Category: Ears on the Board of Education

APPS Scores Victories for Public School Advocates

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. 

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Board Blocks Students and Community Members from Speaking

APPS and PARSL members urge Board to bring back Certified Teacher Librarians. (Photo by Lisa Haver)

Board of Education Meeting:  June 29, 2023 

by Lisa Haver and Lynda Rubin

During this month’s meeting, APPS member Barbara Dowdall was detained by district security who told her she couldn’t go into the auditorium because she wasn’t on the speakers list.  (In May it was Lisa Haver, in April Ilene Poses.)  The board set up 96 chairs for this meeting in an auditorium with a 240-person capacity. When APPS wrote to the board about their setting up only 82 chairs in April, President Reginald Streater replied that they were “working with building management to address it”, as if building management staff could overrule the president of the board. When we wrote to him again in June because the board had barred people from attending because of the current speaker suppression policies, we received no reply. No matter how the board sets up its arbitrary number of chairs,  forcing people to stand, they cannot bar people from attending a public meeting. That is illegal. 

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Democracy Dies in Darkness

Board of Education Action Meeting:  May 25, 2023

 by Lisa Haver and Lynda Rubin

The board’s speaker suppression policies are now doing double duty: not just to keep members of the community from speaking but to keep them out of the room altogether. A guard at the door to the auditorium told Lynda Rubin she could go in because she was on the speaker list but barred Lisa Haver because she wasn’t.  Haver had tried to sign up but was told by the board that she would not be one of the 30 chosen speakers. She told the guard he could arrest her but that she was going in. Last month some APPS members were detained downstairs because they were not on the list.  

We wrote to the board after the April incident, pointing out that they had only set up 82 chairs in an auditorium that seats 240 people. Thus, the same people who were denied the right to speak now no longer have the right to be present. Did the board not want APPS to witness its voting to spend over $500 million in taxpayer money on 78 official items?  Or voting on a charter application that would cost the district hundreds of millions over the next five years?   A governmental body not accountable to the public can become tyrannical and dictatorial. We need an elected school board.

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Board Bars Public from Attending and Testifying, Then Hires Communications Consultants

Board of Education Action and Budget Meetings:   April 20, 2023

by Lisa Haver and Deborah Grill

With every meeting, the Board of Education finds new ways to enforce its mission of speaker suppression. Several APPS members who tried to sign up to speak at the action meeting found the window closed after just two hours.  APPS member Ilene Poses was not only barred from speaking but was barred from entering the auditorium when she arrived. Security told her that there was no more room in the auditorium. When she called those of us who had made it in, we counted over ten empty seats. Ilene was finally admitted along with several other people.    

The board pushes the public away both literally and figuratively. The staff tables in the front of the room set up an ever-expanding barrier between the board and the public. In an auditorium with an official capacity of 240, the board had only set up 82 seats. Lisa Haver asked the board to explain that when she testified; she got no answer.

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