The education committee of the DC council is holding hearings this fall for a variety of things, including for a bill for charter school fiscal oversight and transparency (Oct. 14); public vetting of a new charter school board member (Sept. 17); school food services (Sept. 30); and, possibly, summer modernization work.

But none of those hearings was on the council calendar at the end of August.

Part of the problem is that just having a hearing is entirely at the chair’s discretion (the hearings were listed first were on blog contained in the chair’s website: http://www.davidgrosso.org/grosso-analysis/). There may be no consultation with the entire committee as to what to have a hearing about, much less when to schedule it.

Still, public input in education issues remains imperative, so any scheduling remove creates a hurdle for public participation–in this case, a seemingly unnecessary one.