The Peoria School District 150 Board of Education decided last month to discontinue live broadcasts of the school board meetings on public access cable television starting in May. Instead, they are going to show the meeting a week delayed, and they’re going to excise the public comment portion of the meeting — that is, they are going to censor part of the official meeting because they don’t want the public to see it.

However, since the school board meetings are open meetings, recordings can be made by any member of the public. Former Journal Star employee Elaine Hopkins made an audio recording of the public comments and posted it on her blog, Peoria Story. Kudos to her for keeping the public informed while the school board tries to keep the public in the dark. There are still a few kinks to work out; for instance, she’s uploaded the file in WAV format, which is uncompressed and makes for a hefty download. Once she learns to compress it into a reasonably-sized mp3 file, we’ll really be in business.

It’s funny. These comments used to be available only to those who watched the meeting live on Comcast Cable in Peoria. Now they’re available on demand to anyone in the world who wants to hear them. The school board’s attempt to suppress the broadcast of these comments has resulted in even wider distribution! I love irony.