Board of Education Action Meeting: August 17, 2023
by Lisa Haver and Deborah Grill
APPS members scored a significant victory in its fight against the Board of Education’s speaker suppression policies. APPS, joined by the student advocates of UrbEd, filed suit against the board in 2021 after it capped the number of speakers at board meetings and cut speaker time from 3 minutes to 2. The case was heard in court earlier this year, and the judge issued a split decision earlier this month. The judge agreed with the position of APPS and UrbEd that the board should keep a waiting list for those who signed up to speak but didn’t make it onto their limited list of 30. Board President Reginald Streater announced that in keeping with the judge’s ruling, the board would allow anyone attending in person to sign up to speak; in the event that one or more speakers did not show, they would be called up. One community member did sign up at the meeting and was able to testify in favor of the community garden at Steel Elementary School.
In another victory for APPS members and the community, the Board of Education announced that it would no longer be spending two hours of every monthly action meeting to analyze the data collected that month in its Goals and Guardrails program. APPS members had asked the board several times–in meetings, in letters and in testimony–to conduct the G & G analysis in a separate venue. Last year, we lobbied the board to place public speakers before the G & G; the board finally relented. The board still needs to hear from speakers earlier in the meeting: in both June and August meetings, speakers were not called up until 9 PM. And even without the G & G, neither meeting adjourned until 11 pm.
Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools 