The New York State School Boards Association sent out a warning to local boards across the state about the risks of letting students join protest actions in support of the gun control movement. It is ironic to see the sudden outbreak of pearl-clutching when charter advocates have repeatedly closed their schools and bused their students, parents, and staff to Albany to lobby for more money for their charter organizations, with nary a peep from the NYSSBA.
Incidentally, many colleges and universities have declared that they will ignore any sanctions imposed on students because of their participation in walkouts related to gun violence.
A school board member in New Paltz responded:
“In a recent Legal Alert email from the New York State School Boards Association (NYSSBA) to its members, advice was offered to school boards considering whether to support students participating in a planned national walkout in protest of gun violence in schools, or to exempt participating students from disciplinary action resulting from a violation of school policy. NYSSBA offered very cautious, sensible advice from a purely legal perspective. In short: policy should always be upheld in order to preserve order and prevent the danger of setting a precedent which might, in the future, be used by students to evade repercussions for other policy violations; and that school boards should not support such activities, because school districts have “no express authority to engage in political activities,” but rather should always assume a position of neutrality. In addressing the issue of students’ First Amendment rights, NYSSBA cited the U.S. Supreme Court case of Tinker v. Des Moines, which states that schools can curb students’ free speech rights when they cause a significant disruption to the learning environment.
“As a school board member, I could hardly disagree more with everything I read in this email. Public education has become a highly politicized environment. Governor Cuomo, the New York State Education Department, Commissioner Elia, the Board of Regents, corporate reformers and charter school advocates have turned our public education system into a political football that gets trotted out and kicked around the field during every election cycle. To say that school boards should remain neutral, even apolitical, is ridiculous. We are elected officials, and though our elections are nominally nonpartisan, we are individuals with viewpoints, we represent our voters’ viewpoints, and have obligations to them and to students. The very notion of free public education for all was once considered a radical idea, and still faces attack today from various opponents.
“As school officials, one of our first and most important duties is to ensure that our students, teachers, administrators and staff have a safe and welcoming place to learn, teach, and work, free from fear. We are facing an ongoing crisis in our schools, a repeating cycle of violence, followed by fear, then inaction, and finally complacency. Over the past 20 years, we have seen tragedy after tragedy unfold, from Columbine, to Newtown, and now to Parkland, each with its horrific, bloody, senseless deaths, each ultimately marked by the failure of leaders to take action. As the alleged adults in the federal government prepare to once again sadly shake their collective heads and tell us they wish there was something that could be done, young people across America are preparing to come together in solidarity with one another, and to demand that leaders take action to protect them.
“Our kids and our teachers are being shot down in the hallways and classrooms of the one place they should feel safe from harm. This is not a time for cautious sensibility on the part of school officials. It’s a time for outrage, a time for anger, a time for grief, and a time for change. It’s a time for school board members to stand up on behalf of our students and staff, not to hide behind the board table. Some of our students will choose to walk out and demand that change. Some will not. Either is a brave choice, and should be supported, not punished.
“Brian Cournoyer
“Member of the New Paltz Central School District Board of Education”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great response from this New Paltz school board member. I thank him for caring enough to take his head out of the comfortable sand and taking a stand against the totally avoidable murder of our children
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Tinker vs. Des Moines is a very interesting case. It basically says students have the right to free speech up until the point that the district (credibly) has a reason to believe the speech will disrupt the educational environment.
The key thing about it, is that the district administrators get to make the call (and defend it later if they get sued) for violating free speech.
The NYSSBA opinion doesn’t actually seem that horrible, it basically restates the law in line with Tinker and says schools should strive to remain apolitical.
I hate to say it, but, I agree with the School Board Association on this one. Students have the right to speak out, and be heard, and to not be punished if district policy allows it. However, if we say here and now, public entities receiving public money can push political views on students (even ones I agree with), then when the time comes when someone pushes something I don’t agree with, the precedent will be established and legally nothing will be able to be done about it.
As custodians of public money and the public good, we are not paid to indoctrinate students in any political view (though I know many people tend to think because teachers are left leaning that students get more liberal points of view than conservative).
As much as I care about this cause, and as hypocritical as charter schools are in using money to fund political causes, I don’t think either of those points should enable public schools to move away from their basic mission of teaching students a variety of perspectives and world views and teaching them how to choose between them. That’s the core of democracy.
Public schools should remain apolitical and hold to our values. Remember – if you unchain public schools, you unchain every school in the state no matter what they teach and where they teach, and you make it legal to teach it if you say public funds can directly fund political speech.
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M,
I guess you agree that charter schools are not public schools, since they frequently take their students to legislative hearings to demand money for the charter in which they are enrolled. Students must attend, whether they wish or not.
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M- I agree that public money shouldn’t be used to push any particular political viewpoint (and school board members in New York are not paid). However I do argue that students should be encouraged to express their own, not punished for it. I’m about to (hopefully, if I’m re-elected) enter my third term on the board here, and I can tell you that, seeing our schools and students as helpless passengers in the political maneuvering that surrounds public education every day, asking board members to maintain neutrality is a huge ask, and sometimes, in my view, impossible. In any case, I’m not pushing students in any direction on this. I don’t think kids being shot is a partisan issue. It’s a safety issue, and a civil rights issue. No one will force any student to participate. Kids will be encouraged to do what they think is right for them.
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As a side bar to this, I must recount how the NYSSBA is nothing more than an advocate for the status quo and a dishonest broker professing concern over what’s best for the children.
The Exec. Director of this association is Timothy Kremer. The organization must like his performance because he’s occupied that seat for 20 years. He was chosen to be a member of the Common Core Task Force, a buffer set up by Governor Cuomo to make broad recommendations that would allow him to walk back from the Common Core and all the negative consequences its botched implementation brought. The Guv needed cover to distance himself from the mess he had championed.
So, the task force had its first public meeting at the college of New Rochelle on October 29, 2015 to hear what people had to say pertinent to Core issues. At the time, the opt out movement had become a political force, convincing an astounding number of parents to keep their children from taking the ill-conceived “core-aligned” state exams.
Lisa Rudley, a brilliant NYSAPE organizer and parent activist was invited to speak and raised a number of points about deficiencies in the core standards, curriculum and assessments.
Kremer then directed his remarks to her and said he kept hearing all the complaints about the tests–that they were age-inappropriate, too long, too frequent, too hard, used obtuse vocabulary, posed trick questions… Then he had the gall to ask her in soft tones that belied the cynical nature of his question: “I just want to know what research evidence are people relying on when they say these things about the test.”
Now, if you’ve studied the way Pearson and NYSED have hidden data since the inception of the Common Core, you would know that no one has been given access to the kind of information that would easily support the arguments test critics have been making.
And so, if he can defend a bad testing program that exists in a vacuum of information,
Mr. Kremer and his board of directors deserve little, if any, credibility in whatever flexible positions they may adopt or espouse, such as urging school boards to discourage students from protesting for gun control and fighting for other issues as sanity requires.
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How can the current debate over gun control not be considered a “teachable moment”? It is long past time for action. The NRA has done nothing to prevent such events from occurring and have actively lobbied to relax regulation. From recent polls it would seem that they cannot even claim to represent the majority of their members. It is ludicrous to expect the students to return to the classroom once again knowing that it is only a matter of time before it happens again. This violence is a national crisis; it can’t be ignored any longer.
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To make gun control the center of this as more facts come out is short-sighted. To not look at the horrendous mess up from the school’s handling of this student, the poor security plan, the lack of police reporting so a proper background check could be done and worst of all, the FBI not swiftly acting on 2 credible but tips. No one will disagree that this kid needed psychiatric help and should never have had a gun, but the school and agencies failed these students and no amount of gun control would have prevented this, give those factors. That said, encouraging kids to walk out over gun control is furthering the liberal teacher’s union agenda.
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“…encouraging kids to walk out over gun control is furthering the liberal teacher’s union agenda.”
Wha-a-at?!!! What is “the liberal teacher’s union agenda”? I never found the union idea as particularly liberal unless you were a robber baron. Fancy thinking that workers deserve a decent wage and working conditions!
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It figures you would focus on a single aspect of this tragedy. This would not have happened if the school, police and FBI did their jobs. This was a seriously at risk individual. By hiding juvenile offenses from a background check data base they allowed this to happen. The very kids grandstanding on TV were the kids. who bullied him. This walkout is bogus. If they are concerned about safety, show up at a school board meeting and share ideas.
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No, the system didn’t protect us. Then logically shouldn’t we make it less likely that future response shortcomings can harm us? H-m-m-m. Maybe if we ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines, we will be less likely to have to mourn the slaughter of more school children. Perhaps we should be adding to mental health services rather than cutting them. For all one knows, it might be valuable to make it harder to get and maintain a gun license than a driver’s license.
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“The very kids grandstanding on TV were the kids. who bullied him.”
Oh, is that the latest alt right talking point? I’m sure your information has been carefully fact checked. Go somewhere else. You are offensive.
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I have a link to a Feb 22 commentary from the ACLU about the free speech rights of students.
I think anyone who expects public schools to be apolitical fails to appreciate that the institution is political, in purpose, and governed by the political actions of many people, including the power to seek legal remedies for disputes about teacher, student, and parental rights and rules.
Elected officials in Congress established the inane NCLB and ESSA regulations. Add now the appointment of DeVos as Secretary of Education who is hell bent on making all schooling a matter of private choice. Those are nothing less that political actions. Teachers in public schools are being treated as they should do nothing but comply with the powers that be.
The political character of schools is also evident in the decisions of state officials and locally elected school boards.
Public school teaching is political insofar as students learn about the history of our nation, the Consitution, and so on. No subject is entirely free of some political influence.
Political thinking supports the very idea that teachers in public schools should not indoctrinate students. Public school teachers are constantly faced with slippery slopes as they move beyond teaching in subjects that cannot be reduced to following rules and unquestioned conventions.
In the imaginariums of many people, teachers can and should be ” objective,” so you get the ugly principle of teaching (or preaching) both sides of an issue as if that is a cure-all. That false equivalency has led to court cases on teaching science versus creationism. That is also the ugly idea that President Trump routinely activates as a strategy to please his base while appearing to be perfectly fair.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/student-speech-and-privacy/can-schools-discipline-students-protesting
In addition to the ACLU link, please see Mercedes Schneider’ s research on the millions paid to executives of the NRA, and how their non-profit status functions.
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You go Brian! Proud to be a retired teacher in NP who voted for you. YOU are representing the children! It’s definitely an Emperor with no clothes moment and the kids are courageously stepping up where the adults are hesitating. I’m with the kids, and I’m 70 years old. Their sense of social justice is to be followed! Join them!
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