OPINION

Ellwood City Ledger

When Charles Meeker II was in elementary school, he was introduced to music, and it changed his life.

Now a percussionist in the Lincoln High School Blue Band – he won’t just call it “the band” – he doesn’t take it lightly if he thinks anyone is messing with the musical group. And he thinks, quite strongly, that Ellwood City Area School Board is messing with the band.

“The Blue Band is a matter of pride, and if you take away our pride, we have nothing,” Meeker said emphatically last Monday from a hallway outside the board meeting chamber.

He and his mother, Lori Tillia-Meeker, were among a group of more than 20 people who attended the meeting in hopes of convincing the district to fill an elementary school instrumental instructor vacancy created by Ray Falotico’s retirement.

As of Monday, the district’s plan was to eliminate the position and use high school band director Lee Caldwell and elementary music teacher Julie Mutmansky to fill the gap. But high school choral teacher Felicia Greco said they wouldn’t be able to adequately carry on musical instruction under the district’s plan.

So a bunch of teachers and parents turned up at Monday’s meeting to state their point for district administration and elected officials who are making decisions on their children’s education.

But most of them never got the chance.

Before any of them had a chance to talk, board President Anthony Buzzelli told the group that it had to designate a single spokesperson, and that no other comments would be accepted.

According to Melissa Melewesky, an attorney for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, that violates not only the state’s Sunshine Law, but First Amendment constitutional provisions for free speech and expression of grievances.

Buzzelli said district Solicitor John DeCaro advised the board it could limit comments to avoid having several people stand up and say the same thing.

Melewesky said elected officials can cut off comment to avoid repetition in public comments, but those comments have to become repetitive before they can be cut off. Ellwood City Area School Board put the two things in the wrong order, she said.

DeCaro attempted to minimize things by saying that Buzzelli asked – after resident representative Tammy Kuriger and Greco, who spoke on the teachers’ behalf – if anyone else wanted to speak, and no one spoke up.

“Despite the introductory comments, they did have an opportunity to speak,” DeCaro said, in a reference to Buzzelli’s statement that only one resident would be permitted to comment during the meeting.

DeCaro’s statement seems to indicate that no one else wanted to speak, which wasn’t the case. At least two people said Monday that they had hoped to address the board but were deterred by those “introductory comments.”

Casting the school board in the most charitable light possible, the board changed stances mid-meeting and offered residents the chance to speak, but those who wanted to comment were put off by Buzzelli’s initial statement.

And that most charitable light doesn’t excuse the board at all. If district residents, district taxpayers, were too intimidated to address the board during a public meeting, they can't be blamed for it.

That’s the board’s fault.

Melewesky pointed out – correctly – that the board usually needs to hear more than one or two voices on any issue.

“You have no idea what people are going to say before they say it,” she said.

When Monday night’s meeting adjourned, the school board members and district administrators still had no idea what Charles Meeker would have said, or the passion with which he would have said it.

Considering those officials are supposed to be making decisions about his education, that's something they should have heard.