GUEST EDITORIAL
At the recent meeting of the Ozark School District Board of Education, a patron signed up to speak to the Board during the public comment period. Protocol requires that patrons must sign up in advance and declare their topics before they are permitted to speak to the Board (in what is almost always a one-way conversation as the Board declines to respond). One of the patrons that signed up indicated that he wanted to comment on the minutes from the preceding Board meeting. Upon hearing that this was the requested topic of comment, one of the Board members was overheard to ask “Is that allowed?”
This is an odd question. Or rather, this is a telling question. What is the Board’s attitude toward this public comment practice? Are they grateful to patrons who attentively observe the district’s operations and provide their feedback? Or do they see this as an unavoidable nuisance they must endure in order to maintain a pretense of accountability to the public? What is the Board’s attitude toward the public in general? Do they see themselves as representatives chosen by the public, to whom they remain accountable and responsive? Or do they see themselves as the public’s “champions” whom, once selected, the public must now just sit back and trust? Do they see the community as having a vested interest in and responsibility to run its own school district, through the mechanism of an elected board of directors? Or do they see the community as merely the fortunate beneficiaries of the magnanimity they (the Board) and their school system bestow upon the community?
Among the most celebrated aspects of the American republic, as originally designed, was its emphasis on limited government. Our Constitution created mere “islands” of government power in what was otherwise an expansive “sea of liberty.” The idea was that unless something was specifically prohibited, then it was permitted. Man was free to do as he pleased, so long as his actions weren’t specifically outlawed. That, in fact, was the principal argument AGAINST the Bill of Rights. Opponents argued that no particular list of rights needed to be articulated because citizens were free to do whatever they wanted, so long as it wasn’t explicitly prohibited. They feared that articulating a list of rights would suggest that liberty itself, rather than government authority, was limited.
Consider that reality in the face of this Board member’s question. Is the public allowed to talk to us about our public record of our last public meeting? What an appalling illustration of a completely inverted sense of where authority resides and how representative government works!
If you’d like to submit an article for consideration, make your identity known and send it to: ChristianCountyTrumpet.com. We are an equal opportunity publication.
Leave a Reply