Missing time in the archived video of an Akron school board meeting was the result of a “perfect storm” of technological issues, the person responsible for the recording said in a January statement obtained by Signal Akron through a public records request.
The Jan. 8 meeting documented in the video is the subject of legal action from the Akron Education Association. The AEA claimed in a lawsuit last month that the Akron Board of Education violated Ohio open meetings laws by posting an edited version of the meeting video that was missing part of the discussion related to a vote on an outside tutoring program. Representatives from Akron Public Schools have denied those claims.
In a message sent Jan. 18, Ryan Rittenhouse, who said he was the primary person responsible for running and maintaining the school district’s YouTube channel, wrote that a buffering issue caused a jump in the official record and it was not the board’s policy to edit livestreams.
“I, and we as a district, have no stake, no grudge, other personal or technical reason to want to hide a portion of video from the public,” he wrote. “Those people in attendance saw the interaction and know it occurred. We believe in transparency and honesty with our public.
“While it is unfortunate that this ‘perfect storm’ of technology issues has caused the public to lose faith in us, we stand by these statements and declare that no changes have been made knowingly or unknowingly to the livestream in question.”
The message was sent to Mark Williamson, the spokesperson for the Akron Public Schools. Williamson said in an interview he had asked Rittenhouse for a statement so that, if a lawyer called, he had something to say regarding Rittenhouse’s duties.
Since he wrote the statement, Williamson said, Rittenhouse has spent “quite a bit of time” talking to the district’s lawyers. Williamson said Rittenhouse was not able to comment to Signal Akron on the matter.
Spinning wheels and a ‘glitch’
Rittenhouse’s message says that more than two hours into the meeting, when the video appeared “to ‘jump’ over a real-world interaction between board members, the streaming signal we were sending to YouTube had a ‘buffering’ issue.”
A colleague noted there was a spinning wheel on the live feed, Rittenhouse wrote, something that was not unusual. He wrote that the issue has occurred before and it is common for signals “of this size and length to experience periodic glitches in their stream.”
“It is unfortunate that this ‘glitch’ occurred at approximately the same time as the interaction of the board members was occurring in the real world,” he wrote. “We believe that it is due to this glitch that this interaction is now missing from the archived livestream.”
The interaction in question involved board members Rene Molenaur and Barbara Sykes. In the livestream of the meeting, Molenaur could be seen beginning to discuss concerns she had about a vote on a state-funded tutoring program board members had discussed in executive session.
Sykes stood and called a point of order, which she later said she did out of concern that Molenaur planned to discuss a topic that was part of the board’s private discussions. There was then a jump in the livestream, and the video picked up again as a vote on the tutoring program was underway.
In the archived video, Molenaur’s comments cut off mid-sentence. Sykes’ point-of-order request is not part of the record and there is no call for a vote that’s already in progress.
Rittenhouse said in his statement that “it is our policy not to edit livestreams” and there are “no alternate versions, no other back-ups, hard copies, or edits that exist.”
“What you see on YouTube is what we have,” he wrote.
AEA maintains the video was edited
That didn’t satisfy Pat Shipe, the president of the AEA, who said the group’s position remains the same.
“That video was edited,” she said. “As we proceed with our legal remedies, we believe the board edited the video, and we believe it will be proven.”
She did not offer any proof of editing but said she didn’t believe there were buffering issues.
In addition to Rittenhouse’s statement, the district also provided a Jan. 18 exchange between Rittenhouse and Williamson regarding access to the technology used to livestream meetings.
Williamson, in an email, asked how much difficulty it would pose for Rittenhouse “to simply create (quietly) another login to replace the current one???” and Rittenhouse replied that he was in contact with a colleague about doing so.
In an interview, Williamson said he made the request because he thought multiple people might have shared the same login for YouTube access and he was trying to secure that access. He later learned that no one else had access to the login Rittenhouse used.
“He’s the only one who has the login,” Williamson said.
Additionally, the district provided a draft of an email Williamson sent to Superintendent Michael Robinson intended for Diana Autry, the school board president. It’s not clear if the message assuring her “that there was no editing done on this” was ever sent to Autry. Autry did not return a phone call Friday seeking comment.
Board members were supposed to hear a presentation about the technical aspects of the livestream process at a recent meeting, though it was later cut from the agenda. Zach Hanshaw, the executive director of IT, said in a Jan. 19 email to Rittenhouse that he intended to answer board members’ questions but hoped to be as brief as possible.
A short PowerPoint presentation likely intended for that presentation says board meetings are automatically archived. While viewers can scroll back to watch the video while it’s being processed by YouTube, the video processing isn’t completed until after the livestream is over.
“It’s a non-issue that people are trying to conjure into something dark and mysterious,” Rittenhouse wrote to Hanshaw Jan. 19, giving him feedback on the presentation. “Keeping it short and to the point reiterates that there’s nothing more to it than a small technical issue. It was unfortunate timing, but out of our control.”
Hanshaw replied, “It is unfortunate that it has blown up to this magnitude.”
