 Hi, everyone. Welcome to our discussion today, how culture wars have derailed school board meetings across the country. I'm Mara Shalup. I'm an editor here at ProPublica and your host today. We're going to get started in just a few minutes. We're waiting on more people to sign in. We're at a hearty 223. But thank you so much for your patience. A few little reminders. Closed captioning of the program is available. You can enable it by clicking on the closed caption option bar that's toward the bottom of your screen. Again, today we'll be discussing disputes that led to unrest and arrests at school board meetings across the country. It looks like we are climbing well over 300. Thank you guys for being here. So we'll go ahead and formally get started. I'll repeat myself for just a moment. Again, if you're just joining my name is Mara Shalup. I'm an editor at ProPublica. I'm your host today. Welcome to our discussion how culture wars have derailed school board meetings across the country. Again, closed captioning of the program is available. Turn it on by clicking on the closed caption option on the bar at the bottom of your screen. As an additional note, the session is being recorded. A link to the video will be emailed to everyone who registered. So thank you for doing that. For those of you who are new to us, ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism. Or as we say around here, journalism with moral force. You can find a link to our school board coverage by Nicole Carr in the chat. I'm not really speaking not just with Carr but with experts about unrest that they too have are familiar with at school board meetings across the country and those that unrest stems from a number of things. It could be free speech library book bands, transgender rights, teachings about race are reporting in our school board series zooms in on specific cities and counties to provide a deeper understanding of the impact on school board members on parents, students and communities at large. But for today's discussion we invited experts to share their knowledge and shed light on some of the larger themes identified in this series. Our hope here is to provide a bird's eye view of the reporting and to talk about the impact of this discourse on policy, culture and democracy itself. To begin our conversation, I'd like to invite my colleague, ProPublica reporter, Nicole Carr to join us on screen. Hi Nicole. Thanks for being here. Nicole's reporting broadly focuses on criminal justice and racial inequity for ProPublica South unit, though this reporting has taken her all over the country I should say. And, yeah, let's, let's get into it so for those who haven't read all of your work on this topic or even any of your work on this topic. Can you share a brief overview of just what you found. Sure. So our main interests coming out of some reporting that dealt with the anti CRT movement last year was, you know, kind of tracking the unrest in a, in a way that would help us track other themes tied to the unrest. So myself and research reporter Molly Simon started crafting a database that that tracked folks who had been arrested and charged in the school board meeting space. And from there we added other incidents of unrest and saw patterns with people in the outcome of that unrest and that's really what the reporting is about like what is the sum of the unrest and who is at the center of it. And so, if you read our overview which is a multi media interactive that we published last week that ties these narratives together in different states. We looked at about 90 incidents in 30 states that was the first thing that stood out to me was that we were going coast to coast north to south there was no rhyme or reason to the geographic area of the unrest and we could kind of anecdotally say that I'm going to thank everyone who is listening and joining us today and thank you for joining joining us this afternoon. I'm sure we can say oh I've seen this viral moment at a school board meeting or I've seen this kind of everywhere and scattered, but by the data we could tell that it was across the country. We were looking at this 18 month period from the spring of 2021 that is really when the school board meetings were back in person and out of that virtual space when people were coming to the space. From May of 2021 to November of 2022. And we saw the most common charges associated with this this was trespassing, trespassing resisting arrest, disrupting a public meeting misdemeanor charges. For the most part we had assaults we had threats but in most cases prosecutors decided this was that worth, you know, pursuing the most of the charges were dropped against people and in nearly every person and saying except for one, who was at the center of this unrest in our database was white. And I think it's important to identify all of the, the components of what we found to understand who is driving the unrest the complaints the narrative and then what is the outcome of that. And so that's where it leads us and that's where we go with the narratives. And just describe what you mean by unrest a little bit like what meets the threshold of unrest because some of y'all, some of us have been to school board meetings and they can be pretty tame or they can be somewhat spirited and people get passionate but like what constitutes unrest, journalistically that made you the lit you up in terms of this being important. This is a great conversation that we had you you as my editor and working through this and saying what counts as as unrest and it's it's not just yelling something or being passionate from a podium this was taking over meetings, we had an incident in Utah where 11 people had declared they are the new school board so it's taking over the meeting. It's, it's the physical interaction with others. You know, both during the meeting and after the meeting we had an incident that we examined in Arkansas and the parking lot of a school board meeting where a gentleman admitted to police later on that he had. He pushed this woman into a parked car because he was so frustrated coming out of the meeting where they were talking about the content of library books. I mean there was quite a threshold for that it was the chaos the having to separate people. Oftentimes school board members receiving police escorts to their cars after the meeting. You know that sort of thing it so it definitely is not about free speech and just expressing and being passionate about your children or your community's children or an idea that you have about what should or should not be taught in schools. This is actually like bringing the thing to a to a halt and people real consequences in people's lives when they walk away from the school board meeting. And what made you interested in reporting on school boards to begin with like this isn't something you'd covered for years and years like what brought you into that at this point in time. Yeah, so for me it goes back to a piece that we published last year at ProPublica about a black DI educator a woman, an accomplished black educator who had been hired for a DI role here in Georgia. We don't speak in these acronyms means what diversity equity and inclusion, and we found it was a job that she had not applied for rather she had been, you know encouraged to apply after she was relocating to this district north of Atlanta. And anyhow, there is a scene in that story that leads her to quitting the job before she starts, and it's at the school board meeting. And it's a scene where we see the folks it was the first time I'd seen the moms or the women wearing that I don't co parent with the government t shirts and there were at the time we were not associating that with the Moms for Liberty group but we're, you know, checking out what people were saying about CRT movement and but there was chaos at that board meeting in a way where people were banging on windows and protesting her hiring. There were prayer circles that were being formed in front of the school board. And the school board members themselves had to be set into a room behind the dais for protection and pulling kids into that room who were speaking at the school board meeting it was just it was wild it was a wild scene and I said well what happens after this. Like, what happens in a community after this moment. And so that kind of that led us to start tracking it. In talking to people who've witnessed this unrest or were involved in the in the unrest actively. Do you have a sense of why it happened at school board meetings like wise, why the school board meeting. In some cases, and that is going back to that prior reporting and also in talking to people in this space. You know they were summoned there by like minded people in different ways. So in the reporting last year we saw where parents attended almost a training session and said this is how you engage your school board and this is how you get national attention and that first story was like how to get a clip on Tucker Carlson or Fox News or how to amplify your message from the school board podium. This is what you do so there's that organizational point and that was done by conservative nonprofits that we attract last year led us into this reporting. In some cases it had been my neighbor told me what they're doing, and I decided to show up or it was in a church space or it was, you know, so this is really a community, pushing folks to the space and then most of the people in our database were in fact parents that I know that's a question that people had we were trying to figure out well how many people are actually connected to the district whether they stayed in the district or not is a different story but at the time at the point of unrest. We had found that most of the people did in fact have children in the system and then you had folks who say well hey I'm a taxpayer, you know public education we all have a stake in public education and what happens in this space and they say yeah I'm just I'm just showing up, but for the, for the most part, it was, it was parents, it was parent led white parent led unrest. Yeah. I mean parents are can be forgiven for being passionate about their children's education, this is a forum in which people do speak up about the most, you know, dear, the most dear to them thing in the world. I mean I was not surprised that things got sort of heated there but I was surprised by several things you turned up in your investigation and I'm curious if you could talk about what surprised you as you were doing this reporting or what you felt would surprise readers. Let's go back to our first chapter in the series which landed in Conway, Arkansas, and we were tracking several different people in that space a retired teacher, who had reported what she believed to be a bullet hole through her living room after the school board meeting. Another woman who was there, speaking up for LGBTQ students who was pushed in the parking lot and then there was a group of college students who saw a viral moment from the school board and that's what made them show up, and they were chanting Trans Lives Matter at a school board meeting and were arrested and eventually sentenced to jail. What surprised me in that reporting was how the policy that people were debating in that space or where the unrest had centered quickly became a state law, meaning the school board the local level policy had by the time we finished reporting this out. You know, over this this past summer like laws that began July one in Arkansas were very similar to the policies that the school boards had passed just like that and so they were at this, you know grassroots local level. Discourse and now you have a bill signed into law that mirrors what happens at the school board. And so that that is of great interest to me how quickly policies and things morph into laws or things that that really impact us on a wider level. So that was that was one of the things and then I guess it shouldn't have surprised me but I thought we might see a concentration of the unrest in certain parts of the country and that was not the case. This is very much the United States in our unrest. There's also worth mentioning that you were compiling and your research partner Molly Simon were compile compiling videos a lot of this was either on the live school board feed or there were lots of social videos and that you were watching lots and lots of videos from lots of parts of the country in a sort of condensed period of time like what did you take away from that and those videos I should say for the spine of a multimedia piece that came out last week but you know there's many more videos that are in that piece and I'm curious what you made of that and what might have surprised you in that that the districts themselves the school board members themselves were not ready for what landed in that space, either by policy and I've talked to one of our panelists who you will hear from in a few minutes about the the one a argument the free speech argument and like how far you would have them the school board members trying to shut a conversation down or shut the comments down is something that you know out of control in the space. And we've seen even a federal lawsuit here in Georgia and one district that we've reported on where the federal judge says, you know, they have a point when it comes to free speech you can't stop them from doing this this or that at the podium from saying these things. But those things were like a climactic moment in in in the larger unrest and so the school board itself didn't know how to handle it from a policy standpoint like how do we keep control of this but hear from people and not violate, you know, free speech because it's some some of the incidents it's easier to say oh what should be done like okay you have folks who are, or someone who's eventually charged with assault, like you can't go into the school board meeting and put your hands on people like that's a cut and dry thing, but how do I control this kind of fur that's building at the podium that leads to this other unrest without violating this person's rights and keeping control of the meeting and serving the larger public and the people who are at home and who are in this space and how do we handle this in a policy way and another one of our panelists will talk about this as well as she studies this space and it's really, you know, finally just a democracy space. And that's that's why I said you mentioned earlier I didn't necessarily not an ad beat reporter or whatever but I've always considered this reporting a democracy space. And so we should all we're all stakeholders and we should care what is happening here. And to hear from the panelists you've been increasingly referencing the call it's let's bring them on so I'd now like to introduce these experts and invite them to join us on screen. I'm going to run through their bios so you all will be familiar with their work. Deborah called well stone is director of the American Library Association's office for intellectual freedom, and executive director of the freedom to read education and attorney by training. She is a former appellate litigator who works closely with librarians library trustees and educators on a wide range of intellectual freedom and privacy issues in libraries including book censorship. Thanks for being here Deborah. The pleasure. Kevin Goldberg is the First Amendment specialist at the Freedom Forum, where he works to educate the public about the substance and importance of the First Amendment. Prior to joining the Freedom Forum, he served as Vice President legal for the digital media association and was a partner in two law firms where he focused on First Amendment FOIA for those who don't know that's freedom of Information Act requests and intellectual property issues. Hi Kevin. Hello, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Carrie Samson. Hi Carrie is an associate professor in the division of educational leadership and innovation at Arizona State University. Her scholarship explores how educational leadership and policymaking at the K through 12 level influence equity and social justice for minority communities. Carrie Samson's research is centered at the school district level and has an emphasis on governance, particularly the role of school boards, community advocacy decentralization and school choice policies so what a stellar group of people I'm so excited for you guys to be here. Thank you. I'm going to start with one question but Nicole is going to do most of the questioning, but my first question is this that Nicole has just described her perspective as a journalist when it comes to unrest at school board meetings. I'd like to know what has stood out to each of you in terms of this unrest that she has identified but I'm sure you have to. Over the past two years. And then what has it meant for your work so I'm just going to start with the Deborah and then, but your Deborah to pick on the next person. I guess what struck me most about what's been happening at school board meetings is the vitriol that's been directed at librarians and educators who are simply there to teach to serve the students and the families in that school district. We get reports almost daily now from librarians who are being attacked who for simply providing books to students that a group doesn't agree with. And it's changed our work we've had to add staff we provide support to school librarians and now public librarians as well. We are dealing daily with providing support to librarians who are dealing with demands to censor books as well as the personal attacks that go with those demands to remove books. Have anyone jump in. I think I would also agree that the vitriol is something new there was, and I would say I'll build on that a little bit to me and I'm an active watcher of public meetings. You know and have been for years both from as you mentioned the FOIA side a corollary to FOIA is open meetings but also First Amendment. We're the coordinated vitriol. So before it was very discreet you had one parent with one issue and if anything that parent was very much in the minority viewpoints and maybe you'd have other parents that were sort of like, Oh, just sit down, you know, it's, we've heard heard from this. I've heard from you so many times. And now it's the groundswell of people just with the same message that as Deborah said really puts the, the career, and I would go so far as to say career experts on the defendants. I'm saying on the defense, which is a difficult place to be and and a dangerous place to be I think for if you look at it in the grand scheme of things these are the people who we entrust with decision making who have worked their lives to become experts in a field. And in a lot of senses they're probably very close to saying, I just, I don't need this, you know, this isn't what I signed up for I believe in this but I don't need this and that that's a concern to me. Yeah, and I'll build on that I think I was surprised at the way in which these issues are being conflated. And, you know, we have COVID CRT anti LGBTQ efforts, etc. kind of just all in this perfect storm that has created a very broad and strategic effort for folks and organizations to focus at the local level and at the school board space. And while it's, you know, surprising and shocking it's also not surprising and shocking because it really reminds me of what Carol Anderson calls white rage where she like pinpoints this history of pushback against any, you know, equity or any kind of movement in terms of like racial justice and equality and social justice and so, you know, you see these, these groups of parents and non parents you know we have probably showing up at school board meetings etc. Very coordinated and like Kevin said, fighting kind of for this, this right to, you know, be free of mass mandates to be free of exposure to certain curriculum to be free of having bathrooms for transgender students you know in the school, you know with, with their children and so this kind of entitlement that is associated I think with this white rage that has happened for, you know, decades centuries. And so yeah, but I think that the series really captured the ways in which, you know, some, a lot of these organizations a lot of these parents are not being kind of held accountable these dismiss these charges were dismissed for the most part with the exception of one, one group of students who were kind of advocating on the other end of the spectrum around an anti LGBTQ policy so yeah but I mean again it's shocking but not shocking. And thanks for that, that overview and what we want to do from here before we take in the audience questions is kind of talk amongst you all in different categories of the unrest and what we've seen and so we're going to start in the book banning space Deborah you you sort of touched on this a moment ago when you said that you all are providing the guidance and support to librarians who are facing harassment and who have been targeted in these movements and my first question was really about how the community engages both school librarians and public librarians amid this controversy and we talked about new laws in Arkansas that you know they a public librarians could face a felony for providing obscene material to a minor so like you're two different spaces how do you how do you talk to these librarians and what are you saying right now. Well we've been providing support to library professionals for decades. And what we generally do for them is help guide them through the process of dealing with a demand to remove a book from a library shelf. To go over their policies, give them legal information there is court precedent about removing books from publicly funded libraries both school and public. And generally try to equip them with the information they need to provide information to their board members to the parents or individuals bringing the challenges and and to generally guide them on how to resist censorship it's paradigm of the community to support the freedom to read to resist censorship to provide broad access to all kinds of information ideas in support of the public good. What has happened more recently is we're now dealing with librarians who are being targeted with threats and stigmatization demands that they leave the community and how to guide them through dealing with this hateful speech this hateful conduct that's being directed at them. And it's not just librarians anymore we also engage with members of the public who are looking for ways and means to defend the freedom to read in their communities and in their schools. We also work with library and school board trustees who themselves are finding themselves under attack and are looking for strategies to deal with this and so where we provide policy information legal information, sometimes just a shoulder and an ear to listen. When it becomes too stressful for them. So you had you had answered my next question about engaging folks outside of that that role of public librarians, but also the general public to and just educating because another thing we know from the reporting like there's really nothing new under the sun like book challenge committees people who review challenges those have been around for decades, challenging certain books have been around for a long time and so for anyone here on the panel like can you talk about the library book landscape and this this challenging what should be in the classroom or in the library on the shelves themselves like we've we've been here before. I mean, we've always had disputes primarily about what books are available to young people, students, adolescents. But what we've seen a real change since about 2015 is a real focus on challenging removing books that deal with the lives and experiences of marginalized groups LGBTQIA persons, black persons persons of color indigenous persons. Those have become the books that real target. We still see the occasional coming of age novel by john green. Tony Morrison's books as challenging as they are around race and slavery and our history with all that are also on our books. On our list of most challenge books, but generally what we're seeing is this real targeting of books that deal with LGBTQ themes. And sometimes it's not just that we'll hear an excuse well it's about the book the books deal with sexuality there. But in fact, we're now hearing in writing in complaints about books, we don't want any LGBT books in our library period and that's in public libraries, not just school libraries. And that's a real C change. And really what we're seeing another change that we're seeing is that this is coming from organized groups. So it used to be our challenge reports for always involving a single parent challenging one, maybe two books in the library. We're 90% of our challenges reported to our office last year, involved multiple titles and 40% of the challenges reported to our office last year, invited and involved a demand to remove more than 100 titles at one time. So this is not a parent raising a concern about a book for their student. This is organized political activity targeting categories of books for censorship. I want to add to that point like as we're talking about policies morphing into state legislation you and I talked about this earlier in the week but here in Georgia. There's no state law that says you have to be a guardian in the district, or a parent or guardian to challenge the book, but then it puts the onus of the challenge on the school principle to go through it versus the, the book, the committee that is normally comprised of, you know, the experts in this space who can look through standards and all of that so another example in our reporting of a flashpoint that is now reflected in in state law in state law with how we we navigate things. I want to kind of move into the actual meeting space and just starting with Kevin and again anyone jump in when when you want to but we talk a lot about free speech like I should be able to go here and say what I want to say and and how I want to say it and we had some incidents in our reporting where like law enforcement didn't consider what most people would consider a threat, a threat by legal standards they said that this doesn't meet. This doesn't meet that standard but what should school boards be doing to craft legally sound public comment. Periods without violating free speech but also trying to keep this kind of decorum in place. Like, how do you, how do you navigate that. Yeah, it's it's it's hard, but it's but it shouldn't be because the law surrounding free speech in public meetings really hasn't changed much. You use the term and I may have the exact term wrong but I like the comparison so I'm going to use the term microcosm of democracy and that's what these public meetings are they're actually what we would call public forums either designated public forums or public service public forums, and these are these are legal terms that were created well outside of the school board meeting. You know area the public meeting area and really apply to public spaces, and you know they are areas which the government has either traditionally completely allowed for public speech places like the National Mall here in Washington DC, where everybody comes to protest and you know that is a place you know the town square in any, you know, in any one of your cities or towns. These are traditional public forums and people go there and speak and then there's other thing called designated public forums where the government owns a space and then says you can use this for free speech activities on a regular basis, and there are limited public forums and these are places where the government says you can come in and talk about this topic. There are rules applied to them, and when you then layer those concepts into a public meeting, then you just sort of apply those rules in a public meeting space so it's not hard or shouldn't be hard to understand. And yet they keep apply school boards keep applying this wrong so what I would say is, they need not they may not need better policies they need better training to figure it out especially and I think part of the problem is again. I think of the moment. It does become very hard for people to apply these rules and I get that and I'll give you a sports analogy to you know one thing athletes do is they practice they practice and they practice and they practice and they train and they train and they train so that when the crucial moment of a game comes, they are ready for it and we don't necessarily see that from school boards. I think undergo a little more training around the first amendment to better understand these rules that have existed forever and apply them, you know, as a perhaps a secondhand nature. So what are the boundaries and I think someone has already dropped this into our chat like what what what is that line between, I can say what I want and I can make you feel like someone that in a post to our school board president we reported on, you know, encouraging you to sleep with one eye open like what, what's the boundary. Well, so again I talked about public forums and most of these meetings generally are designated public forums you could talk about whether they're designated public forums which, you know our places that we expect free speech and broad conversation are limited purpose public forums which are a little narrower and the rules are slightly different in a designated public forum. Basically the government can only shut down speech based on the message or the content. If the government you know someone from the government can show that, and they bear the burden that there's a compelling interest for doing so, and that means employed the, the, either the policy writ large, or the moment where you are telling someone, you know, stop right now is narrowly tailored to advance that interest so you, you may have a perceived harm you may have some. You know somebody's going completely off topic that would be one example, and you may say okay we need to bring you back on topic and that person's gonna say you can't stop me from saying what I want to say. Well, the school board probably could in that instance politely redirect the person or say your time is up. What they couldn't do is say you can't you know we're going to redirect this person who's gone off topic into this area but not redirect someone who goes off topic into this area because you have to always be viewpoint neutral and that's really what happens even a limit, limited purpose public forum situation, where you have to be viewpoint neutral. Now let's apply that to the situation you've talked about with threats, you know threatening speech. There's a broad protection for freedom of speech there are some categories of speech that are exempt from the First Amendment and you've hit on one a true threat a case that was actually just decided by the Supreme Court this past year, talked about true threats and sort of redefined what true threats are but generally speaking they are statements made that are intended to put you know make another person feel the subject of the recipient of that statement feel as though they are in some form of direct or perhaps even imminent another would be the incitement to MLS imminent lawless violence is another one and fighting words as a third that comes into play in these kind of public meeting spaces defamation might be another but really and obscenity I suppose. Normally we're talking in the context of your question about people who are saying things that are really trying to provoke some kind of violent response, either from the other people on their side, or from the person they're speaking to which would be fighting words, or to make that person, how we're out coward down in fear. Those are those are completely exempt from the First Amendment you don't even have to apply that strict scrutiny framework I just talked about. If somebody were to issue something that narrowly qualifies as a true threat, yes they could be punished for that criminally punished. Yeah, Kerry you and I talked about this because you reviewed some of these videos in our reporting as well and you were saying you know school boards have to figure out this policy that allows for people who want to speak to speak to get their point across but also try to figure out how to control the space in a way that that allows for for productive discourse so you can get on to the next so you can hear all of these things so can you speak to that from a policy standpoint and just from what the school boards themselves have to do to accomplish this. I mean I've thought a lot about this because I do you know believe that democracy and education is is important I feel that school board meetings are a critical space where we see that and I've studied and minoritized communities who are you know really advocating for equity oriented policies and school board meetings so black mothers Latin Latinx mothers, and these spaces are really important for for them to kind of you know strategize and and you know offer their, their, you know, perspective and push kind of policy and equity oriented ways. And I think though, you know, it's important to emphasize that the broader strategies that these current organizations are using, especially when you're talking about some of these militia based organizations that are involved in it are very anti democratic. So I think that's one of the important strategies to imitate and intimidate threatened cohort school board members into changing policies and practices that can really kind of harm children and families and so I think, as Kevin's talking about the distinguishment between what's free speech and what is violent. So I think it's important to, to, you know, for school board members to understand and have, you know, again, you know what you said about having training, and I think it's also important to remember that most of these school board members are volunteers I mean they're not getting compensated for their time. They're in a position and they don't usually have a whole lot of training. You know, a lot of, you know, context a lot of public in our a lot of professional development and so, you know I think that we need to step back and think about how do we provide support in these environments for school board members to kind of facilitate and handle these conversations so that yeah we don't shut them off because they're very important. I think they're very important for all sides of the issues right. I think that's the point of violence. Again, that's that's anti democratic. Yeah, and I want to, because I know we have a lot of audience questions to get to and a lot of them will be for you all so just as a final question for everyone here. What do these existing protests and conflicts mean for the classroom, the libraries is this distracting from things that are even more important for us to be focused on right now or is this the thing of the moment I think this encompasses so much. This leads to policy change to curricula change to all of that but and it's all important. So, where does this lead us. Yeah. I mean, I'll say that, you know in the in the districts that I've been studying across the country. A lot of urban districts are not I mean these issues are kind of nearly nonexistent some of the urban areas that are serving majority students of color. And some of these suburban rural areas, and some of the things I've seen is that districts have pulled back their equity efforts that they had, you know, recently rolled out, or they've defunded some equity departments or they revise their equity statements to make them much more aware of what they're doing on versions, taken out, you know, language around raised or LGBTQ, and at the classroom level that might be mean less resources and efforts to recruit, for instance, educators of color, who are, who are really known and you know evidence based work around the fact that these, these folks are critical in creating inclusive environments for our minority students and families. And I think that's culturally relevant curriculum in schools, which research again shows are, you know, have been academically and emotionally beneficial for not only students of color but we're for white students. And yeah, I think, you know, like you mentioned, I think it's also just derailing conversations, you know, in terms of just advancing and kind of even coming out of coven like, you know, now now school districts and school boards are kind of having to deal with, you know, like, set of issues that, you know, as they're also trying to, you know, in transition our students back into schools and, and get them, you know, up to par in terms of literacy and emotional, socio emotional learning, etc. And those are the things that are directly being attacked. What we're seeing is an absolute silencing of certain voices. Just, we, and we hear from the students themselves that it's so important to find stories that reflect their lives, their experiences their concerns on library shelves, and those books are being attacked and removed and not only at the local level. And Nicole, as you mentioned, we're seeing state legislation, the Arkansas bill, which is, by the way, being challenged in court right now for him to read Foundation is one of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit. It also bills that are intended to silence voices, almost nationally, I think of Texas HP 900, which is going to impose duties on publishers vendors of books booksellers to rate books based on, you know, a very vague content, sexual content that may well bleed over to every other state. We're seeing a limiting of conversation of ideas, really a limiting of opportunities to learn about other lives other experiences that many people encounter in the library. And it's a true loss and I think it goes even further than that I think it's an actual attack on the public good public education. The roots of our democracy by silencing voices, limiting ideas, engaging in a kind of indoctrination. I'm going to provide a slightly contrarian, hopefully positive note. I am not a fan of book banning I am a book lover always have been actually and really believe that that the, you know, availability of a wide variety of viewpoints is not only essential for the learning process, but the fundamental underpinning of the First Amendment I mean, if the First Amendment provides for anything it is freedom and it's our freedom to become who we want to be by, you know, make your own decisions, by testing ourselves constantly. That said, there is one positive out of this, which is that people are finally on, you know, finally engaging in petition and getting involved, and we at the Freedom Forum have studied American knowledge of the First Amendment and attitudes toward the First Amendment slight plug we put out a survey on this just this week our annual surveys called where American stands. One of the things we asked was people are questioning how and what students are taught about race sex and gender in public schools what level of input should each of the following groups have on what is taught in public schools. And the number one answer was that in terms of who should have significant impact parents of school students school teachers and school students ranked top three in that order. At the bottom or federal education administrators state legislature state governors. So this proves that people want the decisions to be made by you know have based on input from people that are actually in the community and don't want them politicized. And so we're seeing that in practice now I think that's a really good thing I think the problem though is, we're seeing people at, you know, engage in the right to petition. The problem is the people who are the strongest petitioners don't fully understand that the right to petition does not mean you always get your way. It just means you get to petition the government for the right, you know, for the right to redress your grievances. And, you know, that's where it stops, especially when other people are petitioning to, and we create this marketplace of ideas where people get their say but they don't get their win all the time. And, you know, so I'm all for getting people active active in the local community. I agree though with Kerry and Deborah that the net result has been that those with the loudest voices are winning constantly even if it's perhaps not the right answer, legally or fundamentally for our society. I just want to tag on to Kevin's comments that we've always supported the right to petition. It's part of the First Amendment libraries have had reconsideration policies for books for decades. As part of their policies for dealing with concerns, but it's now been weaponized in a way that's targeting particular ideas particular groups. So we're all struggling to address that especially when we have legislation that is actually accelerating the removal of books from libraries rather than supporting the retention. We take on some of those audience questions now here in our figure we give the panelists another minute but we have so many coming in so we turn to them panelists anything you wanted to add. So, before we turn to that anything we missed that you wanted to get in front of people. Okay. Just a couple seconds sorry y'all. Okay. So, before we get to the Q amp a we're just going to really quickly post this link to our event survey. We love any feedback you can give us for how to do these events even better. So I wanted to say that we've received well over 100 questions before this event even started from registrants and thank you for that we did select some of those. And those were ones that were repeatedly asked. But for the most part because we are hearing a lot of common themes come through not just in among our great experts and Nicole, but also in the sort of questions that people want answers to. So, I'm also pulling some from the chat doing my best. Sorry for that noise. So we're going to launch right into these and anybody jump in and answer so what independent oversight exists for these school boards is there any that might be a carry question. I don't know. What I guess that would like what would you mean by independent oversight in terms I mean the state they're really a creature of the state I mean so school board under, you know, state legislation and state law, and we see, you know, different areas in which states can easily take over. There are districts and school boards all together and so. And whether, you know, they're elected or appointed or hybrid I mean at the end of the day, they are elected I think that's some of the most you know the closest democratic link in which voters are then you know the the ones who are kind of the school board and and do usually I mean there's a traditionally kind of a low voter turnout and a lot of districts. I think this, this time and period has shifted that probably. But, and then you also have you know these instances of recalls which, you know, again in the last, you know, 18 months, you know, 24 months we've seen a huge increase in recall efforts more than you know at any point in time and so you know those that is also part of I guess these this idea of oversight within the state law. I tag onto that and remind everyone that publicly funded entities do have responsibilities to comply with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, there are guardrails imposed by the first and 14th amendments for example, not to engage in discrimination, not to engage in viewpoint discrimination or content discrimination, and school boards and library boards are bound by these rules as much as anyone which, and you know, there are those who would argue otherwise but that those are, and ultimately we're seeing courts get involved. We're even seeing the Department of Education, get involved their office of civil rights US Department of Education is receiving complaints that the removal of books dealing with race gender identity or sexual orientation are creating a hostile educational environment, and they're beginning to investigate and act on those complaints there was a recent settlement in Georgia, Nicole you recall. And I think it's the grounds that the school board had, and their handling of the book challenges had created a hostile educational environment for the students in that school. Yeah, the lawyer and me was, was going to end specifically the First Amendment lawyer and me was going to remind everyone again of the right to petition which includes filing lawsuits in the courts and that is that is a very big check quite often on on behavior. And perhaps not to the satisfaction of everyone that it's not going far enough but that is, as Deborah said the usual way. One of these boards oversteps the line and they, you know, they're, they're set back. Another one would be of course not just that that you go to the judicial branch but the legislative branch as well we've seen Illinois and some other states and in, in, in particular stands out to me as a state that in which the legislature has, I guess, passed an anti book ban law right and maybe I can, you know, Deborah could flush that word to where that's happening and that's a legislative response to to some of these actions. Yeah, and, you know, it's a response to the fact that the courts move slowly, you know, we're looking at these lawsuits but it could be months years before we get an answer on the questions involved. And I think that the Illinois legislation is reflective of that they wanted to address censorship in school libraries and now actually it's public libraries I have to be accurate there but what the law requires is the library has to adhere to the library rights, which is really a statement of best practices and ethical standards for library service that of your censorship and promotes wide access to ideas. That's been part of our policies here at LA for decades. And they have to adopt that as part of the policy in order to get state funding so it's less of a penalty for banning books than the requirement that they adhere to constitutional standards and curating their book collections. The other states that are considering similar bills New Jersey is the primary one that I'm aware of right now but we're seeing proposals come on other states as well, and we'll see what crops up in the next legislative session in 2024. I realized that the person who submitted this question did not mean this but in some way the ultimate independent to oversight are the voters right who vote them into office. I'm curious how the school bar school board disputes are affecting school board elections what are we seeing happen. Is there any oversight there. Well, I will tell you that we are aware of groups on both sides the question targeting local elections in order to control, you know, the school boards. We're seeing this primarily from the conservative side of things. There's an organization called I voter dot org which explicitly organize candidates with a conservative Christian viewpoint to get on school boards and library boards other local entities to infuse that viewpoint into policy making in those communities. We've even responded in our own way, LA now has an initiative called united against book bands, which is intended to provide tools to individuals in communities that want to prevent censorship and their schools and in their public libraries to organize themselves to speak out for board meetings to provide questions to candidates to understand who they're voting for and what they stand for. We don't endorse candidates of course we can't do that, but we can provide tools to voters to know who they're voting for. And so they can make a decision in line with their views. You know, over the past few years we've reported a lot on the slates of candidates and this is on the conservative side and we've talked about endorsements. You'll see in several pieces the endorsement of the 1776 Super PAC, or what so you're seeing that organization in the in the elections, and people running as a single ticket. It's not possible but you know running together ever all of the campaign events are, are for a slate, and they're there with the same ideas and they're going after these these seats in that way and someone had asked earlier like, do you think these non partisan boards just all of a sudden became political public education is inherently political but the organization in the way that people declare their politics or their ideology has certainly changed. We've actually seen public school board a public library board elections where they're nominally non partisan, and we've actually seen candidates hide their political affiliation and order to gain a seat. And then when they get on the board, they turn out to have a very conservative pro censorship agenda. That's happened in a number of communities particularly in the rural West. There's a little bit about de escalation methods that can or should be used at school board meetings and who's responsible for offering sort of effective conflict resolution training to the boards we inflicted this a little bit in the conversation earlier but do we know anybody who's doing this right like what is your sense of that. I won't say I won't pick anyone out is doing it right or wrong I will say that my biggest concern about the way the training will go from school boards is that for school boards is that they will get training from their lawyers of course from the school, you know the district lawyers. The county lawyers whatever body is they're a part of, and there's a certain self interest to that, which is, don't get yourselves in trouble. And it's, it's got a certain lens through it it's not as First Amendment expansive as it could be, I think, in many, in many areas and yeah I see someone has put in the chat that that school board Association provides training but again they're from a point of view, I would hope that they would allow outside you know First Amendment experts to to kind of weigh in and help out on that which is sometimes what has happened in other areas. I know, you know that that you may have a First Amendment fight and part of the settlement is you will get training from an independent expert on this topic, which would be a you know that's a bit of an extreme but that's also something that happens and maybe should happen more voluntarily, perhaps, and maybe conflict resolution as well again you have people that are thrown into these conflicts that are now have been escalating for years and they're not prepared to handle them. They don't get special training on that which is which is I think very important as well that that needs to happen. State libraries and state library associations provide training to library trustees in particular, and we probably need to amplify those efforts to provide trustees with the information you know the background the information the training they need to handle their duties and and observe the fiduciary duty to serve the community as well. But I think we're learning all this in the foxhole kind of thing. So, but we can certainly try to move forward for a future where that's it's handled in a better manner. There are a number of nonprofits that do deal with civic engagement community conversations, and that I'm aware of a few of them getting active in some of the communities but they're small, and it doesn't address the larger trends that we're seeing right now. I was also thinking I mean there's some school districts that do like some town hall meetings and things that are not, you know, official school board meetings and I think those might offer a space that is less, you know contentious or more open to, you know, actual feedback back and forth dialogue and I think some of the frustration is that you know, during public comments school boards usually aren't allowed to respond to comments immediately right and so this can kind of create a very it's, it's not a very dialogical environment where ideas can be, you know, discussed and differences might be able to kind of be worked out and so I think maybe it's time for school more school boards to kind of consider how, how do you have these conversations beyond just the school board meeting that's being taped and, and you know where social media is, you know, grasping at the hands of that and so I think that's a great point Kerry I want to jump back in and say you know I realize this isn't always the case in some kind. Sometimes the First Amendment can be the pressure cooker of society but I often refer to it as the valve on the pressure cooker of society, in that most people just want to speak and be heard. They, there are a lot of people that have an agenda but there are also a lot of people that just want to say something when they denied that opportunity to be heard, they lash out in other ways. And, you know, and maybe the, the, the town hall can be the valve on the pressure cooker of the valve the pressure cooker that is the school board meeting and give people an opportunity and a different and better environment to speak and be heard and and listen frankly. People are asking about several, this is coming up in several iterations are time limits that are put on the public comments during school board meetings, denying free speech as some are insisting there's a similar question. Is it always permissible to announce and put on the agenda time limit for speakers so what do we think about that. It can be. Again, it often is these things do, you know, as is the case comes down to the actual execution of the time limit and applying it in a consistent objective manner without regard to the speaker. Time limits per se are probably constitutional they are often unrelated to the content of the speech to what we're called content neutral they fall into the range of of our, you know, often referred to as Tom play time place manner restrictions on speech. They will incidentally burden somebody's ability to get their message across if I want to speak, and I'm only given three minutes that's very different than being given 10 minutes it will have a burden on what I want to say it will make me speak in a certain a certain way and and recalibrate my words but I'm connected at the content of my message. And so if that time place manner in this instance time restriction is applied to everybody equally then it is, it is going to be consistent with the First Amendment, especially in these limited purpose public forums that I've talked about where the, you know, the other requirement is that they simply be reasonable and viewpoint so I said viewpoint neutral but they also have to be reasonable. The 32nd time limit probably isn't reasonable, a three minute time limit may be a five minute time limit you're getting better of course, it can't be infinite but but but it, but you know, restrictions are are if they're reasonable are going to be upheld consistent with the First Amendment yes. We generally see three minutes in what we know. I will tell you I've sat through library board meetings that went on for almost five hours of public comment at three minutes each. So, and in that sense I would say based on the record and the burden will be on the school board to justify the reasonableness. So we're going to get good argument for a reasonable for that being a reasonable cut off period because we cannot have these meetings going on until three in the morning, every night, right. There has to be a time limit we've, you know, based on the record we've had this is how these decisions are made, based on the record we've had a previous meetings. This needs to be the limit, not because we don't want to hear people speak, but because it has to be this way to actually do our business. I have a question backing up a second. Why are parents, given a platform to express these radically dangerous views and behaviors. I guess one man's radically dangerous views and behaviors is not every man's radically dangerous views or women's views and behaviors behaviors but, and there's a sort of similarity and this other question I'll bundle them together what is the current difference between free speech and hate speech, and how can boards maintain that boundary. Well, I guess this is a meat question. Kevin, why don't you start and I'll chime in. Yeah, so I mean, you know that they're given these platforms to express radical viewpoints. I mentioned, Mara that one man's radical or woman's radical viewpoint is another's strongly held belief. And the First Amendment and so the answer is because the First Amendment allows us to all express ourselves and create a marketplace of ideas where we listen to these either have our own views changed or perhaps have our own views, not changed but reinforced that is that is the grand theory and I know it gets tested all the time but I still think it works that being exposed to these these radically different viewpoints can help reinforce what we actually believe in. And so the second that what is the distinction between hate speech and free speech hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, unlike many Western democracies and in Europe, the United States does not criminally punish hate unless that hate speech falls into one of one of those other low value categories I'm expressing hateful rhetoric that is directed specifically another person and therefore is a true threat, or I'm expressing it face to face with someone in a way that is trying to provoke them into hitting me, which would be fighting words, or I'm trying to rile up a crowd intentionally you go attack, you know maybe maybe what I'm trying to do in that room is get people to physically attack the, you know, the school board members in a way or their opponents, those would be areas where hate speech is no longer protected but not because it's a speech, but because it falls into one of those other low value categories. Perry this might be a good one for you. Is there a way to ensure that students voices are heard during these debates. Have you, have you looked at that at all. I mean, youth definitely show up to school board meetings as well. And, and, you know, kind of have, I think, in the last decade or so, especially really kind of use these spaces as well as it as a place to voice their their opinions. At the same time I think, you know, whether they're actually valued in the same way as, you know, parents and as voters, or potential voters is another question right. Some school boards have have appointed students to the school board. I think that that's a good move to kind of get that youth representation on the board. And the problem is that they often don't have voting power on the board and they just, you know, they're kind of just sitting there. They might, you know, say a few things, but they don't necessarily kind of shift the dynamic of policy and practices, depending. You know, it's dependent on the board and the district. You know, you also pull together youth kind of committees to capture some of that youth voice. And so, you know, I think that there's a lot more room for growth and how do we really pull in and embrace youth experiences and perspectives I mean I think across the board we've heard where you know, many parents were really upset at the mass mandate, but the student themselves were okay with wearing a mask they didn't really care but you know and so you know there's I think a difference and maybe opinions and and experiences and perspectives from youth versus even their own parents. I think that needs to get captured and and valued a little bit more definitely in these spaces. And then there are organizations that are trying to empower youth voices and the National Coalition against censorship, for example, has the kids right to read project we've seen other initiatives to try to empower youths. You know, I, you reminded me of one other thing Karen talking about how sometimes these kids, you know, youth voices are not heard. Like we talk about parents rights all the time but we very seldom talk about youth rights youth have First Amendment rights, particularly older minors, and we don't ever discuss the fact that we're taking away their own right to make their own choices about the right to take away the agency of young adults who are preparing to go to college into the military start careers, you know, and I think it's very dangerous for us to try to, you know, teach lessons and censorship. As we're doing right now and trying to pretend like they have no stake in this discussion at all. So, but I think that's important to remember. Can I add one more thing when one thing I've always thought about with these meetings is that, you know, while you know it's an open space, it's not necessarily open space for everyone you know you don't have like the single mom and you know with other you know trying to make dinner and I is not going to be able to attend a 6pm. You know on a Tuesday evening and so you know how do we create and I and I you know during COVID with my things went virtual I thought well maybe this is a an interesting place where more families can get engaged that maybe couldn't before you know that can show up to the board meeting and say some stuff and so you know that I think has pretty much gone away. And back to back to normal but you know in terms of like how do we broaden the spaces that we're not just hearing the loudest voices or the family the other parents or the non parents that show up to these board meetings. You know in some instances some people are getting paid to show up to the board meetings and so how do we you know, counter that with a more, you know equitable access to to you know be able to, you know engage school board members in school district officials. For more families and youth. And Cole here's one for you. How can journalists report on these topics while staying unbiased and neutral. You know, I don't think the facts ever fail, right, it's it's so we don't go through these stories and say we're going to just be fast and loose with what happened that they by the time you finish reading, walk away with what you walk away with. You know, that's it, it's the truth does not have to be comfortable. And it's not. It's not. In a way to approach the the beat what I've found and Mark you and I were talking about this yesterday like I felt most comfortable when I was able to physically land in a space and talk to people and kind of navigate which which, of course we do as as local reporters were able to do that but you should really understand. Because one of the first questions was how do people show up to the meetings, like your reporting doesn't start with showing up to the meeting it's like what happened before the meeting, and what drew people here, and how do people. People been involved or engaged in the space prior to what I am seeing in these couple of hours, and that leads you to broader reporting and a better understanding of the issue at hand and, and again who's driving narratives and how and, and what you saw in that reporting last year when we had a recording of a clubhouse meeting that was doing a parental rights training kind of session, would not know that, and I'm not engaged with someone through a FOIA request, and then said that person said hey, what about this before this thing that you see in this viral moment, and like, how would I've known that I'm not in the room I'm not. But it takes engaging people a little differently to understand those things and the facts will not fail you what people think about the facts, when they walk away from your work is on them and that's why we put it out there in the public sphere and that's the way we do but you should not worry about what people take away from it. You are the record of the time. And that's what what we do. This question has come up a few times references it a little bit but not I don't think we've answered this particular version of it. Do school board simply have to listen, or can school board members provide fact based responses in the days that there are public comments that hinge on conspiracy theories, or misinformation. I have seen school boards pulled together some school boards pulled together, you know, school districts, you know with school boards and superintendents pull together kind of responses in the form of maybe resolutions or, you know, kind of a newsletter response. I've seen some interesting, not very often but like the ways in which school board the superintendents use the media as well as a way to like respond to some of these issues. One of the studies I'm doing as an analysis of media and social media. And in a lot of cases I've been frustrated with, you know, the bias and some of the media and social media and the way that it politicizes these issues but I also have seen, you know, like a superintendent was I, I got, you know, he was getting pushed out of the district by several parent organizations. But he also, you know, had a heavy support by other organizations and so she counted the number of emails he got. He said, you know, I got 200 and something emails, 75% of them were in support of me staying in this district and he said this to a media outlet and he's like this proves to me that I am wanted here like here's what why I made the you know decision I made that that these parents didn't like. And he was able to kind of use that venue as a space to push back. And he's still there in the district. There's still a lot of tension but I think they've been really strategic and how they've kind of, you know, communicated to their district families to their constituents and to the broader public on these issues. So we only have time for like one more question you guys are so many good questions still and we're going to think about ways we might try to answer them for people who phrase such thoughtful points. I like this one is the last one there's so many good options. This is simplistic but why ban books you don't want your children to read. Why not let these books be available and just prevent your own children from reading them. I just don't get it. That's the question. That's the question. It's what we agree with. We absolutely support the right of every parent to guide their students reading, you know, librarians will work with parents and say these are the books that match your values your ideas. You know, but books are, you know, you know, but other books will be on the shelf and they're for other readers, and we should just support. You know, the fact that they're there and support the fact that we have libraries that provide us that opportunity to read broadly. And things we should, you know, Kevin, you talked about safety belts, having giving parents the right to guide their children, but not to dictate other children's reading is really the solution here. You know, it's a safety valve for the First Amendment. It's a safety valve for student rights and parent rights. I think that's what we need. I agree. I, you know, I live in Washington DC and one of the counties just next to Washington DC bordering Washington DC Montgomery County, Maryland is going through a controversy regarding the inability of parents to opt out. So usually you have parents trying to opt their children out, which I think Deborah and I agree is the right answer. And in this instance, the question is whether parents who fundamentally disagree with an inclusive curriculum and including, you know, and book choices are being prevented from opting their children out and I don't think that should be the answer either. If a parent wants to opt their child out, and it doesn't affect other children in the class, then that that seems to me to be an appropriate answer, consistent with the First Amendment, you are making your choices you are speaking your mind, and you are not preventing others from, from living their First Amendment truth. So anytime we have it has been a pleasure being here with all of you. Thank you to the panelists for your time and expertise. Thank you to our audience for being here with us and for your extremely thoughtful questions. 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