometimes take a lot of time. She said the number of recognitions should be noted, what they might look like and account for that time in agendas differently.

Hernandez said she loves recognitions and presentations, but some of the recognitions could be presentations.

“Some of the recognitions we have had I would have liked to see as an agenda item because they had so much to present,” she said.

Schutte said they try to explain the difference between recognitions and presentations, and sometimes presentations have included information in recognitions. He added that during the past year, there have been a lot of accomplishments to be proud of.

According to Stanley, it is not a matter of shortening the presentations but wanting the reliability of a schedule. If she sees a meeting is scheduled to adjourn at 7 p.m., she wants to be able to do other things afterward.

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Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.