Calm No Longer the Norm at School Board Meetings

Continued from page 15

School board meetings inherently contain the elements of the “perfect storm” for heated controversy. The school board is the elected body created by the Public School Code to govern school districts. Its powers include setting budgets, hiring personnel, and adopting curriculum and policies. The school district assesses real estate taxes, the rate and even existence of which are controversial in their own right. The Sunshine Law obligates public agencies to conduct most deliberations and take all official actions in a public meeting. It also requires an opportunity for reasonable public comment before official action, which falls within the constitutional guarantee of the right to address grievances to the government. Add to this the natural emotion that parents feel about their children’s education, their rights as parents to shape their children’s character and morals, combined with a growing belief from some that the school (the state) is actively undermining the values taught at home and at the parents’ place of worship, and the once-routine school board meeting can become heated.

Our panel discussed the way that these controversies start and how a regular meeting turns contentious. All on the panel agreed that the Internet and social media have played an instrumental role. Websites and social media pages from national advocacy organizations have been known to stir up the passions which drive these controversies. Panel members relayed experiences where the same argument was read, word for word, and even with the same grammatical errors, from district to district. Anecdotes which have reached school board audiences have ranged from

“they’re banning books” and “teachers are allowed to discuss their sexual experiences in class” to “they’re putting litterboxes in the bathrooms for students who identify as cats.” It is an example of rumors taking on a life of their own – a game of Whisper Down The Lane for grownups – but with very real-world implications. Even a board’s good-faith assurance that these issues are not taking place in their schools is viewed with further skepticism – for some, denying a conspiracy is only proof that the denier is part of the conspiracy.

The panel then turned to incidents which occurred in their meetings and how they were diffused. One such incident took place years ago where a notorious local white supremacist showed up at a meeting in full KKK regalia and the composure required not to escalate into conflict. There have been more recent incidents, such as when during the mask mandate, an anti-mask activist appeared at a meeting with a mesh mask as a show of resistance and having to recess the meeting to a virtual session. On another recent occasion, a board member attempted to introduce a policy against the teaching of critical race theory, and the solicitor crafted a resolution, citing the mission of the school district, that the district would not utilize a critical race theory-based curriculum (despite the fact that the district did not then and had had no intention of doing so in the future).

Panel members discussed ways to turn down the temperature so that district business can be accomplished, and residents and taxpayers having the right to speak may do so. Some ideas discussed were:

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