HSE Board President to Parents: “Be Quiet”

Evidently, Ms. Pritchett does not want to hear from you

The Hamilton Southeastern School Board had a meeting on June 9 at 7:00 PM at the district central office. You can view the whole two-hour, twenty minute meeting here. Below is a much shorter, edited clip of the parts that I want to talk about today:

The woman speaking at the beginning of this clip is Tiffany, a parent in the district. Although board policy specifies 3 minutes as the time limit for public comment, she was given only 2 minutes. The above clip begins at about 22 seconds prior to the end of her allotted time. Her microphone was cut by board President Janet Pritchett (jpritchett@hse.k12.in.us) at about 11 seconds after her 2 minutes were up.

Part of what Tiffany was explaining here was that her son had fallen behind academically in HSE schools, and she thought that this was at least in part because of the district’s lack of curriculum and focus on “social and emotional learning” (SEL), to the detriment of teaching basic skills in math, reading, and writing. One bit of evidence she provided for this: when she moved her son to a different school where there was a traditional academic focus, he immediately and dramatically improved his scores on standardized tests.

These are reasonable points that are highly relevant to the job that Ms. Pritchett has been elected to do. They are troubling points. They should have been of interest to Ms. Pritchett, even if she didn’t agree with Tiffany that SEL was to blame. She might have said something like: “I hear your story and I am troubled by it. I am not convinced that SEL is to blame, but something is going wrong here and I want you to know that I hear you and I agree that we need to get to the bottom of it.” She could have even offered her own theory about what might have gone wrong. That would have been a civil and reasonable way to handle the situation, and it would have been constructive. Note that full agreement is not required for civil and constructive engagement.

Unfortunately, Ms. Pritchett did not see things this way. Instead, she preferred to cut Tiffany’s microphone and, after some other board members’ remarks that are skipped in the above clip, she went on to stress that Tiffany’s concerns would have no impact on her. As she put it: “I would like to clarify that we will remain focused on social emotional learning in our district, and also diversity, equity, and inclusion, so I remain firm in that.”

Tiffany is a mom who is concerned about her kids. Why couldn’t Ms. Pritchett have afforded Tiffany a mere 14 additional seconds to finish her remarks? All she wanted to say was that, at her son’s new school, he has started to get A grades on his work for the first time, and has been made to feel that he is smart and capable. But I guess it was important to Ms. Pritchett that we not hear that. Instead, the way that Ms. Pritchett handled this interaction made it seem as if she was not listening to Tiffany, and did not care what she had to say. It seemed like she was so focused on being sure that Tiffany had as little air time as possible that she just wasn't hearing Tiffany’s words at all. I find it difficult to relate to this behavior.

After Ms. Pritchett made it clear that she would disregard Tiffany’s remarks, some parents raised voices of protest. Ms. Pritchett’s response was to tell those parents to “be quiet.” Michelle Fullhart—another board member—subsequently stressed that the board is in control of who gets to speak, and that the board has complete discretion on that score.

It is irritating to hear a public servant like Ms. Fullhart instruct the public that they are not allowed to speak. But, more importantly, with the power to determine who is permitted to speak at the meeting, she and Ms. Pritchett also incur the responsibility to wield that power in a reasonable manner that brings people together for the common good. That is not what I saw at this meeting. I saw behavior that made me think that Ms. Pritchett and Ms. Fullhart are unwilling to listen, unwilling to compromise, and entirely unempathetic.

I would like to encourage both Ms. Pritchett and Ms. Fullhart to consider a different approach, even now, even today. I know I’m eager to work together instead of against one another. If either one of them were to reach out to me to try to find common ground, I’d be overjoyed. I’ll let you know if that happens.