Parents in some school districts find their input suppressed—and their dissent criminalized

For those more inclined to watch a video... here is the local news report on the event.



Here is the article. I used the sub-headline for the thread title as it is more descriptive.

https://www.city-journal.org/public-school-boards-against-parents

The latest and most egregious example comes from Round Rock, Texas. In a series of school board meetings this fall, two fathers—a minister named Jeremy Story and a retired Army captain named Dustin Clark—spoke out against alleged corruption and school officials’ hostility toward parents. Journalist Pedro Gonzalez reported that at an August meeting, Story had calmly “produced evidence that the board had covered up an alleged assault by the superintendent, Hafedh Azaiez, against a mistress.” The superintendent and school board president cut him off midsentence and ordered officers to remove him from the premises.


At the next meeting, in September, with the district’s controversial mask mandate on the agenda, the school board locked the majority of parents out of the room, preventing them from speaking. Clark and other frustrated parents asked the board to open the nearly empty room to the public. Instead, school board president Amy Weir directed officers to remove Clark from school property. As he was dragged out by two officers, Clark shouted to the audience: “It’s an open meeting! Shame on you. Communist! Communist! Let the public in!”


A few days later, the school district, in coordination with law enforcement, sent police officers to the homes of both men, arrested them, and put them in jail on charges of “disorderly conduct with intent to disrupt a meeting.” Families and supporters of Story and Clark held an all-night protest outside the jail, until the men were released the following morning. They are now raising funds for their legal defense.


The school board was able to do this because the Round Rock Independent School District has its own police force, with a three-layer chain of command, patrol units, school resource officers, a detective, and a K-9 unit. The department serves under the authority of the board and, through coordination with other agencies, apparently has the power to order the arrest of citizens in their homes. For many parents, the school board is sending a message: if you speak out against us, we will turn you into criminals. When reached for comment, the school district’s police department confirmed that it initiated the investigation and that “one board member requested details from the RRISD Police” prior to the criminal referral.

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These School Boards are really hurting the Democrats across the nation. I welcome more of these Authoritarian Actions by the Leftists. Americans need to realize that those on the Left need to be nowhere near power, unless we are looking for oppression and failure.

 

I disagree with the general tone of the article which is blatantly partisan.

And, most of those things are just a RE-Hash of several things which have already been discussed at PF.

Personally, I have a Different Take on this issue than the Author (Christopher Rufo, an Extreme RW Activist and a favorite of Faux News).

I find the following passage to be just one (of many) Misguided Claims made by Rufo:

The battle lines are clear: on one side, the Biden administration, public school bureaucrats, and their armed agents;

^Rufo's use of the term "armed agents" in that context is beyond ludicrous.
RW Hyperbole at it's most misguided.

But, obviously, Rufo is entitled to his OPINION

I just happen to disagree with his OPINION.

Regardless of the circumstances, people (who believe that they have a genuine gripe) need a better game plan than to publicly disrupt School Board meetings just to give the RW the latest batch of Faux Outrage material.

 

You can riot, loot and burn down your own neighborhood and call it peaceful protesting, but it’s criminal behavior to speak up at a school board meeting. What happened to the left’s vaunted free speech rights?

Keep in mind that every corrupt and evil school board member was elected by the people who are now being oppressed by them.

The people who were arrested need to sue the school district and the board member who got them sent to jail.

 

A school board meeting doesn’t seem like an appropriate place to bring up allegations of someone smacking their mistress. And anyone who screams communist is probably an unhinged loon.

 

The lefts authoritarian actions are beyond question for the observant. Will they suffer for it? Mabye, Mabye not we will see as 2022 gets here. But I do think I’m the long run they are hurting themselves with this evil.

 

Exactly, the left will defend a violent leftist criminal till they are blue in the face. They will ignore their victims.

but be a right winger who is wrongly oppressed? The left will not be your ally, they will ignore your plight while smiling.

when the shoe is on the other foot I will do the same.

 

TL: DR - Couldn't wannabe-mod the time of the article, the title, or find any rule violations.

Never been to a school board meeting before, have you? Police have been there for a long time now - they are often raucous affairs. I've been to many. Other school boards have their own security there that might not be the police. It's pretty normal nowadays. Yeah, I think "armed agents" qualifies to describe many of 'em. Heck, considering the threats boards often get and I've personally seen over almost thirty years, they need to be. Please share your own personal experiences with school board meetings, AJ. I can't wait to hear 'em.

Hey, lookie HERE. I remembered this video as they showed it to us during our ALICE training - this was one of the reasons school boards started needing armed agents in the first place.

 

Sorry, had to go to Lowe's as my wife and I are re-flooring the house during Thanksgiving Break.

So, to continue - reading the article, it appears that the school boards are definitely going full-fascist. This is what ultimately happens when you got admins in power and you give 'em soldiers to play around with. In my district, we have the sherriffs there and they HAVE to follow rules set down by the county. But when you have districts that have their own militias working for them - yow. I mean, c'mon, call a police officer in. It's only- what, once, twice a month?

These particular moves are especially egregious - although I note that AJ had less of an issue with these particular boards going full ham-fisted with power and more concerned with the RW posting about it.

 

Well the staff managed to bury another CURRENT EVENT thread that they apparently didn't like... whatever. This is getting kind of old.

I won't be participating in this thread anymore. If they wanted the primary headline they should have just changed it. I was trying to do the forum a solid by using the secondary headline.

Primary Headline: Enemies of the School Board

That's not very descriptive and is just click bait.

Secondary Headline: Parents in some school districts find their input suppressed—and their dissent criminalized

I figured the secondary headline was more descriptive of the news event. This is not an opinion piece. This is hard news and why it's in this forum makes no sense.

I even added the local news video of the news event as well. I would prefer my CURRENT EVENT threads that they don't like just get deleted instead of relegated to the Flame Bait part of the forum.

 

It happens far too often IMO.

 

Show your ass in a public meeting, go to jail - even in Texas.

 

Yet another thread that had to be moved because its creator seems unable or unwilling to follow thread creation rules. You are right about one thing though - it is getting old...

11. THREAD CREATION

The opening post of a thread sets the topic and the tone of the discussion. It should contain a member's opinions or questions with sufficient elaboration to establish a foundation for respectful discussion and debate. Threads should not be posted in the wrong forum, or be duplicates of other threads and/or topics (creating multiple threads with fundamentally the same topic is not allowed). Images, links, quotations, etc., should be used to support a member's opinion, not to replace it. Quoting from an article is optional. If a quote is added, it must be clearly distinguishable from the personal commentary. Quotes may only contain a small portion of the article. We do not allow the entire article to be posted. Personal commentary must be a paragraph with at least 3 sentences of respectful elaboration. Thread titles should be a description of the thread topic (and if not they may be altered by the moderators). Whether a thread has sufficiently set a basis for respectful debate on the thread topic will be at the discretion of the moderators. All other board rules apply to thread titles and creation. Threads may be deleted, merged or closed for not meeting any of the requirements listed.

There are additional rules for "Latest U.S and World News" and "Current Events": All thread titles must be copy/pasted from source article titles. Article titles that are too long to fit, should be abbreviated, keeping as close to the original title as possible. No personal opinions are allowed within thread titles. Threads must have a sourced article or news video, and the full article/video must be accessible upon clicking. (Content behind a paywall does not qualify as a source.)

 

Before we get to the nuts and bolts here, why in the world were there police officers at these meetings?

 

Because parents go full idiot on the mask/anti-mask issue and can't keep their feelings in check. It is sad. really.

 

This whole situation is insane.

 

Interesting. Let’s assume that your school board were propagating white power material to their teachers and students and wanted white supremacy taught to your children. Other than taking your children out of the school, what would your “gameplan” be other then to bring it up and keep bringing it up in their public comment time at school board meetings?

And when you brought it up and they had you arrested for disrupting their board meeting, what would be your gameplan then?

 

If property taxes that fund the schools were optional, then I could see how an invasion of outsiders to express their opposition to school policies might be considered a crime. That's not the case. Videos of socialists acting out their fascist tendencies should be used in campaigns to unseat Senators who voted for Merrick Garland and his policy of criminalizing parental rights.

A socialist apple doesn't fall far from the fascist tree.

 

While being physically dragged out of a school board meeting for expressing an opinion about his kid being exposed to an unhealthy environment brought about by policies dictated by the school board, I can overlook his reaction as a reaction and not the cause for his treatment. The cause was that the school board was trying to run a fascist operation with no input from the people who pick up the tab and who will ultimately pay the price for the damage the school board does to the kids.

 

Sue the ever lovin' **** out of 'em. That's the process. What these idiots are doing is cheap, dangerous theater.

 

Actually, we don't know what happened that prompted the police to remove them from the meeting. We only have the picture that the RW media opinion video is painting of the incident.

From the video, there were a lot of other parents in the meeting that were not removed by police. So, my guess is that these two parents became agitated and unruly.

In any case, the simplest solution is to vote against the school board members. That's what elections are for.

 

You've identified why Rufo (and Carlson) began to flog (by misrepresenting) this matter in the first place. Repub opportunists recognized its utility as a perfect culture war issue to be used for coming elections as soon as their manufactured controversy elicited a visceral response. You can expect more provocations by conservative activists and more media coverage by conservative media in the lead-up to the midterms. It's Kabuli theater for the gullible that the VA election proved is effective.

 

Sue them for what?

 

Teaching white supremacy. It wouldn't be the first time a school district has been taken to court over content in the classroom *cough* intelligent design *cough*

 

The tip off was the statement that they were removed because this wasn't the first time they objected to policies. In other words, they called the board called the police because they don't like opposition to their policies. What right wing media are you referring to? A local FOX affiliate that you have never tuned into?

I would love to see a malicious prosecution lawsuit arise from one of these situations. This may or may not be the right one.

 

What we know is that the video was heavily edited and didn't show the "voicing of opinion" that cause the board to call the police. As I said, there were a lot of other parents at the board meeting that were not removed, maybe because they didn't cause disruption and become agitated. Screaming "communism" from the top of your lungs while being forcibly removed by police doesn't indicate that what happened prior was just a polite voicing of opinion,