CHUH deems 5 minutes comment too infectious; limits it to only 3.
The CHUH Board of Education has decided that its meetings will have less public comment. Because why let the Negative Nellys like parents talk about the problems with our schools?
As citizens of the United States of America, the students at Cleveland Heights-University Heights schools are to be educated of their rights within America’s democratic decision making processes. As such, the district has engaged in activities such as providing rides through the Heights High PTA to early voting in 2018 so that students may “participate in our democracy and vote”. If that’s not enough the Heights Coalition for Public Education* hosted “a community book discussion” on School House Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy by Derek Black. It was so important that they got three dates in March and April 2021 and the notice was published on the district’s webpage. In 2020 the district even allowed the League of Women Voters register CHHS seniors to vote at boys basketball games in order to allow them to vote in the March 2020 Democratic primary. (Actually they could vote in either party primary as both were holding them for federal offices, but the web page’s notice only mentioned the presidential primary. Funny how that works, huh?).
This district really, really, really cares about democracy in action, so much so that they seem to have forgotten that the concept of democracy transcends the mere exercise of the right to vote and the funding of public education. Remember, residents and kids, when you step outside of school sometimes you have to actually do other things as a society like run a barbershop, care for patients at a hospital, or lay brick. And sometimes the people that go out and do those jobs within your school district want to see that their children are properly educated and supervised when they are at school, and when they are not they would like to comment at the BoE’s meetings. In a vibrant participatory democracy petitions, marches, protests, and sit-ins are part of the vocabulary even if it causes annoyance among those that are seeking less debate in the interest of convenience. And seeing as one of the reasons for limiting the public comment was not to extend the meeting time beyond the voluntary schedules of the board members, it is reasonable to infer that expediency and convenience played a major part in their decision.
According to a document supplied to me by a municipal affairs activist (see above), the Board of Education has proposed a new Public Comment policy for its meetings. Section F includes a change limiting time for public comment to three minutes whereas before it had been five. One option in Section C would require participants to register to comment within two business days before the meeting. Another section prohibits registering someone else to speak and Section L allows the presiding officer to “interrupt, warn or end” the comment time of the participant for a litany of reasons including “repetitive, obscene and/or comments that constitute a true threat”. No language is given to specify what form such a threat may take. Could the BoE’s presiding officer decide that someone saying “you haven’t heard the last of me!” is a threat?
Finally there are two sections (H and I) that prohibit speakers from mentioning specific students or staff, nor may they engage in any campaigning without prior permission of the Board President or Superintendent pursuant to Policy 9700. I am well aware of this policy as I filed a complaint with the Ohio Secretary of State against a PAC that used school property during the 2021 BoE election in violation of it. But 9700 isn’t supposed to govern the use of political speech by district residents or students during a public forum. Otherwise student political activism could be conducted only with the same approval while on school grounds, and it would negate the purpose of even having citizens comment at BoE meetings. As an elected body the BoE is by its very nature political, and stipulating that it would be at its board president or superintendent’s discretion whether to allow campaigning as part of the comments actually gives them the power to mute critics and amplify supporters.
Why is it that public comments will be shortened and regulated even more? During the December public meeting (see above) comments a number of parents arrived and stated their objection to a number of district policies. One woman expressed her criticism of what she deemed to be the lax enforcement of CHUH’s mandatory masking policy. Another woman, after a protracted fight with BoE President James Posch, read the account of an alumna and rape victim and accuses the district of endangering her by placing the assailant in the same classroom as her pending his trial. Another commenter raised the issue of the student dress code. Posch’s long argument with a commenter centered around whether she would be allowed to read a statement on behalf of the rape victim who due to her COVID19 status had not been able to attend in person. Yet Posch also refused to allow the woman to speak via Zoom. Within the proposed rules change there is an option that if adopted would prohibit comment using remote methods from residents unable to attend in person. Having watched the meeting on YouTube replay, I found myself disagreeing strongly with a majority of the public commenters, yet during the exchange none of the speakers or audience members engaged in obscene or threatening conduct.
Is the district muzzling or shortening public comment in order to minimize the amount of attention that critics like the aforementioned rape victim could receive from an airing of the grievance and opening of old wounds? Sources in the know have told me that there is a student organization forming seeking to reveal that it was not an isolated incident and they have already organized one student walkout. Whatever the reason for the change of public comment rules, Heights residents and students should not take such a change lightly. In the Declaration of Independence the second paragraph includes the following passage
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Regardless of one’s thoughts about the personal flaws of the signatories of the document, the concept of democracy in the American context is derived not merely from the votes of the citizens but their consent. This is the basis of the social contract upon which the theory of representative government rests. Voting is only the part of the process whereby representatives are formally elected, yet how can voters be properly informed in order to guide their decision whether to consent if public comment is restrained?
The boosters for the district that support organizations like the Heights Coalition for Public Education under the mistaken belief that they are actually improving the schools by calling for bigger budgets and less oversight may applaud this measure and say that until now public comment has been abused in order to disrupt the meetings. However, should the BoE attempt to enforce the rules that they pass they could regret it in the long run. Long before the recent wage of viral school board meeting conversations there were court cases in federal courts that overturned public comment limitations at such forums according to Student Press Law Center. Will CHUH be the next to be embroiled defending such a heavy handed law? I hope they think long and hard about where this may lead.
*Heights Coalition for Public Education is made up primarily of current and retired employees of the district campaigning for greater educational spending by the State of Ohio, meaning that CHUH school district by posting their notices is effectively granting a platform to a political lobbying group that is interested in growing the district’s budget. This would constitute a violation of Section 9700 by the the district itself!