Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 57. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset is 5:53 for 10 hours 30 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 29.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board will conduct an Annual Budget hearing at 5:30 PM and a Regular Meeting at 6 PM. (Note, Monday evening: The district listed the Regular Meeting to begin at 6 PM. In fact, the Annual Budget hearing ran later than 6 PM, so the Regular Meeting began later than the posted time.)
On this day in 1775, King George III expands on his earlier Proclamation of Rebellion in the Thirteen Colonies during a speech from the throne at the opening of Parliament.
The Whitewater School Board meets tonight. As part of its Regular Meeting agenda, before public comment, the following cautionary words appear:
Citizens may speak under Public Comments, but no School Board action will be taken. Issues raised may become a part of a future agenda. Participants are allotted a three-minute speaking period. A Citizen Comment Request should be filled out prior to speaking. In accordance to [sic] Board Policy 187, personal criticism and/or derogatory remarks directed at School Board members or employees of the district will not be tolerated. Should there be a number of citizens planning to speak, the President will announce the total time for citizen comments and divide the time between speakers equally with no more than three minutes allotted to each participant. The Board will not be able to respond to individual questions at the meeting. Complaints against an employee should be sent to the Superintendent or Board in writing with your signature. Please keep in mind that students often attend or view board meetings. Speakers’ remarks should therefore be suitable for an audience that includes Kindergarten through 12th grade students. The Board President or officers of the Board may interrupt, warn or terminate speakers’ statements that are unrelated to the business of the School District or inappropriate for K-12 students or disruptive to an orderly, productive meeting. The time estimates noted for agenda items are for informational purposes only and may not be reflective of actual discussion during the meeting.
Well, now we know. Honest to goodness, it’s not merely cautionary or advisory, it’s excessively so. These many warnings convey that the board is watching the public very carefully. That’s an inverted order: the public should be watching the board. Left, center, or right — Whitewater’s school board has been a self-protective, self-defensive board for many years. That’s not public service; it’s self-service.
It should be obvious that the effect of this advisory is to remove legitimate concerns about the district, administrators, or staff from public mention. There’s a difference between wanting a government position and wanting that position on terms that undermine the position’s very legitimacy in a free and open society.
As it turns out, the board president has sometimes read these words before scheduled public comment at a meeting. Here’s an example from July (which compounds the written advisory’s chilling effect with an auditory one, where neither advisory should have been fashioned or delivered the way it has been):
Speak only a bit faster, and it would sound like this:
How odd to be a man who voted for Obama, or a woman who voted for Trump, only to win seats on the school board with a shared perspective that among the most important votes are one’s own defensive position against the rest of the public. Perhaps, at bottom, that’s what’s left of bipartisanship.
I’m sure that there’s someone on the Whitewater School Board, of whatever political ideology, who would say that these measures are necessary to prevent disruptions from members of the public. To which this libertarian blogger would say that the advisory is excessively restrictive of the public, thinks too little of the public, and that these boardmembers are, in any event, from that same public.
Looking around Whitewater, after all, one doesn’t find anyone from the House of Windsor… and we’re better off for it.