School Board Meeting, November 16, 2022
Lots of public comments defending books in the library. Also a comment on why union negotiations should not be public.
Public comments begin at about 30:00 on the video. The audience was unusually large, as were the number of public comments.
The first speaker spoke in defense of the community’s LGBQT members, saying “we have evidence for the lack of appreciation for diversity in our community.”
The second speaker presented a petition to the board signed by 264 residents of Nottingham.
An excerpt from the petition:
Here in Nottingham, community members have repeatedly used dangerous and harmful arguments, with language from organized, national campaigns, to advocate for the removal of books from our school under the guise of concern for our students. When such rhetoric is left unchecked, our students and their families are left to believe that their or others’ experiences–their very personhood–is somehow “political” or “controversial.” In addition, the lack of any public response from the Board to such a narrative suggests an implicit agreement with the points included therein. We believe, if left unaddressed by the Board, these harmful public comments and dangerous requests will continue and likely escalate.
The third speaker asked the board to “not ban books in our library.” “This nonsense from the right is diverting school resources.” “No parent has the right to decide what the children of other parents should or should not read.”
The fourth speaker said she had signed the petition. She talked about how the dissemination of propaganda was used in WWII to inspire fear of marginalized populations and to pit neighbors against each other. “Many of the books burned in Nazi Germany … were about … race and sexuality.”
The fifth speaker said, “just because Nottingham has less diversity than most communities it doesn’t mean we should have only books with white heterosexual Christian characters.” She detailed a long list of popular books that in the past people had advocated be banned from school libraries. “By allowing a few parents to decide for everyone we are saying that one parent’s opinion is more important than others.” She urged that if there were books that parents did not want their children to read that those parents send a note to the school identifying those books so that the librarian could withhold them from the child.
The sixth speaker spoke in support of keeping these books in the library, arguing that the books in question were age appropriate.
The seventh speaker - a former school board member - said he also supported the point of the prior speakers, but the reason he was addressing the board was the push to make union negotiations public. He said that “public negotiations are not feasible. They are not going to generate good contracts. They might not generate a contract at all. I think that was one of the intentions of that warrant article. By pushing to have negotiations in public raises a high likelihood that there would be no contract agreed to. There would be a stalemate.” He encouraged the board to make a policy that negotiations must be non-public. [Following this was a microphone failure and his remaining comments were difficult to hear on the video.]
The eighth speaker was Budget Committee member Michael Kelly, who made brief comments that were inaudible due to microphone failure.
The comments of the ninth speaker were also inaudible, but the microphone was fixed for the tenth speaker who spoke in defense of keeping the books in the library.
This was the last speaker. In closing public comments the board said that they have a process for dealing with these matters and that process has been initiated. The board will eventually be weighing in on this matter, but it has not officially come to them via the process. So, the board will not be saying anything at this time.
Watch the video: