No Comment For You

“We don’t care what you say…”
- Overkill

In California, the Brown Act guarantees that stakeholders have the ability to address their representatives during public meetings. During “regular” meetings, public agencies like the LAUSD must include a public comment period for items not included on the agenda. There is no such requirement during “special” meetings, although this type of comment period is still permitted under the law as long as it is specified on the published agenda in advance of the meeting.

At all meetings, members of the public must also be given the ability to comment on items on the agenda. These comments are supposed to be relevant to the item being discussed by the public agency, but enforcing this rule is a slippery slope. To do so would require making a judgment call that the speaker is not only off-topic but that the contents have no relevance and that no effort will be made later in the speech to bring it back to the subject at hand. Who has the authority to make this decision and what assurance is there that it will be made without prejudice? Should a single person without oversight have the authority to diminish someone’s First Amendment right to address their representatives?

At Tuesday’s LAUSD Board meeting, President Kelly Gonez decided that she wanted to climb this slope. Her intentions were telescoped by the fact that a period for general public comment had been left off of the agenda. Before beginning the comment period for agenda items Gonez warned the upcoming speakers that they “must speak on the item that you signed up for.”

As the first speaker of the day, I found out quickly how Gonez planned to intimidate speakers who were determined to be “off-topic.” Just one minute into my speech on “Transparency and Engagement” I was interrupted and admonished that comments had to be related to the agenda item topic. This was after the Board Secretariat appeared to get permission directly from Gonez. Another interruption followed 57 seconds later.

Since the clock did not stop during these interruptions, I did not have time to complete my prepared statements which had been carefully planned to have relevance to the agenda item that I signed up for. At exactly the three-minute mark I was cut off, mid-sentence. This is a departure from the previous policy where speakers were allowed to at least finish their thought.

I was not the only one subject to this intimidation by the board. Speaker after speaker was interrupted as they tried to get their point across to the board. Some of the speakers responded as I did and just continued on. Others became angry. Still, others gave in to the bullying and cut their comments short. I suspect that parents from backgrounds where it is improper to question authority were particularly vulnerable to this intimidation.

These interruptions continued as speakers were heard for the agenda item labeled “Conference with Labor Negotiators.” Speakers would have no way of knowing what the district was negotiating behind closed doors but were still expected to stay “on topic.”

It is not particularly surprising that board members like Kelly Gonez and Nick Melvoin would engage in this type of behavior. Neither one of them has ever been particularly keen on encouraging community engagements as this would interfere with their mission to represent the charter school industry on the board. It was, however, disappointing that none of the board members who support public education expressed displeasure with these tactics. At the very least, Scott Schmerelson, Jackie Goldberg, and George McKenna should have spoken up about how their constituents were being treated.

The following are my prepared comments for the meeting, including the part that was cut off:

Before starting I would like to express my concern that on Sunday the Superintendent retweeted an article endorsing candidates in the June 7th primary under a Twitter account labeled @LAUSDSup. It was bad enough when a leader from Nick Melvoin’s Speak Up impersonated Austin Beutner to send out political messages on Twitter, but now we have a Superintendent actually participating in politicking. This increases the divide in this district and removes the focus on supporting our children.

I should have been able to make that comment as part of general public comment, but the board has chosen not to make that option available. Yes, under the Brown Act, “special” meetings do not have to include this comment period, but the law does not prohibit it. This is something that you have chosen.

Nick Melvoin, when you originally ran for office, you stated that one of your goals was to make the District more transparent. Yet, you stand idly by while the voices of constituents are diminished.

Transparency was also absent in the District’s decision to close Pio Pico Middle School. This community is fighting to save their neighborhood school but is being ignored by Superintendent Carvalho and his office, their board member, and their local Superintendent. The community has been told that they are being eliminated because of declining enrollment, but the district will not even allow new students to enroll in the sixth grade next year.

There was also no transparency as the Charter School Division wiped out $7.6 million in debt by charter schools for over-allocation fees. Jose Cole-Gutiérrez insisted for years that these fees are set by the State Board of Education. The public would like to know what methodology was used in determining that half of these fees would be forgiven. Why were the parents of the students at the LAUSD public schools that were slated to get 90% of these funds not informed that the money was being taken away from them?

In general, the PROP-39 process lacks any sort of transparency. Charter schools complain that they do not like how space is allocated. LAUSD school communities who have space taken away from their students certainly do not feel like they are involved in the process.

This lack of transparency brings me to the comment period that I have signed up for - Pending Litigation. On April 13, The North Valley Military Institute (NVMI) filed a lawsuit that alleges that the District is not following the rules in turning over space to their charter school and demands that the students at Valley Oaks Center for Enriched Studies (VOCES) give up even more of the space that is used to provide services in their magnet school. It is not that NVMI is not getting the amount of space that they are demanding, but they do not think that it is fair that some of the space will be located at Mount Gleason Middle School.

I would like to know who had the great idea of putting this charter school on a middle school campus. NVMI was sued by parents of former students alleging that an administrator sexually assaulted their children. Instead of taking the steps necessary to protect students, the charter school allegedly turned the parents into Child Protective Services. There are also allegations that female students at VOCES are sexually harrassed by NVMI students. This charter should not be allowed to operate on any LAUSD campus but putting them on a middle school campus is just a disaster waiting to happen.

Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for students with special education needs and public education. He is an elected member of the Northridge East Neighborhood Council and serves as the Education Chair. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him “a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles.” For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.