At the beginning of each monthly Business Meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, Chair Collin Beachy reads the following script.
In the course of the summer, I
will in articles on this blog be analyzing the script read by Beachy.
For now, I invite you, my
readers, to analyze the script yourselves
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- Board members, public commenters, and any staff
presenting, please speak slowly, clearly, and directly into your
microphone to assist our interpreters and the closed captioning service.
- We ask that nobody cross the barriers and approach
the dais either during the meeting or recess. During recess, you can
connect with board members as they are in the café space or if we come
into the seating area.
- Anyone who attempts to cross this threshold will
be asked to leave the room for the remainder of the meeting.
- If there is not a chair available in the audience
for you to use, it means the room is full and we ask that you watch from
the room across the hall where the meeting is live-streaming, until
someone leaves the room.
- If for any reason, we need everyone to leave the
room, the exits are on this side, with the double doors in the back being
the primary exit.
- Please follow any announcements and the
instructions of the Emergency Management, Safety, and Security staff here
supporting our meeting.
- We meet in a public setting so our community can
watch the business of their public institution be conducted by their
elected officials.
- Disruption of any kind that prevents people from
seeing or hearing the meeting will not be tolerated.
- If a disruption causes an interruption to the
meeting, a warning will be provided, and then the meeting will be in
recess until the meeting can again be seen and heard.
- If disruptions continue, the board may need
to reconvene in another space with limited seating to complete our work.
- We ask for your continued cooperation with these
protocols and our public comment guidelines, which I will share prior to
opening the public comment portion of the meeting.
- We welcome you this evening and thank you for
being here.
Prior to Public Comments:
·
Next,
we will hear from those who signed up to provide comments here tonight.
·
As staff projects the list and our first
speaker gets ready to come to the podium, I will remind us of the public
comment guidelines.
·
We again ask those providing public comments
to use professional decorum, to be respectful, to be kind, and to be cognizant
of how your words and actions are perceived.
·
We must model the level of respect and
concern for others here that we expect in our classrooms and schools.
·
To review, our goal for this portion of the
meeting is to hear from those who have signed up in a fair and respectful way.
·
To do this we ask each commenter to:
- Begin by stating their name and relationship to
Minneapolis Public Schools
- Remain professional at all times
- Keep comments within the two-minute limit, or four
minutes if using an interpreter
- Not mention identifiable information about
individual staff members or students
- Not use profanity, insults, slurs, or threats.
- Again, under no circumstances, may a speaker
approach the dais beyond the markers. If you have materials for the board,
they can be placed on the table next to the podium or given to staff on
the side of the room
If these guidelines cannot be
followed, I will provide a warning, and then if needed, I will turn off the
microphone and end your comment time.
Please remember that this is an
opportunity for the board to hear from the community, so we will not respond in
the moment to comments or questions.
Staff may follow-up or connect
with you, based on your comment.
Finally, I want to emphasize
that for the protection of everyone’s privacy, public commenters should not
mention identifiable information about students or staff—regardless of if the
comment is positive or negative.
If you’re not able to resolve a
situation working with the appropriate staff and need further assistance, every
board member is accessible by phone and email, and we can connect you with the
appropriate resources to help process your concern.
We’re also very happy to hear
your positive feedback about individual staff members, but again, request that
it be done via email, phone, or to board members directly in-person, rather
than during public comments.
We ask for your cooperation on
this important part of our process.
Thank you.
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Meeting Opening:
Next, I want to offer a few
reminders and notices about our meetings and this room:
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