R2 Board attempts to pull a fast one

Minutes before the time to amend the agenda for the May 12, 2020 Regular Meeting of the Board, the District published a revised agenda, adding an item that is very important to the public.

The Board will be asked to suspend Board Policy BEDH - Public Participation at Meetings. Previously, the Board suspended Policy BEDH temporarily. Now it wants to suspend it. Period.

The District's email to media announcing this agenda change was sent out at 3:56PM. The deadline was 4:30PM. An agenda cannot be changed within 24 hours of the meeting, and tomorrow's meeting starts at 4:30PM.

The District attempts to put the responsibility for the proposed suspension on the S.C. School Boards Assn. (SCSBA)  It needs to have the guts to accept the responsibility and make decisions on its own. It is swallowing too much of the Kool-Aid from the SCSBA. That association does not put the public first. It is an association of school boards, and it proposes what is best for them, not for us.

To know what Richland 2 wants to do away with, go to the District's website - www.richland2.org

Click on EXPLORE (top right)
Click on School Board
Click on BOARD POLICIES
On the left sidebar, click on B - SCHOOL BOARD GOVERNANCE & OPERATIONS
Scroll down and click on Policy BEDH

What does BEDH cover?

It leads off with "The public is invited to attend board meetings..." Wrong. State law says board meetings are open to the public. There is no "invitation" involved. It is your lawful right to attend all meetings of the board. You have the right to know what's going on. They must meet and act in public, not in secret.

Paragraph 2 dictates what you can say and how you say it. It does not say that you cannot complain about how or what the board is doing.

Policy BEDH says the public can request an item to be on the agenda. Maybe suspending this Policy is their way of not responding to my request that the Board adopt a policy requiring all board members to use the District's email service.  Such a new policy would require two board members (Holmes and Elkins-Johnson) to stop using personal email accounts for board business. When they do, it is hard to FOIA their emails. Think Hillary Clinton and her private server.

This Policy also covers members of the public who want to speak at board meetings. They want to do away with this!

The board already tries to censure speakers who have "personal complaints" about anyone connected with the school system.

My complaints about the two illegitimate members on the board (McKie and Holmes) or the (illegitimate) board member (McKie) who owes $51,750 to the S.C. Ethics Commission are not "personal" complaints. Every voter in the District and every Richland 2 employee and five board members should be outraged by those issues.

I'm not the only one complaining about those issues, but I am the only one who hasn't given up. For a while I thought the S.C. Attorney General would arrange for McKie and Holmes to appear before the S.C. Supreme Court to answer why they have not taken the oath of office legally yet. After all, they were elected on November 6, 2018. They became eligible to take the oath of office legally on December 4, 2018 and have not done so.

Call your board members immediately and tell them to vote NO on this item on the May 12 agenda. If you are reading this after May 12 and if they approved it, call them and ask them to vote again and rescind the suspension of Policy BEDH.