Schools

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about schools, and how contentious it was, year by year.

Scores of the written record, normalized by era. Minutes are the clerk's summaries, not transcripts: tone is muted and the style changed with each clerk and era, so every score is compared only with meetings of the same minute-style era (1962-1979 narrative minutes, 1980-2004, 2005-2016, 2017 on) and shown as a percentile of that era. Signals: divided and failed votes, motions that died for lack of a second, tabled or postponed items, amended motions, ordinance readings that stalled, hearings with objections, public appearances, the length of an item's discussion compared with its era, and words such as "objected", "protest", "concern", "thanked" or "commended", each kept with the sentence it came from. Only pages whose reading scores at or above the archive's score target count. The record is scored, not people: no resident is named or scored, and members appear only through their recorded votes. Meetings named as the most contentious or most congenial are published only after a person reviewed them.
322items on this topic
242meetings
2.4%share of discussion (era average)
12contentious items
7divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 3 decades (1970s: 1, 1980s: 3, 2010s: 8).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19623 10% 0.06158
19634 6% 0.03153
19647 8% 0.11751
19651 1% 0.0046
19663 4% 0.08169
19672 3% 0.0382
19685 4% 0.12475
19699 5% 0.10843
19706 3% 0.13461
19725 4%1 0.12178
19742 2% 0.07129
19754 3% 0.05205
19766 4% 0.03305
19771 1% 0.0678
19784 2% 0.03144
19791 2% 0.06125
19805 5% 0.02149
198116 5%1 0.09612
19822 1% 0.14135
19835 2% 0.09224
19845 2% 0.05272
19854 3% 0.08154
19865 3% 0.14456
19874 3% 0.11261
198821 7%2 0.141,640
19903 1% 0.14227
19986 2% 0.09455
19993 1% 0.07129
20007 3% 0.11547
20014 2% 0.10256
20052 3% 0.21254
20063 8% 0.16501
20072 3% 0.1682
20089 3% 0.02209
20091 2% 0.0043
20103 1% 0.0175
20129 3% 0.04720
20139 1%1 0.13720
201417 4%2 0.161,281
201515 3%1 0.09846
201617 2%4 0.23754
20176 1% 0.06268
201816 2% 0.03481
201914 2% 0.04430
20207 1% 0.06254
202110 2% 0.02285
20229 2% 0.04339
20233 1% 0.0268
20248 1% 0.06209
20252 0% 0.05119
20267 1% 0.07315

Reviewed examples

Examples appear here once meetings on this topic have been reviewed by a person.

JSON

Data last updated October 21, 2026. Built from the archive's documents; see how the data is built.