Recent School Committee meetings have had various visitors who have both attended, spoken at, and taped our meetings; subsequently posting videos with editorialized content and titles. We would like to take the opportunity to provide the community with deeper understanding and information about how we conduct school committee meetings and why events have transpired as they have.
The public speak portion of a school committee meeting is generally an opportunity for members of the community-at-large to address us with their feedback, concerns, and questions regarding the activities of the school department. Unfortunately, recent public speak situations represent long-standing issues that have been attempted to be resolved in many ways to date.
It is worth clarifying the following: public speak is not the same as making a formal complaint for resolution in the system.
In both cases, they ask that the issues be brought to the authority closest to the situation and move up the chain of authority (teacher to supervisor, supervisor to principal, principal to superintendent, superintendent to school committee). However, a formal complaint that has not been successfully resolved at lower levels can be brought to a body like school committee through a formal written complaint (this is the formal policy) and as a procedure, we always invite personal meetings to resolve issues. However, if complaints have been resolved through other means such as litigation, the school committee cannot discuss them, nor do they have the authority to take action on these complaints.
A recent visitor to public speak was disruptive to the meeting, which meant that school district business could not be attended to as efficiently as expected, and because “defamatory statements,” (damaging to reputations/slanderous/libel) were used, this violates our public speak policy. Speaking using vulgar language and ideas in front of our high school students (or in front of anyone) is not appropriate.
Avoiding defamation, abusive remarks, or personal statements about children and personnel does not preclude a person expressing their general opinions (opining) about broad general issues, i.e. “something has to be examined in the way special education students are identified,” or “administration is not listening to our concerns about unsafe busing.”
We always warmly welcome public speak, but we are also responsible for ensuring the critical business of the school district is conducted appropriately. The importance of reiterating the public speak rules of conduct during the meeting was to remind our visitors that there are specific rules that we (as a committee) are bound by and to implore them to respect those rules as well.
We are only able to stop disruptive or abusive speech/speech about specific students and personnel after warning a person that they are doing so. When a speaker uses defamatory and/or abusive remarks, speaks about specific personnel or students, becomes disruptive as defined by the chair (which may include yelling, defamatory remarks, abusive language and actions, engaging the committee, refusing to relinquish the floor, and filibustering) we have to reiterate the policy as a first step to resolving the communication issue and restore the decorum of the meeting.
Public speak is not designed to be a two-way conversation (this is also true of the other boards, like the Board of Selectmen). When broad concerns are raised, the central office administration determines the best person within the organization to address and investigate the concern and we follow up with the public speaker. That is why we take names and information at public speak and include them in our minutes.
As of late, many topics raised during our meetings tend to be sensitive in nature, concerning personnel, complaints against specific personnel, or about specific students and thus cannot be responded to in a public forum. We can certainly understand that parents and members of the public want to use public speak as an opportunity to gain a wider audience for their message. However, our first duty is to protect student and staff privacy—and we take this charge seriously. As it relates to some of our recent visitors to public speak, unfortunately, this may have come across as uncaring to viewers. However, it is evident that we are dedicated to supporting and protecting our students and their families and meeting our legal obligations.
We do want to assure you that all parties who have come to public speak recently, had been advised they could not speak on specific or sensitive issues in the public meeting and have been invited to speak with individual administrators and/or school committee members on multiple occasions. Additional constraints do indeed come into play in some of these situations, as may be evident in watching the videos or visiting the meetings. These are complex issues and we work to allow for free speech—but even free speech is guided by policy and decorum in the realm of open public meetings. We work regularly with our on-staff public relations and communications director and our attorneys in these matters so we can strike this balance.
Please feel free to call or meet with us if you have further questions.
Sincerely,
Natick Public Schools
School Committee and Central Office Administration
