Milford board again tables vote on controversial topic policy

Milford’s school board has now tabled the policy revisions vote twice.

After about an hour-and-a-half of public comment on a district policy, which included mainly opposition from staff, students and even the ACLU, the Milford School District Board of Education voted for the same outcome it did last month.

The board voted to table revisions on Board Policy 6103 , which was originally adopted in 1974 and  has not been updated since 1982.

It pertains to controversial issues, and how teachers should act and how to treat students when those topics are brought up.

RELATED: Milford delays vote on controversial/sensitive issues policy

Many of the public commenters were worried that the new policy would create censorship and limit the ability of students and teachers to discuss and experience different perspectives.

Additions to the policy would include:

• “Milford School District staff shall ensure that the learning environment is free of conduct or items that have a purpose of effect, intentionally or unintentionally, of substantially interfering with a student’s performance in the educational environment.”
• “Milford School District staff shall ensure that the learning environment is free of conduct or items that intentionally or unintentionally creates an intimidating, exclusionary, hostile or offensive educational environment.”

The policy applies to teachers, but the proposed revisions would expand to all employees in the district if implemented.

The revisions include a definition of controversial/sensitive material, saying it is “material which, when introduced arouses strong reactions representing differing points of view. There are many subjects, which by the nature of contemporary society, are intrinsically controversial/sensitive.”

“This policy is not intended to do X or to do Y or to do Z, but that is not necessarily what is written here, and that is not how someone may interpret it today,” said Mike Brickner, executive director of ACLU Delaware. “It’s not how someone may interpret it a year from now. It may not be how somebody interprets it from 20 years from now.”

He asked the board to keep that in mind when evaluating the policy.

“We believe that its passage would signify grave violations of both staff and students first amendment rights, and would potentially subject the Milford school district to costly litigation,” he said.

In Monday night’s board meeting, Board Member Alan Brownstein gave the first insight as to why this policy change discussion is happening.

“At our last meeting, I told many of you that there was a reason that we are where we are today, but I was not at liberty to share that information,” he said. “I am now at liberty to do so.”

In late March, Brownstein was contacted by a parent with a complaint that was initiated by a student.

The student, who is Jewish, saw a Black Lives Matter poster in a classroom and was offended and felt threatened, due to a lot of support from that organization for Palestine, especially on social media.

Brownstein said the family took the BLM flag as a signal of endorsement for the murder of Jewish people and for support of Hamas.

He and other board members went to a handful of classrooms, and found that about half of them had some sort of politically-charged emblem in them.

“If a person has a Black Lives Matter banner, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he endorses all aspects of what the Black Lives Matter movement believes in,” said Clara Licata, chair of the Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice .

She said she has friends that post political beliefs on social media that are so contrary to her own that it’s sometimes disturbing, but those different perspectives must be tolerated.

“I think it’s a good opportunity, a good learning opportunity for students to realize that they may be upset by something, anxious about something that they see, offended, but this is, this is life,” she said. “This is what’s going to happen down the road in life, and we need to learn how to it’s part of tolerating what other students and colleagues and friends and everybody else believes in.”

Brickner said while the ACLU believes students can and should be free to express multiple viewpoints in the classroom, compelling teachers to present multiple viewpoints, no matter how illegitimate, also violates basic tenets of free speech and expression.

“We do appreciate that the board did make some amendments to the policy, but we still very strongly believe that will violate peoples 1st amendment rights,” he said.

The school board voted to table the policy revision, which means the policy revisions are essentially killed for the time being and the board did not vote “yes” or “no” on them.

It is unclear if the policy revisions will be brought again before the board in the future, especially after two meetings with extensive public comment in opposition to the changes.

However, the board is moving to create a committee to discuss the policy and broader topic of controversial and sensitive issues in the district.

“I don’t know if this will be the end of our discussion,” said Board President Scott Fitzgerald