Apparently, in Prince William County, Virginia, the school board has been looking for ways to cut down on the number of angry comments made by angry parents at their public meetings.
Here’s what they came up with: They limited the number of speakers to 20 at any one meeting. The speakers have to sign up ahead of time. If one of the first 20 to sign up doesn’t show up, or doesn’t speak, his slot can’t be filled by anyone else.
So what happened?
Teachers’ unions orchestrated an effort to have teachers (who are in the middle of renegotiating a contract) sign up for all the spots and then refuse to speak at the meetings — effectively eliminating the public comment sections of the meetings.
You can read more about this here.
I always have mixed feelings when reading about this kind of thing because of my time on the select board of my town.
We had our own share of disruptive behavior at meetings, and at some point, we had to recognize that a board meeting is different than a board hearing and organize our meetings accordingly (holding public comments until the end and limiting comments to three minutes).
The purpose of a board meeting is to do the work of the board — get the bills paid, make decisions about roads and equipment, decide which grants to apply for, and so on. In order to keep things transparent, meetings are open to the public so that anyone can come and listen.
The purpose of a board hearing is to solicit input from residents regarding things like proposed ordinances, changes to the structure of town government, and so on. In order to fulfill the purpose of such a meeting, anyone can come and speak.
The thing is, the right to listen is not the same as the right to speak. If you have any doubt about that, try asking to stand up and speak in a court proceeding or during a session of the legislature. Those bodies are there to do work, not to listen to input.
I also think about the old joke: If a tree falls in the forest, and Helen Keller is the only person there, does it make a sound?
If you speak to a board that doesn’t care what you have to say, have you made a sound? You have — but not because the board is there. You’ve made a sound because of the other people who are there and the people who will watch the video later on.
I’m surprised that no one has thought of doing this: Hold a public meeting, put effigies of the board members at the front (possibly with fingers in their ears), and let parents rage — preserving the whole thing for YouTube viewers, who are really the intended target anyway.
(A picture of the effigies would make great fundraising T-shirts. Be sure to send GraniteGrok a share of the proceeds, please.)
The real issue isn’t that you aren’t being allowed to speak at board meetings. It’s that the board members don’t want to hear what you have to say. And you can’t make them hear it.
But that doesn’t mean they should be able to keep anyone else from hearing it. And the only place they can do that is in a board meeting. So go to those meetings to listen, but when it’s time to speak, have your own damn meeting.
