The school committee representing the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School is considering a turn to artificial intelligence to help record their legally-required meeting minutes, as the volume of committee and subcommittee meetings is straining its usual, human notetakers.
Artificial intelligence, which has slowly made inroads in some facets of every day life, could could be the easiest and most cost-effective solution for a school committee that has paid north of $20,000 last year for the creation of minutes.
Adding AI to the process would still require human input, but would be a relatively rare move; while legal, a state association that helps municipalities with government issues notes that while there’s been interest, they do not track whether towns make the switch to AI.
On the Vineyard, Chair Skip Manter raised the issue in the Monday meeting of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Committee.
Normally, he said, school staff or a member of the administration takes notes at a meeting, which are then turned into official minutes that the committee publishes as per Massachusetts Open Meeting Law.
However, the high school has over half a dozen subcommittees, with some having formed recently as the school prepares for an extensive construction project.
The high school does not have a full-time notetaker, and some of the people currently responsible have voiced difficulties with workload to school leadership, according to principal Sara Dingledy on Monday. Meetings are generally held in the evening, often conflicting with people’s personal responsibilities.
“I think the hard part is just doing it on top of a full day [of work],” Dingledy said on Monday. “And I think that’s kind of where we’re getting some of the resistance … just the amount of meetings.“
One solution, floated by member Mike Watts, is to rely in part on artificial intelligence — specifically, summaries provided by Zoom, the platform that hosts the district’s virtual or hybrid-format public meetings. Zoom also provides meeting transcripts, though these are not able to attribute any comments to their respective speakers.
Someone, Watts said, could simply review and tailor the AI output in order to create official minutes. He expressed his confidence in the accuracy of Zoom’s summaries. “[L]ately, you ask for it to give you a summary, it’s pretty good. And then … someone could go in and do a really nice edit to it, fast,” he said.
A human’s input is, however, legally required of a committee using AI to create minutes. This is according to an opinion from Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Flynn to the town of Westborough, obtained by The Times.
“The Open Meeting Law does not specifically prohibit the use of AI in drafting meeting minutes; however, it is the public body’s responsibility to ensure that meeting minutes are accurate,” the opinion reads.
Aside from Westborough,Boston, has also expressed interest in using AI to help create minutes. This is according to the Massachusetts Municipal Association, a Boston-based intergovernmental relations organization and public policy advocate.
The association does not track, however, whether those municipalities have chosen to use AI.
Teresa Kruszewski, who serves as recorder for the school committee and creates their notes and minutes, is one person who voiced their concerns to school leadership. She told the committee that the use of AI would have to be accompanied by a human touch.
“I had a chat with a nonprofit maybe a year ago, exploring using the transcription from Zoom,” Kruszewski said. “And [they] said it’s very difficult for them to discern who’s making a vote … so you would still have to have that human element to understand who made the motion and the second and so on and so forth.”
Another answer could be subcontracting services for notes and minutes, an approach raised by member Robert Lionette. He noted that the committee had explored the idea before COVID, and that subcontractors would just have to be sent meeting recordings.
Other ideas from Manter included hiring a dedicated notetaker, who the school could potentially pay along with funds contributed by another town or board. He also wondered whether to reach out to nonprofits.
While the committee did not choose a path forward on Monday, Manter noted that any strategy may come with a price tag. Over the previous fiscal year, creating minutes for the school committee and subcommittees cost around $24,000.
A remote attendee, Tony Peak, also asked committee members on Monday to identify themselves when speaking, in order to make it easier to follow along.
The committee will revisit notetaking and minute creation in their next meeting, in January, Manter said.
