The City of Stevens Point will no longer air school board meetings on Community Television.

The school district board meetings was being aired on Stevens Point’s designated television station (analog channel 95/ digital channel 984), thanks to the work of employees from the city’s Parks & Rec Department. But since April 2013 those meetings have consistently run longer than usual, and it’s too great a burden the department can no longer bear.

“Until 2013, the 4 hours I’ve budgeted for each School Board meeting has been more than enough, on average, for my videographer to record and prepare the meetings for televising,” said John Quirk, TV/website coordinator for the city.

In a letter to District Superintendent Attila Weninger, Quirk said. “Only a little of my time was ever required to get each board meeting on TV the next day. However, that was when the average length of a school board meeting was less than half of what it is now.”

In his letter Quirk said from 2009-2012, school board meetings typically lasted an average of 2 hours, and during that time period the district held only one board meeting per month.

But in 2013 the board voted to discontinue holding committee- level meetings, instead dealing with all district matters in detail during full board meetings, increasing the frequency of those board meetings to twice monthly- with some running past 1 AM. Quirk said the average length of board meetings is now nearly 4 1/2 hours, and it’s something his department can’t afford.

“Because of the length and frequency of the meetings, the processing required to get them on TV has regularly overloaded our editing systems, has required far too much of my time, and has interfered with my other daily duties,” he said, adding the strain has begun to show with the part-time staff members who run the video equipment.

“That employee also records City Council and County Board meetings, so I can’t afford to ‘burn out’ that position,” Quirk added.

The lengthy meetings have also disrupted television scheduling and viewership, he added, which took even more time for staff to rearrange the programming schedule, which meant other municipal government meetings to include City Council and County Board were played back a times different than those indicted on the programming schedule.

“Quite often, I just couldn’t play them all,” he said.

Weninger said the meetings would be available on the district’s website and YouTube channel, and live-streaming would not be affected.