MARBLEHEAD — The School Committee voted 4-1 to pass its policy regarding the display of flags and banners Thursday night after 18 months of deliberation.
The policy states: “The Marblehead School Committee, as the governing and policy-making body of the Marblehead Public Schools, has the sole authority to determine that flags and banners affixed on school district property reflect the mission, vision, and values of the school district and constitute the school district’s government speech.”
Further, “This policy does not apply to athletic team banners, student artwork, locker decorations, notebook covers, or any personal items staff and students may bring to class or use during transportation to or from school or school events. Additionally, the policy allows the display of positive affirmations, such as encouraging school values, promoting a welcoming environment for students, or recognizing school community members, provided they are not affiliated with or attributed to a political or activist organization.”
Many community members aired concerns over only listing six heritage months in the policy, which “may be displayed during the specified month.” The six listed are: “African American History Month (February), Women’s History Month (March), Asian Pacific American History Month (May), Pride Month (June), Hispanic Heritage Month (mid September-mid October) and Native American Heritage Month (November).”
However, the language in the policy does not dictate that more heritages cannot be celebrated at their respective times, or possibly even throughout the year. Rather, it codified those six instances. It would be up to Superintendent John Robidoux to come to the School Committee with more suggestions down the line if he recommended more heritage months were to be celebrated.
The sole committee member who voted against the policy was Al Williams.
“The bottom line for me (is that) all the input I’ve heard today does not move me from questioning whether we need this policy to begin with. In fact, I think this policy creation creates more questions and uncertainty,” Williams said.
Vice Chair Alison Taylor asked if he was “ruling against what our general counsel says.”
Williams then said, “I don’t know if it’s ruling against or I don’t have 100% certainly behind what we’re being told… There’s been… attorneys sitting in that chair (for public comment) arguing against the findings of our general counsel. To me, when that happens enough, it raises a certain level of uncertainty in my mind.”
Committee member Sarah Fox made it clear that she was voting in favor of this policy because she felt it would do more damage to not have a policy and continue to allow the “all means all” rhetoric when it comes to hanging flags and banners.
“For some reason, people – and it’s good – people assume the best in our community. I hear people saying, ‘Yeah, all means all. We’re going to put everybody’s (flags) up. Who’s going to ask you to put something up that’s offensive?’ And to a certain extent, it is really great that people are assuming that there are not members of our community that will ask us, if we go ‘all means all,’ to put up a flag — that would be really, really hard for some groups — just (to) prove a point,” she said.
Fox continued, “I’ll go to the extreme: I think if we go ‘all means all,’ we could wind up in a situation where someone sends something like a Nazi flag or something and asks us to hang it. I say that because I do think, unfortunately, there are people in the community who are looking to make a point at any expense, and my concern is that if we go ‘all means all,’ we legally don’t have a right to turn that down.”
Chair Jenn Schaeffner added that “the toothpaste is already out of the tube at this point,” meaning that it’s too late to not just continue forward and vote in favor of the policy.
Fox also brought up that the School Committee used roughly $38,000 for the antisemitism investigation which “was launched simply because of the discussion at play.” She emphasized that $38,000 could have easily funded a tutor for a full year rather than a six-month investigation, and she didn’t want to “minimize” the reasons that led the committee to passing this policy.
“I would love to avoid this flag policy,” Fox said. “I would love to advocate our need to deal with this situation because, quite frankly, I have a lot of issues (with it). But part of sitting at this table and serving in this role is doing what we need to do to protect the legal standing, even when it puts us in the line of fire.”
Robidoux said Friday that “at this point, given that the policy was just voted on last night, the operational side of managing it has not yet been firmed up.” He added that “the written policy itself still needs to be finalized based on some of the discussion last night, so I will be waiting to see that to have conversations with our administrators about how we operationalize.”
“I hope that I will have the balance of the school year to work out the logistics and implement this in earnest for the fall,” he said.
