A group of parents, students, former educators and community members gathered outside the Academy D-20 administrative building to protest a new resolution moments before the Board of Education passed it at a special meeting on Tuesday.

Resolution 248-25 updates the board’s procedure for adopting administrative policies. Specifically, it moves from a “policy governance” model, which the school district’s website states “defines and guides appropriate relationships between an organization’s owners, its board of education and the superintendent” to a model that gives a greater administrative role to the board.

Now, all new policies or policy changes proposed will be submitted to a review committee before being presented to the board as a written report at their next scheduled meeting. From there, board members will be able to discuss and ask questions about the new policy before either moving it forward for approval or further discussion at a future meeting or study session.

The rationale for the resolution on the agenda item stated it will provide greater transparency to the community. However, the group of about 40 protesters said they were concerned about the potential loss of public input with the new approach.

Various signs were held outside expressing their disapproval of D-20’s current board members and beliefs that the resolution will give them greater control over the educators they were elected to represent.

Jude Malloy, a retired teacher who taught at Eagleview Middle School for over 17 years, made a sign reading “You swore to serve, not to rule,” directed at the board.

“They’re not educators. We elected them to serve the community, the schools and especially the superintendents and teachers and students. That’s their job,” she said. “So, don’t tell the professionals how to teach.”

Others expressed concerns that the resolution would open the possibilities for further changes to policies like public participation at board meetings.

During the meeting, the board was presented with 17 new or revised policies to discuss or advance to their next consent agenda.

The only one that garnered any sort of discussion was a new policy detailing acceptable conduct at their meetings. Its language included a mention of limiting public commenters from representing others unable to attend and speaking on their behalf.

Board President Amy Shandy said this was not the intent of the new policy and that commenters should be allowed to represent others if enough time was given in advance to indicate this.

“We’ve always welcomed if someone arranged ahead of time that they were with a friend (or) family member to speak for them, if the reader signs up,” she said.

The board would then agree on the amended language to include this provision and approve it for the next meeting’s consent agenda.

Retired D-49 teacher and current D-20 resident Kim Miller said she began attending board meetings in recent years when topics like COVID-19 policies and certain curricula became more contested.

“Boards didn’t use to try to control everything going on. And now, it’s just changed,” she said.

“They’re trying to make everybody do things the way they want to and this is public education. If you want to control something, there’s plenty of private schools you can put whatever you want in. Leave public education to the public.”