Speakers harshly cut off

At last night's school board meeting five members of the public addressed the board in the first segment of Public Participation.

(18:05 on the video timer) The first speaker was a female student from Spring Valley High School. She spoke in a confident, well-organized presentation. 

(21:45) The next speaker was a male student, also (I think) from Spring Valley. He tore into the board about use of low-skilled substitutes in his AP class. I'll have to listen to both comments again, as soon as the video is published.

The third (25:22) and fourth (28:59) speakers also ripped the Administration over lack of accommodations for at-risk teachers. 

They were cut off abruptly by Acting Chair Holmes, who was keeping a sharp eye on the timer. Her abrupt, loudly-spoken interruption of "THANK YOU" must have been shocking to the parent speaker and also was to me in the audience.

If only the moderators in the Presidential debates had had Holmes for a tutor!

Trustee Elkins asked Holmes, very politely and professionally, to allow speakers to at least finish their sentences. Holmes acted like she'd be committing a Federal felony if she let a speaker go one second past the allotted three minutes.

Holmes threw on her superiority tone at Elkins and shut down further discussion.

The problem was that the timer was behind the speakers. The board and the audience could see the timer winding down, but the speaker was facing away from the timer. Unless he had eyes in the back of his head, he would not realize he was running out of time.

BE SURE TO VIEW ALL FIVE SPEAKERS, when the video is published on YouTube. Each of the five speakers did a great job.

(33:07) The sixth speaker spoke with a heavy accent. It was difficult to understand everything he said. At one point, Holmes leaned toward the superintendent to comment, diverting her attention away from the speaker. 

Her doing so was disrespectful to the speaker and also against meeting procedures for members of public bodies. Everything said by a board member should be audible to every other board member and to the public. Side-conversations are not to be conducted.

(Edited after watching the video on Nov. 12, 2020)