On the agenda for your 1/25/2022 Executive Session is Item 2.4 Receipt of Legal Advice, including Policy BEDH – Public Participation.
Will you please ask the attorney, specifically, why members of the public cannot mention a board member by name?
I believe Chair Holmes is applying the Policy incorrectly, when she admonishes members of the public not to mention a name of a board member.
Policy BEDH, under Open Forum, reads, in part, “The board will not permit in public session any expression of personal complaints [emphasis added] about individual school personnel or any other person connected with the school system.”
It does not state that a board member’s name cannot be mentioned. It does not prohibit a comment about a board member’s position on an issue. It does not forbid a compliment about a board member. It does not prohibit a statement in defense of a board member.
Please clarify for the Chair that she cannot make up her own rules for Public Participation. She can only apply BEDH as it is written. If she is going to quote Board Policy, please ask her to quote it accurately and not “interpret” or expand it.
Gus Philpott
Richland 2 Resident
Why does The Voice continue to allow Gus Philpott to submit letters continually. It’s fairly obvious what his intent is here.
This is addressed to MR. CUMMINGS: It’s called free speech. We the people are entitled to that right. In our constitution.
And instead of criticizing Gus Philpott, You ought to be congratulating him for stepping up and voicing the facts. Or at the very minimum his opinion. If you disagree you have the same right to announce your disagreement. Nonetheless, I would assume it would be met with the opposition without facts.
Jeff Schaffer
I will defend to death the right to opinions, whether they be rooted in ostensible inanity or reasoned, thoughtful expressions absent of vitriol, ad hominem, and racial animus. I will also scrutinize such opinions to expose their iniquitous base, hence their uselessness in civil discourse. Freedom of speech is not unlimited. It is responsible, therefore must maintain “accountability” – to use one of the campaign tenets of Trustee Lindsay Bourke Agostini. Obviously, most anyone who objectively views this obsession and incessant behavior with the R2 Board, Superintendent, and the so characterized “The Squad,” while using RONR as a ruse, is devoid of authentic “accountability, advocacy, and accessibility” she portends.