When we’re talking public bodies, who gets to say, “enough’s enough” and then ban public dialogue at a public meeting?

This being the United States, intuition might tell you that no one does. If it’s a public body and a public meeting, then the public gets to talk. But, for starters, you’d be wrong here in Ohio where the law provides for a right to attend public meetings, but it does not provide for the public to have a right to participate or comment.

Punctuating the (perceived mis)use of a similar power, but in this case in New York, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy have sued the town of Sanford’s board for its September 2012 resolution that bans public comment on fracking:

The resolution said: “It is the determination of this Board that hereafter no further comment will be received during the public participation portion of this or any future meeting regarding natural gas development,” until the state’s environmental review was done.

Not so unreasonable?

Read the rest and start a conversation about it. Should electeds get to ban the public from what they can discuss?

As a public figure she should know better.  We hope that Ms. Terhar will retract the comparison and apologize.  She should make clear that Holocaust comparisons are inappropriate and a terrible distortion of the history of World War II.

Thanks to reporter Matt Bruning’s tweet from this morning’s Ohio Board of Education meeting, you can read precisely what Ms. Terhar had to say – and you will not see the words “Hitler” “Holocaust” “history” or “World War II” in it:

This is incredibly unfortunate – that in a state of 11 million people, and at least 3 million children in public school, the person who is the president of our public government body charged specifically with improving public education in Ohio (I read the ORC on their duties last night), Debe Terhar continues to refuse to see or perhaps just lacks the competency to see how the content of her Facebook posting is the problem, not her “mistake” for sharing it somewhere where the public might see it. Her characterizing the Facebook posting as “hasty” contradicts her prior statements that said she was only trying to get people to be thinking.

This is incredibly bad precedent to set. How on earth will Debe Terhar have the ability now to lead the board to a “healthy consensus” for kids’ best interests, let alone judge with any credibility what far lower level education system people do given that she’s suffered zero consequences?

Although I absolutely do not question the integrity of a number of individual members of the State Board of Education and in fact am grateful for their speaking out and stepping up, I have no faith in the entity’s credibility so long as Debe Terhar is its leader.  This is not what Ohio needs or deserves if it wants to play the game of attracting people here. Education is almost always the first thing many people look at when considering where to live.  Her inability to recognize the wrongness of referencing Hitler as she did, whether the public sees it or not but simply as a matter of what educated people should not do, chills me to the bone and I know it affects many, many people the exact same way.

Scary, scary stuff at the top of education system.

Statement of Jill Miller Zimon, resident of Pepper Pike, Ohio
Ohio Board of Education meeting
Monday, February 11, 2013
In the matter of Board President’s use of a photograph of Adolph Hitler

I know what it is to be an elected official who took an oath to faithfully perform duties in a non-partisan seat. As a city council member, I constantly contemplate how all my constituents, regardless of whether they voted for me or not, rely on and expect me to act with their best interests in mind. However, today, I speak as a parent, taxpayer and resident of Ohio.

The current president of the Ohio Board of Education, an elected official whose constituents include literally millions of children who have no vote, has irreparably compromised faith in her ability to perform her duties, as she has sworn an oath to do, on behalf of this nonpartisan, public, government body and all Ohioans. This lack of faith is a direct result of her intransigence in refusing to recognize and publicly express how wrong she was to offer up a photograph of Adolf Hitler, allegedly to provoke thought on gun policy. In the absence of this faith, the Board president must step down or be removed as leader of this Board.

As the Anti-Defamation League has stated specifically in regard to the Board president’s inflammatory posting,

“Whatever one’s position on the gun control issue, analogies – whether direct or implied — to Hitler and the Holocaust have absolutely no place in the debate over gun control,” said Martin H. Belsky, ADL Cleveland Board Chair, and Nina Sundell, ADL Regional Director.  “While one can disagree with the Obama Administration’s position on gun control, comparisons of his proposals to Hitler’s trivialize the memory of the six million Jews and the millions of other who perished in the Holocaust and are deeply offensive to Holocaust survivors.

“Clearly Ms. Terhar needs an education about the history of the Holocaust,” added Mr. Belsky and Ms. Sundell.  “As a public figure she should know better.  We hope that Ms. Terhar will retract the comparison and apologize.  She should make clear that Holocaust comparisons are inappropriate and a terrible distortion of the history of World War II.”

The social media aspect of this incident has served primarily as a costly distraction to the critical work of this Board. It has also exposed an unacceptable lack of sophistication on the part of the Board president in regard to how social media work and demands implementation of Board social media policies and training.

I thank you for your time and attention and respectfully urge you to act in the best interests of all Ohioans: Please either remove Debe Terhar as Ohio Board of Education president or, I say to Ms. Terhar directly, step down now as Board president and give this public body a chance to rebuild and earn the credibility your presence as Board president keeps in doubt.

Read the LTE and comments.

Feel free to comment there as well.

By the way, did people realize that the originating incident came at the beginning of National No-Name Calling Week (my emphasis):

No Name-Calling Week is an annual week of educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities.

No Name-Calling Week was inspired by a young adult novel entitled “The Misfits” by popular author, James Howe. The book tells the story of four best friends trying to survive the seventh grade in the face of all too frequent taunts based on their weight, height, intelligence, and sexual orientation/gender expression. Motivated by the inequities they see around them, the “Gang of Five” (as they are known) creates a new political party during student council elections and run on a platform aimed at wiping out name-calling of all kinds. Though they lose the election, they win the support of the school’s principal for their cause and their idea for a “No Name-Calling Day” at school.

Motivated by this simple, yet powerful, idea, the No Name-Calling Week Coalition, created by GLSEN and Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, and consisting of over 40 national partner organizations, organized an actual No Name-Calling Week in schools across the nation during the week of March 1-5, 2004.

What an interesting twist of fate is that?

Dear Board Member Oakar,

My name is Jill Miller Zimon and I’m a resident of Pepper Pike and therefore in your School Board district. My three children have attended the Orange schools, and two are still there (oldest is now in college). I’ve been dedicated to public education my entire life and find wholly unsatisfactory Ms. Terhar’s inability to comprehend that her actions this week have been inappropriate, offensive, inaccurate and unworthy of someone whom you and your colleagues have placed in the position as the nominal and actual leader of our state’s top public body related to the education of millions of Ohio children.

I realize that unless you were absent, you must have voted to affirm Ms. Terhar’s place as president of the Board (my understanding is she was re-elected to being president unanimously), but clearly the Board must possess better alternatives among the remaining 17 of you (I note that there is one at-large vacancy at this time).  For if there is not a better option at this time than Ms. Terhar, we should all be questioning the fate of our state’s education system. I am asking you to do everything within your power to remove Ms. Terhar as president of the Board and install a member who can appreciate the wholly inappropriate actions and reactions of Ms. Terhar.

In addition, I would urge that the following steps also be taken:

1. Social media policy for the Board members be reviewed, modified and adopted as necessary.
2. Social media training for the Board members be designed, implemented and required for all Board members.
3. Sensitivity training be procured and implemented with all the Board members. Facing History and Ourselves is an outstanding, award-winning program that could be contacted, but groups like the Anti-Defamation League as well as the NAACP and I’m certain many others (we have the Diversity Center here in Cleveland) could also handle such an assignment.

Ms. Oakar, in addition to being a parent of children in the Ohio public schools, I’ve also been a lawyer and social worker. I just began my second term as a board member of the American Jewish Committee and was recently nominated to serve on the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland. Additionally, I’m in elected office – I have been a City Council member in Pepper Pike since 2010. I understand what it is to be engaging with the public online and off, and I also understand how online content works, in terms of how that interacts with my being an elected official, regardless of what my opinion may be about what should be and ends up not being “public” or “private” information. I have been blogging since 2005 and have kept a blog specifically about my city council work since 2010. I am fully aware of the pros and cons of online communication.

Let me clearly state that I am not, under any circumstances, speaking for any of the entities I’ve just named and that have honored me with the privilege of being involved. I am, however, writing to you as an Ohio taxpayer, voter and parent who cares very, very deeply about the state of our state’s public education system, from top to bottom.  I want to see Ms. Terhar removed as president of the Board and I want to see her demonstrate a conscientious and sincere regret, not for sharing a photo she shouldn’t have shared because it could be seen that she shared it. I want her to demonstrate a conscientious and sincere regret because 1) the information was wrong, 2) the information was inflammatory in the worst ways possible and 3) she has utterly failed to recognize her extreme lack of judgment in all these actions, especially as someone in the field of education, let alone at the top of the pyramid for our state’s public education system, by using a photo of Hitler and an inaccurate quote attributed to him to, as she claims, get people thinking about history and the 2nd Amendment, and not, as she denies, suggest a comparison between Hitler and President Obama.  There should be a zero-tolerance for educators, of all people, to be using such provocative and inaccurate memes as a way to provoke thought and it certainly does not reflect the kind of thinking I want going into the making of our children’s public education system.

I look forward to hearing how you progress in this effort and I thank you for your service now and in the past.

Sincerely,

Jill Miller Zimon

To add more fun, I’ve known Ed for many years and it is going to be an honor to moderate this conversation about the County’s efforts in shared services, collaboration, consolidation and yes – I’ll say it – merger. Please come lurk and engage from 11-12noon.

Can’t be there? Leave a question or comment now and Ed will respond later.

You can watch the event unfold here.

So rather than watch the tick-tock around the swing states of Virginia, Ohio and Florida, I’m following the record number of women who are running for office this year. If you are not familiar with that statistic, check out the 2012 Project (which has corralled women to run in this first post-redistricting election, a time when the increase in open seats also increases the chance of women winning those seats).

Where might this history be made? In New Hampshire. Its situation reminds me of the 2010 Diane Sawyer discussion with United States Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor. During the conversation, Sawyer asked Ginsburg, how many women would be enough women on the bench.

“Nine,” Ginsburg replied with a smile. “There’ve been nine men there for a long time, right? So why not nine women?”

Something approximating Ginsburg’s prophecy has come true this election eve in the Granite State because its voters elected the first all-female congressional delegation.

So awesome – New Hampshire did indeed become the first state to have an all-female congressional delegation, with a female governor to boot. So coveting them.

Ohio – you’re next. No, really. I told Henry Gomez, so you know it’s going to happen.