SCHOOL DISTRICT APPROVES POLICY LIMITING CONTACT WITH INDIVIDUAL BOARD MEMBERS

At the Commack School Board meeting held on June 12, 2014, the Board voted, despite my objection, to approve new Board Policy No. 1501 (the “Policy”), which relevant part provides:

COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE COMMUNITY AND BOARD MEMBERS

“Individuals who wish to communicate with the Board of Education of the Commack Union Free School District (the “Board”) as a whole or with any individual member of the Board must either e-mail the Board through the official Board e-mail account (boe@commack.kl2.ny.us) or by United States mail by addressing the correspondence to the District Clerk.  If a member of the Board receives an e-mail about District matters to  an individual e-mail address, the Board member will  immediately forward such e-mail to the Board e-mail account, E-mails to any other account will not be considered official communications to the Board or the District.

See full Policy- https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3cbjRc1NY_pb1VQaGY4YjRFOWc/edit?usp=sharing

See also Videos of May 8, 2014 BOE Mtg – (starts at 20:49 mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JglGoGtw6Ss and June 12, 2014 BOE Mtg - (starts at 26:47 mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MESdJvFbXvc

My fellow Board members attempt to justify the Policy by claiming it merely says communications concerning District matters will not be considered “official” unless sent to the official Board e-mail address or mailed to the District Clerk. However, despite the Board's self-serving interpretation, anyone who can read  English can see that the Policy goes much further.  The first sentence of the Policy unambiguously restricts people from communicating with Board members individually by E-mail or US Mail. 

As I noted in my prior Patch post, the restriction is absurd because it violates the right of the people to communicate with their elected officials and vice-versa. see http://commack.patch.com/groups/jim-tampellinis-blog/p/commack-boe-prohibits-community-from-contacting-individual-board-members. The Policy is beyond stupidity, it is aggressive stupidity, a conclusion only enhanced by the fact it was authored by Peter Wunsch – whose term in office thankfully comes to an end next week.   

In my view, the Policy offends the First Amendment by exercising control over the manner of communication between Board members and the community they serve.  For instance, pursuant to the Policy, a PTA member (or any other person for that matter) cannot e-mail or write directly to any individual Board member about issues that may concern them.  Instead, they must e-mail the entire Board at the joint Board e-mail account or mail their communication to the attention of the District Clerk (who presumably will then distribute to the Board).  The Policy stands in stark contrast to the majority of other school districts who provide their communities with the ability to communicate with any board member individually by e-mail, and at least one district (Kings Park) provides a contact phone number for each board member.

See:

http://www.halfhollowhills.k12.ny.us/page.cfm?p=976730

http://www.kpcsd.k12.ny.us/board_members.cfm 

http://www.babylon.k12.ny.us/boardofeducation/default.aspx

http://www.syossetschools.org/boardofeducation/default.aspx

http://www.deerparkschools.org/boardofeducation/default.aspx;

http://www.eischools.org/boardofeducation/default.aspx

As elected officials our duties are not only to help guide the District, but to also serve and assist the Community in addressing issues relevant to their children’s education and schools.  How then does a Policy that essentially prohibits the community from bringing their concerns to individual Board members (if they so choose) not infringe upon or limit that ability to serve? 

I for one will have no part of the Policy and have no intention of complying with it.  Rather, I plan to violate it with impunity and dare the Board to attempt to enforce it.  Members of the community should feel free to do the same.  In that regard, I invite anyone in the community to feel free to contact me directly at my District e-mail boejt@commack.k12.ny.us or my private e-mail at JTCommackBOE@yahoo.com or by sending correspondence via US Mail addressed to my name at the Commack Union Free School District.

In closing, I leave you to consider as relevant the poignant words of Supreme Court Justice William Brandeis’s concurring opinion in the seminal First Amendment case of Whitney v. California who wrote:

“Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion.  If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”