School Boards should “Practice what they Teach.” Schools across America teach that the First Amendment gives citizens the freedom of speech and more. The First Amendment in full states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The Cleveland County Board of Education thinks they are above the law–the Congress, the US Supreme Court, the US Constitution and many parts of the First Amendment.
North Carolina State Law requires all government agencies like commissioners and school boards to hold regular meetings and for those meetings to include “Citizens Participation” or “Public Participation” as it is sometimes called as a part of their public meetings. State law also requires these agencies to conduct ALL of their business in public with very limited exceptions. (Those exceptions may be a subject of other articles, but will not be included here.) This article is about how the Cleveland County Board of Education, lead by Chairman Phillip “Bully” Glover is trying to revise THEIR policies to deny Cleveland County citizens their Constitutional rights. And, in a sneaky and probably illegal way. Read on.
First, the Policy in question. Make that a big question mark as hanky panky by Bully and company appear obvious.
The Policy, noted as CCS Board Policy 2310 was discussed in the February 27, 2017 school board meeting. Superintendent Fisher lead the policy presentation saying this policy titled “Public Participation at Board Meetings” was on the books and the document presented to the Board was only a minor revision.
Only thing was, I had picked up on this policy so-called revision from the meeting agenda. I immediately smelled a rat because the policy called for an exact three minute limit on citizens, if the citizen tried to use additional seconds to finish his or her sentence, the chairman, Bully Glover, could order the citizen to shut up, if the citizen did not immediately shut up, Bully would rule the citizen out of order and at Bully’s discretion have the citizen arrested for disrupting the meeting. There were other parts about personal attacks within the three minutes where Bully, as the one who would decide what a personal attack was, could do the same thing. I immediately recognized this as a way to shut down all citizen’s complaints. I also immediately recognized something was illegal about all of this.
So, the first thing I did was search the internet for shutting down citizens recognition at public meetings and the North Carolina Institute of Government. What I found was an advisory article written by the Institute of Government titled “Criticizing Public Employees in Public” that told me everything I needed to know. According to court cases already decided, Citizens indeed had the right to criticize, and name, school employees in their presentations to the school board. Citizens can’t use profanity, jump up and down, yell and scream, etc. but otherwise citizens can tell it like it is.
