May 18, 2021, was supposed to be a festive day for children in the Scottsdale Unified School District. They were going to be honored for their academic and extracurricular performance at the monthly school board meeting.
One student, seventh-grader Theo Joseph, was due to receive acclaim for the essay he submitted to the Phoenix Holocaust Association on the testimony of a Holocaust survivor.
Unfortunately, Theo and the other students who went to the Board meeting to be recognized were denied the honor when anti-maskers repeatedly disrupted the board proceedings by refusing to put masks on.
According to Theo’s mother, Natalee, they even refused to go to the overflow room where they could be maskless and watch the proceedings.
Mrs. Joseph described the anti-maskers at the meeting as “loud and disrespectful” who booed and yelled.
She called their behavior “shocking, super weird, and not normal.” Furthermore, she relayed that these “people were so focused on their agenda, they would not let the meeting begin.”
Also in attendance with the families hoping to rejoice in their children’s achievements was State Representative John Kavanagh (R-LD23). Mrs. Joseph and others in attendance said he did nothing to calm the anti-maskers.
This writer tried to reach Kavanagh for a response to why he did nothing, after claiming that the anti-maskers are not violent. Tell that to the parents, children, teachers, and board members who attend these disruptive meetings.
Eventually, after the anti-maskers would not relent, the Scottsdale School Board postponed the meeting until a week later where it was held virtually.
For the children who did not get a chance to be recognized in an in-person, public ceremony with their families and classmates in attendance, it was probably small comfort.
It was definitely not the same experience as in prior Scottsdale Board meetings where children were recognized in person without the disruption of the traveling circus of anti-mask, anti-vaccination, and anti-critical race theory zealots who have been crisscrossing school board meetings across Arizona in places like Litchfield, Vail, and Peoria. Click to read Purple Parents’ Hate Group Disrupts School Boards Across Arizona.
As Mrs. Joseph relayed:
“There is a time and a place a way to go about things to get the outcome you want. Do they (the anti-maskers) want it or do they want to cause trouble?”
Reaction from other local school board members.
Two school board members from Maricopa County voiced their perspectives on this group of individuals disrupting school board meetings.
Wanda Kolomyjec of the Kyrene School Board sounded a similar note to Mrs. Jospeh, commenting:
“What I would say is, first and foremost, we should interact with one another — no matter who we are — with respect, dignity, and humanity. I see this lacking in some of the recent interactions at school board meetings and frankly, in a few of the letters I have received as a school board member.
Secondly, school boards are very local and, I believe, should answer to people in the community that the school district serves. When out-of-district folks, and in some cases, out-of-state folks, come to school board meetings to push a particular political agenda, I believe it detracts from the focus and mission of school boards.
Local and civil should be the rule of the day.”
Lindsey McCaleb of the Creighton Elementary School District Board relayed:
“I am troubled by the events that have been taking place, and stand by school board members being able to feel safe and make decisions based on science in the best interest of the students, staff, and families.”
Moving Forward
As Mrs. Joseph, Ms. Kolomyjec, and Ms. McCaleb commented, there is no place for disruptive elements to invade school board meetings and take a bombastic and heated approach to the proceedings.
As Mrs. Joseph relayed, these people should be civil if they have actual legitimate grievances to address.
They should also be, as Ms. Kolomyjec relayed, actual members of the local community or representatives of them, not some traveling sideshow of malcontents looking to make school board events war zones.
Do not confuse these people with the freedom riders of the Civil Rights Era. They are nothing like them.
Citizens in local communities should safeguard school board meetings and make sure they are conducted safely. They should also make sure that these radical fringe elements do not win actual seats on local school boards.
As the recent board meetings in the Litchfield Elementary School District demonstrate, it becomes more complicated to advance sound and reasonable school policies when there are fringe reactionary board members, supported by like-minded public member attendees at these meetings, and throwing harsh words, and injunctions at one another.
Do not let school board meetings become the next permanent battlefield for the extreme right.
It is not fair to the children.
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Bruce, I wonder how many handcuffed suspects the Good Representative bravely beat when he was a cop.
I wonder (not really, though) what Kavanaugh’s response would have been had it been BLM protesters doing the disrupting…
This asinine behavior is no different than Ammon Bundy forcing the cancellation of his son’s high school football game because Bundy, in his childish glory, refused to wear a mask. To quote Charles Pierce: “These are truly the mole people.”
After Ted, McGeorge and a host of other Bundys, it seems the only decent one was Al.