Some districts allowing calls
Another San Diego Unified parent, Emily Diaz, said she submitted three public comments at recent board meetings that she never heard read aloud.
In her comments, she asked the district to provide more f lexible learning options for students during school closures. Diaz has pulled her 8-year-old son out of Ocean Beach Elementary to home-school him because he needs constant help during Zoom sessions and, as a single working mom, she didn’t have time to sit in on his classes and help him.
“It definitely feels like, in this time when you want the district to hear the struggles of your student more than maybe any other time, that you just can’t have a good mechanism to do it,” Diaz said.
Many comments are not read aloud because San Diego Unified imposes time
constraints.
When the board discusses agenda items, usually the “pro” side and “con” side of an item get 10 minutes each for public comment.
The board also usually cuts off public comments about non-agenda items at 30 minutes total. Comments are read in the order they are received.
Even before the pandemic, the state’s transparency law, called the Brown Act, has allowed governing boards to limit the time for public comments on specific issues and for individual speakers.
Evans, the San Diego Unified board president, said all public comments received are emailed to all board members, even if they’re not read aloud.
But some parents said not having their comments read during a meeting or posted anywhere online makes them suspect they’re not being heard, and they sometimes have no confirmation that board members read their comments.
“My main concern is I don’t actually know ... if they are truly, actually reading
the testimony,” Sorenson said.
Calling for public comments by phone
The ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties recently wrote a letter to multiple school districts saying that they should allow live public comments, either by telephone or teleconference, to properly comply with the Brown Act.
The Brown Act says public board meetings must provide an opportunity for people to “directly address” the board. The ACLU argued that requiring comments to be written and then read by someone other than the author does not meet that requirement.
“The opportunity to directly address school leadership is an important priority that is critical to building and maintaining trust with school leaders during this challenging time,” wrote Melissa DeLeon, an attorney at ACLU San Diego, in a letter to school district leaders dated Nov. 10.
The ACLU sent an earlier letter, dated Sept. 18, to San Diego Unified about the same public comment issue.
The San Diego County Office of Education also says school districts should allow for live public comments by phone.
“We have been advising that if they are capable, districts should allow for telephonic public comment during board meetings,” spokeswoman Music Watson said in an email Friday. “We have worked, and encourage schools, to comply with the spirit and intent of the Brown Act to the extent possible. Social distancing guidelines limit in-person interaction; they do not limit the use of other electronic means.”
After the ACLU asked San Diego Unified to allow comments by phone, the district told the ACLU its public comment practices are in compliance with state requirements.
“After review by our Legal Department, we believe our current policies comply with both the letter and spirit of the public meeting laws,” district coordinator Callie Harrington wrote in a September email to the ACLU.
Several other districts — including Sweetwater Union High, Poway Unified, Chula Vista Elementary, Grossmont Union High, San Ysidro Elementary and the county school board — also only accept written public
comments, according their board agendas.
The county school board will soon consider changing its policies to allow for comments by telephone, Watson said.
Some districts in the county handle public comments differently. Vista Unified and San Marcos Unified allow members of the public to call in and speak during the board meeting.
For Vista, people request a “hold card” in advance with instructions on how to call in, according to the district’s board agenda. During the meeting, the board president calls on people one by one to unmute.
San Dieguito Union High School District posts all written public comments in their entirety on its board agenda website.
La Mesa-Spring Valley and Coronado Unified accept written comments and prerecorded audio messages.
Cajon Valley Union does not invite pre-submitted comments and requires people to physically go to its board meeting room to give comments, provided they wear a mask and get a temperature check first.
Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest school district, and the State Board of Education allow people to submit written comments
to and call in during board meetings.
The ACLU was not calling on school districts to eliminate written public comments. Some parents said having the option of writing comments beforehand is convenient for people who aren’t available to give a comment during the meeting.
Instead the ACLU wants districts to read out loud any written comments during board meetings, include them in meeting minutes, and post them to district websites.
Evans said in an interview that he believes San Diego Unified’s public comment practices need to change and, at a minimum, should include posting all public comments on the district website.
He said one downside to having public comments submitted by email is it’s easier for a lot of people to submit a lot of comments.
“It can kind of give us an unmanageable number of public comments that can take hours and hours to read,” Evans said.
San Diego Unified board members have been wary of giving free rein to public commenters and have said they think some meetings get out of hand when people give many public comments. In a controversial decision last year, the board moved non-agenda public comments to the end of board meetings, so that it could take care of agenda business sooner.
“We don’t want to turn board meetings into circuses, and we don’t want to ... give a forum to people who are going to just act in ways that are inappropriate,” trustee Richard Barrera said at last week’s board meeting.
Evans said he explored the idea of having people say their comments in person at board meetings, but he was told that would violate public health guidance against gatherings.
During last Tuesday’s meeting, the board and San Diego Unified Superintendent Cindy Marten discussed having people submit prerecorded audio or video messages. Marten suggested that the district would need to screen the messages to ensure there’s no profanity and to filter comments from people who have no relation to the district.
San Diego Unified currently accepts only written comments because it hasn’t figured out the technology involved to have other forms of public comment, Stultz said Tuesday. The district may have its staff test a new public comment process as early as January, Stultz said.