The purpose of a school board is to oversee and govern school districts. Board members are elected by the community and are responsible to represent the community in meetings and decisionmaking. Board members should have student achievement as their first and ultimate goal of serving as a trustee on a school board. With the increasing chaos surrounding school board meetings, student achievement is clearly not the priority.
Increasingly, parents and the public are being silenced, denied access to, and are being physically removed from school board meetings across the nation. There are reports of outspoken parents being blocked on school board social media sites, investigated for matters not related to their child or school, being publicly gaslit for raising concerns or in the case of a group of united parents in Atlanta, being referred to as “domestic terrorists.”
In Arizona, the president of a school board is alleged to have maintained records of personal information and photos of outspoken parents. In Round Rock, Texas, a community member was allegedly escorted out of a board meeting by officers in the middle of publicly sharing information about board malfeasance. The board essentially shut him up. In Austin, the headquarters of education in Texas, a parent who raised his concern to the board was labeled a “disruption” and was physically removed from the meeting by police. At the same meeting, dozens of parents were not allowed in, despite having a lawful right to be there. The trend of outspoken parents being silenced or denied entry to board meetings is egregious and should raise a red flag for everyone.
I respect the work that board members are elected to do. Teachers, parents, administration, politicians, and community members can be hard to please and impossible to please all at the same time. Board members are often treated poorly, called names, and according to news media, some have been threatened with bodily harm and even death. Such treatment is indefensible and unacceptable. Threatening behavior in a board meeting should be eliminated swiftly. The concerns of which I speak are not related to threatening behavior by attendees, but rather parents insisting on being heard and taken seriously.
The common reasons for parental push back increasingly involve district priorities, literacy, social theories, sexuality, and school literature. Whatever the reason, barring threats of violence, under no circumstances should a parent or community member be silenced or barred from a school board meeting. Yet, parents ARE being kept out, often in violation of the law.
It is time for parents to take a hard look at this trend. As it stands, speaking out at a board meeting could have you thrown out and banned from participating in person. The people who are voted in to be the voice of the community in school matters are increasingly kicking the community who voted them in, out. As a community, we must not allow ourselves to be kept out of the decisions that affect our children and their education. As we fight that battle, we should concurrently consider why they don’t want us to see and hear what’s really going on.
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