Public input won't be limited at Iowa City school board meetings

The Iowa City School Board on Tuesday night barely voted down a measure which would have restricted the way citizens could communicate with the board during meetings.

The board had already accepted the first two readings of the measure, which would have restricted community input to verbal comment, preventing attendees from wielding signs or submitting multimedia content. However, after discussing the issue for almost an hour, the board came to a 3-3 vote, killing the proposal. Board member Mike Cooper was absent.

Michael Shaw, Tuyet Dorau, and Sarah Swisher all voted against the restrictions. They said that until the board hosts regular forums for public input, board meetings should allow various forms of input.

"I feel like we are beholden to our stakeholders and the public," Dorau said. "I think that we shouldn't limit people's participation in our meetings, however they want to participate, so long as it doesn't become completely disruptive to us."

Swisher even said that in the late 1990s, she'd held a sign during a State Board of Regents meeting that was "probably more disruptive" than the signs people bring to school board meetings.

Phil Hemingway of Iowa City brought a "Support City High" sign with him to the podium when he addressed the board before the vote on Tuesday. He told district officials that the proposal would hinder free speech.

"This sends the wrong sign to the community at a time when you should be encouraging parents, taxpayers, people with ideas," Hemingway said.

Toni Cilek, Patti Fields, and Gayle Klouda stuck by the proposed restrictions. They said there are ample avenues for communication and hoisting signs is unnecessarily disruptive.

"If the people in the back of the room with the signs want us to get that message, they really ought to come up here or email us, or write it on a piece of paper and pass it around up here," Klouda said.

Some have accused the school board in recent years of not being responsive to public comment. For instance, the board voted to close Roosevelt Elementary School two years ago despite many community members urging against the move. At the meeting in which the final vote was held, a few people in the audience held signs that said "Save Roosevelt School."

The public input restrictions from the Iowa City school board would have put the board out of line with most other local governing bodies in the area. Neither the Johnson County Board of Supervisors nor Iowa City City Council forbid visual aids at their meetings. The Cedar Rapids and College Community school boards don't specifically outlaw aids either, but they do generally imposes a time limit when citizens speak at meetings.