As first reported by the Westport Journal this morning, the Westport Board of Education ended last night’s meeting when several speakers continued beyond the 15-minute public period.
As they’ve done at meetings since February — when a Westport couple described racially based incidents directed at their Staples High and Bedford Middle School daughters — parents, students and others have used the public comment time to talk about the treatment of minority students in the district.
This time, when they continued after being asked to finish their comments, chair Lee Goldstein left the meeting. Other board members, and school officials, followed.
Board member Kevin Christie stayed, and listened as the speakers continued.
When members returned, the Board voted 4-1 to adjourn.
This afternoon, Christie told “06880”: “I believe we have to create space for our community to be heard, while also ensuring the Board of Education can live up to its mission of preparing every student to reach their potential as lifelong learners and socially responsible contributors to our global community.
“We have to be able to balance these things, and when that didn’t happen in last night’s BOE meeting, the board recessed and ultimately voted to adjourn.
Kevin Christie
“It is understandable why our community was and is upset. When members of our community are in pain and speaking up on issues that are important to them, and our bylaws put time limits on comments and prevent us from responding and reacting, it can feel like a lack of human decency, interest or care.
“We do care. We also want to ensure that we can make space for the challenging work of the BOE. Last night’s agenda included things like restorative practices (generally, and in the context of hate-based incidents), ensuring productive public comment, and student research projects, which we know are important to our community.
“Public input is important. The work of the board is important. Let’s find a way to do both.”
I commend Kevin for staying not just because it was the right thing to do, but the promise he made to voters when he took an oath to serve the public with the utmost responsibility and respect to take in the public’s feelings.
Fifteen minutes had passed, but what’s another five? We owe it to the public to stay. We took an oath of office, which takes us away from our families, home, and extracurricular activities to serve the public and town. Extending the open public comment by another 5-10 minutes, letting everyone speak and feel good, continue with the agenda, get it done, and go home.
THAT is good governance and that could have taken place. Some will disagree and that’s ok. But I share Kevin’s same deep commitment to listening and advocating for the public to speak and to be heard.
To have a 2 minute time limit per person for comment is an insult; also, it seems 15 minutes is the TOTAL amount of time given over to public communication…who the hell does the B of E represent? Themselves?
Public input is essential for a B of E AND a superintendent. If a speaker is repetitive or irrelevant, have the balls to cut ’em off; otherwise, sit back and learn.
As was pointed out by another commenter, when the topics are on the agenda (which is published beforehand) there are no limits. This was the “non agenda ” items portion of the meeting. Ironically the agenda for Thursday had restorative practices on there and would have been the time to bring up some of these concerns.
People do not learn the facts anymore! Look what happened with the Camilo crew! People jump on a bandwagon and run with it. People have lost all sense of decorum and how board meetings run. I suppose some people want school board meetings to operate like Florida which wad a total disaster.
I guess when you compare ittomother towns and cities Westport is highly desirable to live in. It’s far from perfect like most people
You are quite the role model, Denice.
Oh yes, most people here use their real names. What’s yours?
Good for Kevin for staying. But the key questions- which still have not been answered in Westport (as well as at Harvard and other universities) is: “What are they doing to fix this? How will they keep Jewish students and other minorities- who are being bullied and assaulted- safe?”
Dan- when you see these questions actually answered by the BOE, please be sure to publish it. I know many people have been waiting for real action on this- and, sadly, we are all still waiting.
Ed, There has been a lot of discussion about this and one of the recent meetings had a discussion about an updated code of conduct and disciplinary actions. What other sorts of actions do you think are appropriate other than listening to parents, holding open forums as they have done and taking concrete steps to shore up disciplinary process and expectations?
Kudos to Mr. Christie. I too tend to err on the side of hearing out those who take the time to show up in our democratic process. Yes decorum must be observed. Yes, the chair has authority to keep the meeting moving. Yes sometimes citizens don’t know when to stop talking. Yes board members are volunteers who should be treated with respect; their time is valuable and appreciated.
But read the room. It seems like this was an opportunity make an allowance for constituents to be heard on a singularly important matter. There are a handful of important, sometimes emotional issues in Westport right now and they need to be vetted. Anger will wane in the face of understanding and mutual respect.
More citizen participation, not less. I suggest we take the time needed to let everyone be heard.
Thank you Mr. Christie, for your leadership.
Thank you Kevin for writing this.
As a Board of Ed Member I could not attend last night’s meeting due to work unavoidable work commitments.
I applaud Kevin for remaining.
I am disturbed by a potential movement to limit public participation in a Board Meeting. I do agree that other students and teachers should not be specifically named or referred to in a negative light. That is wrong. However, beyond that I would oppose any attempt to limit or control public commentary. Public comment brings issues within our community into the Board of Education. The contribution can shine an important light on an Issue. Many times I hear things in public comments that I have no idea are going on in our community or schools. Sometimes public comment overrun a little. Such is life. We appropriately accommodate and we move forward.
Furthermore, I do not accept this idea that a Board of Education Member cannot and can never respond to public comment. I fully understand the risk I am taking when I am saying something. I owe it. If I get it wrong I will correct it. I will continue to speak at a Board meeting when I feel strongly on a matter – even responding to public commentary. I trust others will use their voice in whatever way they feel is appropriate. The Chair, or anyone else has a right to disagree or be critical of me on this.
I agree with Kevin that both public comment and work of the board are important. We can and must do both. We shouldn’t limit one to justify the other.
Thank you.
Thank you Kevin for staying while others felt the need to leave a room as a child spoke. All this did was show the children who are victims that even the BOE does not care. Robert I commend you on speaking at the last meeting. If you don’t want families to continue to come out then you need to have a public conversation and willing to listen especially to the children. If you feel the need to get rid of public comment it just shows you don’t want to know nor care what is happening.
Thank you Kevin, I agree we need a place for parents and students to speak about their experiences, and that the board needs to have the ability to get to the items on the agenda.
I want to clarify that Lee Goldstein called for a recess, and that is when members left. I personally left because I felt it would bring down the temperature in the room. I am appreciative of conversations, but we were not able to be productive.
I understand parents and students to not feel heard, and we need to reconcile that.
As for Robert’s point of responding to public comment, we cannot. The board must comply with FOYA regulations and our by-laws. We also must remember that BOE meetings are a meeting in public, not a public meeting.
I also think kudos to Kevin but find it interesting that so many people feel like he’s saying the board should have stayed and listened. I’m hearing the opposite – I think he’s saying they have a job to do and they can’t throw out the agenda for public comments when enough parents come to speak on an issue. Like many things this is more complex than it is being portrayed to be. The BoE has held open sessions with the community – a few in the last year that are open to anyone. They held an antisemitism and racial bias forum last month. In February they allowed Dr. Felder to go over the allotted time when making her very powerful statement. I made note of it at the time because I had never seen it happen and thought about precedent. Since that meeting almost every meeting has had parents with concerns about racial incidents. So its not that they are not allowing time and listening. But there are limits. We may feel like this is so important we should allow it to go over but what about other topics/parents we might not agree with. The last few years we had a number of other parents beside Camilo Riano talking endlessly about how DEI is anti-white and the school board was facist and pedophiles and whatever else. There were quite a few of them. I don’t think too many of us in the public would have wanted the Board to allow them more than the 2 mins/15 mins? I think what Kevin is saying is that its a balance. The other issues that I think need to be considered are the appropriateness of some of this at the meetings. It’s hard to think it wouldn’t be appropriate to let the masked child speak, on the other hand there is a policy that all be Westport residents and so can we start to let anonymous people speak? They already allowed the Pres of the NAACP to speak as a non Westport resident. The BoE also does not know the facts of particular cases and even if they did it would be inappropriate to discuss them in public. What they can discuss – and have been – is the new disciplinary code of conduct and what can be done about behaviors in school. I think that there should be a forum held with BoE and Superintendent to specifically address these issues – separate from a regular BoE meeting. I think this is what the Rabbi’s did and it sounds like more is needed. Maybe the Pres of NAACP can assist with an open meeting. As Dr Felder said in her board comments in Feb, this isn’t a you need to fix this issue, its a WE.
Thanks Lauren. I too am sad about the way things unfolded on Thursday and I appreciate your thoughtfulness about the complexity of public comment on non-agenda items. Families and students should be heard and the 15 minutes of public comment on non-agenda items feels like short shrift on these vital issues. However, comment on agenda items, like a new code of conduct, goes on to the very last speaker. Racial harassment is a topic that deserves more space and thoughtfulness than 15 minutes–and I hope it is being addressed by our schools in discussions to which the public is not privy. I think our Board should continue to provide opportunities for public discussion, as they have in the past in open forums at the library or the discussion at Temple Israel. I think it is also worth noting, as you have, that our Board, especially our chair, a Jewish person, has championed diversity, equity and inclusion and been called anti-semitic for it. She has stood up against book banning and been called a pedophile. And these are things that have been said in that period of 15 minutes at the top of public meetings. So, let’s hear from the community, families, students–especially those who have been shamefully mistreated–and other public servants alike, but let us do it in a way that makes continuing to serve this community on the Board of Education something that thoughtful well-intentioned people will continue to want to do.
I am very concerned about people accepting mistruths as truths in this case and many other cases. We have to be careful about whom we are getting information from. I want to hear Tom speak and defend himself against these awful accustaions. Lee as well! Sometimes people just believe the loudest voices in the room. There have been some nefarious things going on in the past to attempt to drag down or even sue our district.
I like to hear the full story before I judge anything. I have full and complete empathy for any child who experiences real racism or anti semitism. Falsely accusing a superintendent or Board of Education member of not caring is a totally different story.
Abby. yes we can. I think we should be very careful listening to all the “advice” we get from the BOE attorney.
Perhaps if our media and discussions dealt less with our different colors, religions, sexual preference etc., celebrating them by designated months, we would realize we are all Americans and in this together. And yes, we are all immigrants.
Thanks are due to Mr. Christie for having remained in the room, and for having stepped forward with this commentary. I believe we are due some explanation from those who did not remain in the room. I understand there are issues of equitable treatment for other public commenters, but I don’t believe the Board and Administration should hide behind moral equivalence in this instance. When children are coming to you to tell you their story but feel they have to be masked to feel safe doing so, there is something very wrong.
The board walked out as a child wearing a mask as he was too scared to be identified was speaking on what he has faced in school. Parents acknowledge the BOE can’t make comment but it is called empathy and compassion. You don’t need to use “words” to show those two things. Children stood in that room and seen “adults” walk out on them. The mission of the NAACP is ensure the political, educational, equality of minority group citizens of States and eliminate race prejudice. There was a community gathering for antisemitism and bias. It was a very well scripted and articulated event. This meeting has raw emotions from being unheard. Children need to be safe.
sounds like Kevin would make an excellent choice for first selectman
What in the world is going on? This feels like the attacks by Camillo and company. I can not believe what I watched! Were there people wearing black masks in the audience? What was that all about?
I pray that this is just a parenting issue. There is no way Westport Schools is tolerating or encouraging kids to be racist. I hope I can say no way! I can not imagine they are.
Please everyone: attend meetings, listen, and participate. Go to school board meetings and see this all to witness.
We need to get the full story on all of this.
As a resident, parent, and teacher I am very concerned about how the NAACP has been responding versus how the ADL responded! I listened to the BOEeeting on Thursday and heard the Bridgeport NAACP rep threaten and accuse Westport Public Schools, Tom, and the BOE w a lawsuit and other measures. On the other hand, I heard and witnessed the ADL handle the anti Semitism and bias, cases and incidents in a much different manner working WITH the school district, BOE, teachers, administrators, TEAM Westport and even the clergy to find solutions together to solve problems!
I am very concerned with how the NAACP is attacking this school district, superintendent and BOE.
Clarification: it was the president of the Norwalk NAACP and she threatened to call the state police and the National Guard on westport Public schools.
The national guard? Is this how we teach kids lessons and solve problems in 2024?
Everyone has the duty to watch the BOE meeting from Thurs April 4th.
Instead of walking out, which is dismissive and disrespectful, why not say something to the effect of “ We see there is a lot to discuss on this issue. Let’s set up a dedicated meeting for this topic as a start. Members of the community can offer agenda items beforehand, and our group will do the same. If we need more meetings a subcommittee can be organized.” This is one of the most important issues of our time. in the past, Westport has always been a town that fought for social justice.