Saying they shouldn’t risk the perception that questions, suggestions or thoughts from the public are unwelcome, members of the school board this week rejected a proposal that would have limited the scope of comments from attendees at their meetings. The Board of Education also softened some new language regarding behavior at its meetings, changing two instances of the word ‘boisterous’ to ‘unruly’ in defining conduct that is not allowed, after school board member Penny Rashin flagged it. To the suggestion that a member of the public who wishes to address the board present his or her thoughts ahead of time for inclusion on the agenda, Rashin said, “I think it is chilling, actually, to require somebody in town to think they have to get a board member on the side in order to speak.”
“It is not obvious from the face of this that that’s the case,” Rashin said at Tuesday night’s regular Board of Ed meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “I think somebody could just read the policy and think, ‘Oh, I have no right to speak,’ even though procedurally they could get a board member to support it. We do have controls, the controls are two minutes to any speaker, I think sometimes you do have uncomfortable comments that you listen to as a Board of Ed member but we are elected representatives and I think that there is a real difference between email communication and face-to-face communication and it takes a lot of courage, actually, for a number of people to come to speak publicly to a board like this and I have always been proud that we have encouraged anyone that wanted to come, to come.
