Policy 0167- Public Participation in Board Meetings

Before getting into this specific policy, the policy documents up for review do not contain the term “Draft” on them. Not all document changes (from the old policy) are indicated in bold.  This can lead to a lot of confusion and makes it harder for the public to understand how the proposed policy differs from the prior version.

0167 has been a much discussed policy in BOE Meetings and concerns about the arbitrary manner in which it has been interpreted and applied has been increasingly criticized since late 2022 when a former BOE President decided that stakeholders were suddenly disallowed from coming up more than once to speak.  This has recently changed under BOE President Bradford, yet these changes seem to favor stakeholders with prepared comments in favor of Ms. Bradford’s positions.

The new proposed policy does not seem to address this issue at all; however, it does include some good changes and some changes that raise concerns.

Let’s start with the good.

The policy provides a framework for remote participation, which seems to imply that the Board of Education may finally make good on its promise to allow for such participation this year:

Now onto the slightly concerning.

The new language requires speakers to state their street address (something President Bradford has recently started asking for), which seems a bit excessive and seems to only exist to make it more uncomfortable for people to speak.

Some folks might not want to broadcast the exact location of their house on video for YouTube :

The other concern is that the term “inappropriate” pops up for remote participation. 

I’m not a free speech absolutist; however, a BOE President’s judgment of what is appropriate vs. inappropriate seems to change with who is speaking and whether the person at the microphone agrees with them. 

The policy should remove this term and can keep “offensive,” “defamatory,” etc., which is OK to stay, in my opinion, and operationalize a bit more the type of speech that Board Presidents can disallow. 

A policy does not protect the District from a lawsuit alleging violations of free speech, so this isn’t so much an ideological issue, as it may end up costing the District money if improperly applied.

Draft Policy 0167