School Board Meeting   9/19/2024

Good afternoon, everybody.

I'd like to welcome you to our board meeting here today being September 19, 2024.

And I would or I am calling this meeting to order and if you will please join me in a moment of silence.

Thank you.

And if you will please stand and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

Yes, Madam Chair.

Ms.

Burns?

Here.

Ms.

Cooper?

Ms.

Dooley?

Here.

Mr. Meyer?

Ms.

And Ms.

Yes, thank you.

Now, if I may have a motion for approval of our proposed agenda.

Any questions, discussion?

All in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Any opposed?

Thank you.

And now we will open the meeting up for comments from any students in the Media Center or online.

Great.

And then we have an opportunity for comments from members of the community.

Anybody here in the media center?

Thank you very much.

My name is Chuck Moran and I live in the neighborhood right next to Johnson School.

And first of all, I'd like to thank Dr. Gurley for your considered response to my email yesterday, sir.

That was very well welcomed and I appreciate that.

I too look forward to a open and engaging dialogue with you all as we move forward and try to find a just and fair resolution to the school renaming process.

I have three quick points that I want to make.

In my email that I sent yesterday, I referred to statements made by Phil Varner, who was interviewed by the Daily Progress back in the end, the publication of that date was the 3rd of August, 2024.

And anyone who's interested in reading that can log on to whatsinaname.info.

The link is right at the top of the page.

Mr. Bonner is the author of the documents that the board and division have relied on to drive the renaming process to date.

And not only does that set of documents unfortunately malign just the Caucasian namesakes, but spares all of the African-American ones.

And on the face of the documents, that is an injustice if you ask me.

The first, let's see, and as he does go through the documents, he does so in a very unfair and biased manner.

And I've covered that ground in multiple forums with all of you.

So I won't go through those details at this point.

Barner says that he is, quote, trying to paint a picture and tell a story and not trying to write a professional historical analysis.

In fact, he says he has no professional background in the construction of history.

in terms of analysis.

He also states that he was, quote, expecting the school system to do more research and not just do the stuff that, just not go with the things that he had submitted.

Berner's story, unfortunately, has led to the defamation of my great aunt, Sarepta Moran, who is one of the namesakes for Burnley Moran Elementary.

He also claims in his article that teachers, and this was very curious to me, that teachers were ordered back in the 20th century to teach a state mandated curriculum of white supremacy.

I wasn't aware of that.

This man definitely has a clear bias, and he reveals that in many different forums.

He has no evidence to disprove that my ancestor was a believer in white supremacy or the Lost Cause myth, for instance.

But he goes on to say that that was the most common belief system of white people in their day.

This is the guy that you all are relying on to present factual information to our renaming process.

There are numerous reasons to disregard the flawed and biased documents as you enter this next phase of the renaming process.

And I really have a hard time believing that you intend to submit them as factual material to the renaming committees to support the process of renaming our schools.

My second point, the majority of the board that sits here today was not on hand, nor was this new renaming process in place when you all decided in April of last year to affirm renaming Burnley Moran and Johnson.

and given the fact that this board is the one that will be deeply engaged in the manipulation, the engagement of that process, I think it's only fair to resubmit Burnley-Morana-Johnson to that process.

So number three, in closing, I respectfully request that a member of this board do the right thing today and offer a motion to

removed the flawed Varner documents from the division's website and to allow the advisory committees to fairly review Burnley, Moran, and Johnson, along with the other unreviewed namesakes, the other unreviewed schools.

Otherwise, I feel like you are perpetuating an injustice that exists in opposition to your stated values.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

All right.

We're now to our action item.

Good evening, Madam Chair and members of school board and those assembled in the audience.

This evening, I want to stand before you and ask that when we did the policy revisions back in May,

We had inadvertently swapped the school naming policy and so for the new school board members, the members who came on January

We had done a lot of work, the school board and staff had done a lot of work with the renaming policy and then you all were involved on one of those Saturday work sessions where we did

work with the regulations.

And so I would like to draw your attention to what was uploaded in ESB, which was the policy that was adopted by the school board

in December of 2023.

Particularly what sets this policy apart from the one that was uploaded inadvertently was the, if you look at the third paragraph where it says school board reserve the sole control and authority over namings,

It also goes on to state that it's the intent of the school board to involve stakeholders such as students, teachers, and interested citizens.

And it concludes by stating that any entity quality or ideal

that the school board deems worthy of recognition which we refer in our regulations as purpose and it also goes on to say that schools can be named after local history and geographical areas so place so we would consider purpose in place as we're naming schools and

You instructed us as we did to include that in revised regulations which are very linear and provides a lot of guidance to the school naming committee.

I was just going to make a motion.

Second.

Any questions or discussion?

Yes.

Any opposed?

All right, at this time, we will take any comments from board members.

No comments.

All right.

And then just for the public's sake, just a quick rundown of our upcoming meetings.

We do have a meeting October 10th, which is our normally scheduled.

It's shifted a little bit because of a holiday, I believe, but it's October 10th at 5 p.m.

And then October 15th, we have our meeting with legislators, Senator Deeds and Delicate Kallsen.

And that is at 5pm and that'll be at KTEC.

And then October 19th, we have a school board advance at 830 at Johnson Elementary.

And if there are no other comments or questions, I will adjourn this meeting.