School boards across the nation have complained about members of the public who create chaos at school board meetings: screaming, threatening violence, disrupting the proceedings. The National School Boards Association lodged a complaint with Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking for an investigation.
A large group of prominent rightwingers sent out a notice to parents and other allies, urging them to attend school board meetings. The leading voice who signed the letter is 89-year-old Ed Meese, former attorney general for Ronald Reagan.
Their letter begins:
Conservatives are deeply disturbed by the efforts of the Department of Justice to criminalize parental dissent at school board meetings. This is a dangerous and anti-democratic attempt at intimidation that should be vigorously opposed.
The DOJ has recently announced it will direct the FBI to investigate “threats of violence” at school board meetings. The announcement came just days after the National School Boards Association urged the Biden administration to invoke the Patriot Act against concerned parents, as they might be engaged in “domestic terrorism.”
This level of outright authoritarianism must be opposed. Parents not only pay for the instruction taking place in public schools, but as parents, have the right to know how and in what manner their children are being instructed. Those expressions of disagreement and demands for accountability are not only appropriate in a democratic society, but protected under the Constitution.
If Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Biden administration are going to make it their business to ban, demean, and belittle parents and citizens for engaging in protected speech in the institutions funded by their tax dollars, the response from concerned parents must be more speech, not less.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s a solution- they should stop threatening school board members.
As an aside,I hope public school parents and community members are watching this.
Not one positive or productive contribution to public schools or public school students. It is 100% negative. Public schools are trying to recover after the pandemic and did these professional political activists offer anything positive or productive for the schools or students? Nope. It’s just the usual public school bashing, except they turned up the volume.
Remember when we were told these folks had an earnest desire to “improve public schools”? Over the last 20 years, is there a single shred of evidence they have contributed anything positive or productive to any public school, anywhere?
It’s easy to be a public school critic, and apparently quite lucrative, given how many thousands of full time, paid public school critics this country seems to produce, but that isn’t what the public was promised. The public was promised reform activists would “improve public schools”. They haven’t delivered and now they affirmatively harm public schools.
There are so many memes on social media about trickle down economics not working over the past 40 years. Where are the memes about the last 20 years of testing, removing teacher protections, school “choice,” etc. being a farce ?
Why so little pushback from the ed reform echo chamber to the ed reformers who are promoting these protests? Are there concerns that some of the groups funding the protests also fund the ed reform echo chamber, and that’s why there’s so little dissent?
If Koch is funding both the anti-public school groups and the pro-charter/voucher groups does that affect whether ed reformers defend public schools?
If these protests were disrupting charter schools, they were anti-charter school instead of anti-public school, would the ed reform response be different?
Just odd that “public education advocates” who purport to be concerned about public school students post-pandemic are carefully ignoring protests that keep public schools from attending to school business.
your last paragraph sends chills down the spine: where ARE the notably organized rebuttals and actions? I certainly don’t see anybody being interviewed on news shows who have a clue about these attacks being devastating to public education.
Raises questions about the huge ed reform push for private school vouchers this year too. Why no demands that parents run private schools? They’re publicly funded now. Why are public schools and public school students the only “sector” in the ed reform model that is attacked like this?
If only we had a huge group of paid ed reformers to dicuss some of these questions. Sadly, it’s an echo chamber so there will be no discussion of the absolute incoherence of the ed reform agenda, where they rigorously police the public schools and don’t even regulate the publicly funded private sector schools. That seems inequitable.
“Parents not only pay for the instruction taking place in public schools”
Well, thanks to the hard work of ed reformers. “parents” and the broader public are also now paying for private schools and we can’t even attend their board meetings so one would think ed reformers would be outraged.
But they’re not, because the only coherent position in the ed reform “movement” is opposition to public schools and promotion and marketing of charter and private schools. It doesn’t have to make sense – it just has to be ideologically correct.
There’s no “accountability” or “transparency” at all in the private schools they all lobbied to fund. Does that concern the echo chamber, and will there be a real discussion of it, or is that barred by their employers?
The radical right is firing up right wing parents and using them as a “weapon of crass disruption” against public schools. They are sowing more seeds of mistrust in public schools.
This is just…so nuts. The FBI? They’re using the FBI as the boogeyman here? Along with anybody associated with education?
And that’s a list of sleazy wingnuts for sure. I see the wife of a Supreme Court justice…Donald Trumps lawyer…and a porn-obsessed car dealer from my hometown, Nashville.
You’d think some of these more prominent sleazes would be embarrassed to sign something this stupid. But there is no bottom.
These folks actually want the FBI to get involved because their goal is to make a Federal case out of the issue.
Is there any doubt in your mind how law enforcement would have responded to these protests if the protestors were on the other end of the political spectrum. If there is, you might want to view some of the cam footage of NYPD actions early in the BLM demonstrations . Three days before the overwhelmingly unrelated looting started, NYPD was kettling peaceful protestors on night one and cracking heads.
Try to envision the treatment of a left wing protestor being dragged out of a school board meeting.
Try to imagine a left wing protest at a state legislature armed with AR 15s . Wait there is nothing to imagine roll the tapes.
The Right knows they have little to fear from the state.
Well, the Constitution does include a ” Bill of Rights”
So, the response is in some regard understandable.
If it had been intended to protect lefty protestors, it would surely have been called “The Bill of Lefts” or if its intention was even handedness, it would have been called “The Bill of Ambidexters”
Little known fact: the “of Whites” at the end of the title was edited out to make it ambiguious for all but those who knew the secret handshake.
The only real surprise, given the attitudes of the Founding fathers toward Blacks, is that it was not called “The Bill of Whites”
Our thoughts (and comments) crossed
The wonders of timing plus the ether!
The Bill of Whites”
The Bill of Whites
For civil rights
Is worth the nights
With hooded Knights
// End sarcasm
And if it had been meant to protect cigar-employing womanizers, it would have been called the “The Bill of Clintons”
And if it hand been meant to protect interfering billionaires it would have been called “The Bill of Gates”
One correction: As a self-proclaimed Constitutionalist/originalist I can categorically state that “The Bill of Clintons” was meant to apply to DeWitt, James and George. (But now that you bring it up, was Bill and Hillary’s move to Westchester a move to link up with those spirits to create a new dynasty? It makes so much sense when you look at it logically and do some research. And I need to check into those Ambidexters. They sound suspicious.)
Foiled into moderation by the Clintons!
Hey now, lets not bring first baseman Bill White into the mix!
What? Oh! Nevermind!
So, GregB is huffing ether?
Ether he is or he is not.
Them signals need the ether t’ ‘ttach to soes they can git from where’s they sendin’ to where they’s gettin’, like our computers. Ether is mightily misunderstood and neglected a’cause of false learnin’ ’bout magical, fake stuff like radio waves and ‘lectricity.
The Left got what they wanted in Portland – the police now stand down to the “protestors”: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10103603/Portland-hit-100-person-riot-police-dont-react-law-banning-crowd-control-techniques.html
How does that apply to disruptions at school board meetings?
Joel’s comment was saying that if you were a conservative protestor, that the police would not be likely to intervene. I gave an example of liberal protestors, with the police not intervening.
Matt Metzgar
You are absolutely right about Portland Police standing down and they have been doing so for years . Their sympathies far more aligned with Neo Nazis and fascists who have been invading Portland for years . Going as far as acting as spotters for these Hitler Youth as they invaded the City . Warning them of police actions and not enforcing warrants, thus antifa. The day neo Nazis march down the streets of my town is the day I violate their first amendment rights with my second amendment rights.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/16/portland-proud-boys-rightwing-march-liberal-city
If you have twitter you can watch this video of thousands of NYPD protesting mask & vaccine mandates. This is not going to end well for anyone. https://twitter.com/peoplesmedianyc/status/1452666761258668041?s=20
They were police, fire , sanitation and other municipal workers . So it was not thousands of police. The problem is the termination should be permanent, end stop. They have been given the option to come back after receiving a vaccination. .They are Public servants . The Public wants protection from them .
Northwell Health the largest private Hospital chain in the State issued a mandate. 98% of employees received the vaccination. The other 2% terminated.
Pandering to fascists does not work.
Disgusting demonstration.
There was one in Chicago nearly simultaneously.
Coincidence? I think not.
Right out of the playbook of the esteemed Rep. Waters:
“”If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters, who has called for President Donald Trump to be impeached, told supporters over the weekend.”
Oh! Both sides do it?
Can’t be. Only those “wingers” do it.
How does that apply to disruptions at school board meetings?
OK! Enough said. Roll “Looney Tunes” theme.
LOL. Mark. That’s perfect.
“Keri Rodrigues
I have visited school boards in literally 10 cities in the past 6 weeks. In person. With the people on the ground. Here’s what parents and families in districts where the bulk of our children attend traditional public schools are ACTUALLY talking about at school board meetings:”
Prominent full time, paid ed reform denies school board meetings are being disrupted and pens long list of complaints about public schools.
This is how “the movement” improves public schools. They hire and pay full time public school critics. No positive contribution to any of these schools, no productive work put towards improving them, just thousands of adults employed full time in bashing public schools.
Notice the focus on “traditional” public schools, too. Reading inside the ed reform echo chamber one can assume all of these issues happen ONLY in public schools and not in the charter or private schools they promote and market.
When does ed reform get around to doing what we hired and paid them for? Any work on “improving public schools” this year, or do we get yet another year of anti-public school political campaigns, making this Year Twenty?
Can any of these folks point to single public school or public school student they have actually benefitted? Is there some reason we continue to hire them?
Keri Rodrigues likes to pose as a mom, but she takes in nearly $200,000 yearly from the Waltons. She got her start here in MA when there was a 2016 ballot question to eliminate a cap on charters, which was soundly defeated.
Mo Cunningham is her nemesis.
Woops, my previous comment posted twice instead of the new message:
One solution to this craziness is to pack school board meetings with level-headed citizens before the firebrands arrive. An conservative friend sent me a post urginh parents to act out because schools are allegedly teaching porn. Of course, they have no evidence, and they never bother to participate when it was just about the kids and not politics.
Sounds a lot like Hitler’s hoodlums, who joined and promoted Hitler’s creed of lies and abuse.
Bingo
Thanks, Joel.
I’m retired but remember many school board meetings in my career. The district where people behaved most civilly 1) had a civility policy in place; 2) had parents active on different committees to make decisions; 3) had parents sign up to speak at meetings and kept to a time limit; 4) when the board went into closed session for personnel issues, the parents could remain or leave. Companies can also come in to train boards. In California you can now have a felony on your record and still be a board member. In one district if there was a hot topic where the press would come, the police might also be present.
“screaming, threatening violence, disrupting the proceedings” is not two sides peacefully agreeing to disagree and then debating the issues with logic and facts in an orderly fashion where hopefully the side with most facts based on truth wins.
These alleged parents are nothing more than dangerous, violent thugs, just like the Brown Shirts that supported Hitler’s rise to power in Germany or Mao’s Little Red Guard that turned that country upside down causing the deaths of millions.
And spreading lies to cause chaos is Traitor Trump’s weapon of choice, just like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and every other tyrant throughout history.
If the traitor and his MAGA thugs/mob are not stopped, even if it takes bullets and bombs to stop them, that will be the end of the United States as a Constitutional Republic and democracy.
As the traitor’s mob has been saying recently, they want to start killing anyone that isn’t on their side. Are we going to let them get away with that just like Germans did when Hitler’s Brown Shirts were doing the same thing there?
I think we are beyond reasoning with the traitor’s bloodthirsty thugs. If not enough rational people arm themselves and get ready to resist, then our way of life will end horribly. with starvation, and horrors you can’t imagine, death camps, et al.
I used to disagree with you on that . Not no more.
I agree about being wrong about once disagreeing. That honeymoon after the election didn’t last long, did it? Actually, a honeymoon period in politics today is as obsolete as whalebone corsets.
In other news, Brazil’s Senate just voted to recommend charging Jair Bolosonaro with “crimes against humanity” due to his Trump Mini-Me handling of the pandemic, leading to the deaths of 600,000 Brazilians. Why? Because the Brazilians are saner than we are.
cx: Bolsonaro
In the US , people are regularly prosecuted for crimes against insanity.
LOL
Daniel Ellsberg is perhaps the most prominent example.
Prosecuted under the Espionage Act for passing the Pentagon papers to the press in an effort to stop the insanity in Vietnam.
But this comment box is not large enough to hold all such cases.
Ellsberg was prosecuted for crimes against insanity of crimes against humanity.
Merrick Garland met with the Senate Oversight committee yesterday, October 27, and the GQP used its time to rail about the FBI intimidating parents at school board meetings. The execrable Ted Cruz was perhaps the worst offender. He invoked a parent’s right to give a Nazi salute.
Ted Cruz exemplifies the The Lone Neuron state of mind.