This piece first appeared the The Vermont Standard
When my children were in public high school fourteen years ago, I tussled with the school’s elected board over issues arising from the murder of a student. The board didn’t value my input and tried to inhibit it. My experience taught me the frustrations of speaking out.
My son and daughter attended a highly regarded school in another state. Members of the governing board embraced an educational philosophy that saw students as mostly self-driven workers, and teachers as guides rather than deliverers of instructional services. Students were free to come and go as they pleased during the school day. This relatively unstructured environment, I felt, did not suit the learning styles of my children, but I never complained. I instead supplemented with frequent homework sessions at the kitchen table, some outside tutoring, and my own rules of behavior.
When I dropped the two of them at school one January morning, an ambulance was waiting by the front entrance. An hour later, my daughter called home, crying that someone had been stabbed.
The victim, a freshman boy who’d come in early for a band practice, was brutally attacked. A medical examiner years later told a jury that the boy’s liver, lung, and heart were all punctured by an eight inch blade. His forearms and fingers were slashed.
The perpetrator was another student, who reportedly had staked out several locations, before settling on a lavatory, where victim and perpetrator met for the first and last time.
School board members of course offered condolences and expressed extreme sadness. But it seemed that they were soon anxious to move on. The minutes of their meeting just ten days after the murder noted that “most parents think that their kids are safe.” They expressed concern at losing the “special teacher/student interaction if we changed the rules of the school.”
Two months later, the school board tabled all discussion of the tragedy, and appointed a safety review subcommittee, which in turn declined to hear personal grievances or stories. Their work went on for several months, but with little result. According to their final report, they “did not have the time, expertise, or detailed knowledge of the day-to-day workings of [the school] to be able to responsibly make specific detailed recommendations.”
A growing body of revelations about the tragedy, to me, pointed to a need for further examination and discussion. The perpetrator was an out-of-town student whose past difficulties in main-stream environments were well-documented. He was enrolled in a specialized program, but his care and supervision at school seemed lax. There was talk that he had been bullied or marginalized. On at least one earlier occasion, he’d been discovered with a knife, which should have triggered an expulsion hearing. Instead, the weapon was returned to him at the end of the day.
As I tried to process this information, I was publicly silent. I thought a lot about the victim’s mother. I pictured her on the telephone, hand at her throat, as she learned what had happened to her son. At home, I shared my angst. My children begged me to stay quiet. “It will only hurt us if you complain,” said my son.
Then, the school board did something that finally spurred me to act. Another concerned parent decided to video record one of their meetings so that it could air on community access television, as was his right under the state’s open meeting law. He and station personnel went to the meeting room early and set up a camera and microphones, then left to grab a quick bite. When he returned, the equipment had all disappeared. Board members claimed that they didn’t know what had happened, but after the meeting’s conclusion, the parent was directed to a room across the hall. In a subsequent letter to the editor in the local newspaper, a board member wrote that the video set up had been removed for “safety” reasons.
During the two years following that incident, I attended and video recorded almost every school board meeting, and the community access television station aired them. I was keenly aware that the board members did not want me around. I was often greeted with comments like “here comes the surveillance.” One board member watched for the red recording light on my camera, and snarled at me if it came on before the meeting’s official start time. The principal pointed out that the board could do its work more efficiently if I was not there, recording.
I offered input, which was, without exception, ignored or criticized. At my first meeting, as I introduced myself and read an initial statement of my concerns, two board members laughed and passed notes. When I’d finished, another parent asked the board for a response. One committee member said “I don’t have any obligation to respond,” and added “this was a major topic of discussion in the election,” implying that the spring election should have ended the dialog.
I researched safety procedures at other schools and submitted a report, for which I received no acknowledgement or follow-up other than a one sentence notation in the meeting minutes. Then I suggested that the school establish regular meetings of small “homeroom advisories” that would partner every student with a teacher. I developed a PowerPoint that I carried with me to every meeting for weeks until I was finally given permission to present it. The principal told me that implementing my idea would take too much work. The teachers were already too busy, he said. When I criticized the board for inaction in the local newspaper, they responded by very publicly accusing me of misrepresenting the facts.
I did not get much community support either. It seemed common sense to me that parents would want a safe school, but broad support for my homeroom proposal never materialized. I think that parents worried that continuing to talk about the issues surrounding the murder would jeopardize the reputation of the school, which might in turn impact property values and students’ chances for acceptance at top colleges. The school hired a public relations firm.
I learned how difficult it is to speak out. I had a long career in business, during which I met with many executives and made hundreds of presentations. But still, at every school board meeting, I felt nervous and anxious and reluctant to confront a group that was openly hostile. Surveys show that fear of public speaking impacts 75% of the population, and many fear speaking out more than they fear death.
Now, I am disappointed to learn of a memo from United States Attorney General (AG) Merrick Garland to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and to attorneys in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ). The memo and simultaneous press release claim that an increase in “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school board members, teachers, and workers in our nation’s public schools” require interventions by Federal authorities. It directs the FBI and DOJ to collaborate with local entities to use “federal enforcement tools” where “threats of violence may not constitute federal crimes.”
The downside of this directive, in my opinion, far outweighs any good it may do. Every day, I read and hear hyperbolic, vicious, insulting, out-of-context, and patently false comments and frightening pontification from some on both sides of our political spectrum. Many of these people, I fear, will use any means, including an opportunity to involve the FBI or the DOJ, to intimidate and silence their perceived enemies.
I think school boards and parents should instead be encouraged to work together to calm highly charged situations. School boards have an obligation to establish clear and fair rules of engagement. They should acknowledge the courage it takes parents to speak out. They should listen carefully and actually consider parent input, even when it is inconvenient, even when it comes from people they dislike, even when it concerns difficult problems. Parents, for their part, should follow the rules of engagement, and realize that school boards are not always able to implement their suggestions. All this, I think, can be accomplished between neighbors, without involving federal authorities.