The AB School Committee has More Problems with “Virtual Zoom” Meetings

By Charlie Kadlec and Scott Smyers

As many Acton and Boxborough residents already know, two recent ABRSD School Committee (SC) “Virtual Zoom” meetings were interrupted by racist and insulting messages sent by anonymous cowards using features of the Zoom software intended to allow public participation in the meetings. The first incident was at the December 17, 2020 SC meeting, which started with comments from the public focusing on the SC’s recent decision to retire the Colonial as the team name for Acton Boxborough District. See the complete video here.

After the public comments the SC moved on to other items on their agenda.  More than an hour after the public comment period which included the Colonial topic, the Superintendent stopped the meeting and announced that racist comments had been posted in the Zoom Q&A box. He did not provide details, but the timing of this incident and the lack of any reference to the controversy about the Colonial mascot indicates that the incident was unrelated to the Colonial issue. The contents of the Q&A box were available only to the Superintendent and to the SC members.

The reaction by the School Committee members who clearly were the intended targets of the racist comments, was emotional and passionate. Superintendent Light and SC members as well as two members of the virtual audience immediately condemned the racist comments. One Committee member wisely suggested a recess, after which the Committee resumed the meeting.

Later, there was another verbal “Zoom Bomb” at about 3:14 where someone did not identify themselves and made a trumpet-like sound. This seemed to have no purpose and may not be related to the text posted in the Q&A section.

The school administration issued a video condemning this incident (see below) and the Chair of the SC issued a letter. and the Board of Selectmen held an Emergency Special Meeting and issued a similar denunciation. 

On January 7, 2021, the SC met again and at the beginning of the meeting there was presentation from a student on the pros and cons of remote learning then a public comment period, where members of the public provided statements. Some of the comments were related to the decision on the Colonial issue, one comment was very supportive of the SC’s decision, while several others were critical of the decision. All comments were respectful.

Watch the video yourself here,

At approximately one hour and forty minutes into the meeting, someone called in with a muffled connection claiming to be “John” from “unintelligible number Picnic Street, Boxborough” and played some music featuring the N-word. The exchange lasted less than a minute and is in the 1:39 section of the meeting. The Committee appropriately marginalized the incident and moved on with business.

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Again, the reaction by the school administration and the Selectmen was immediate and strong. The Superintendent released the following statement:

AB Community,

I cannot put into words how angry I am to be writing to make you aware of yet another racist attack on the two black members of our school committee during our meeting tonight. During a portion of the meeting where the committee took questions and comments from the public, an individual was recognized who provided what we now assume to be a false name, along with an accurate street name in Boxborough where they claimed to reside. The individual then immediately played music with racist lyrics which were clearly targeted at the two school committee members.

There is nothing left to say that would approriately call out this level of premeditated hate. We have already contacted the police and begun gathering all data regarding the meeting so that we can work closely with law enforcement to vigorously pursue this incident along with the prior attack.

Our community places a high value on public participation in government and at meetings, but we can never again subject the members of our committee to this type of treatment. We will be evaluating if any public participation will be possible moving forward in this remote environment and under what circumstances it can take place. While we will strive to provide that opportunity, it cannot come at a cost to the safety of our elected volunteers.

In solidarity with our members,

Peter Light

Superinetndent of Schools

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We of course agree with the condemnation of these racist insults, but we are concerned with the Superintendent’s comment about further restricting public participation in SC meetings. In response to Mr. Light’s letter, Charlie issued the following message:

Message To Peter Light dated January 8, 2021

Good morning Peter,

I have received a copy of the note to the “AB Community” that you wrote last night after the school committee meeting, expressing your anger at the racist message sent as a “public comment” and suggesting that it may be necessary to stop allowing any public participation in school committee meetings. To be uncomfortably blunt, that would be the worst reaction to this incident, giving the perpetrator the satisfaction of having a major impact on how we conduct our public business.

This never happened prior to “Zoom” meetings, for one simple reason — everyone including audience members making comments was physically at the meeting. My suggestion: require those making comments on Zoom to be on camera, just like you and the school committee members are. Not quite as effective as physical presence but much better that the anonymity of just audio.  This is not any sort of invasion of privacy, it is the same as being seen making comments at a school committee meeting prior to COVID-19. I do not know the details of Zoom technology but there may be an option to also have a “7 second delay” for the public comments as some live TV shows used a long time ago.

If for some reason the above suggestion does not work the next best thing that we, as a community, can do is to ignore these stupid insults. Although I have not yet had the chance to get to know Mss. Cook and Abayaah-Issah I am sure that by now they both understand that nothing useful comes from overreacting to these deliberate provocations.

Finally, as you noted in your “update” last night, we still do not know who is responsible for this and the previous insults. Attempts to blame the communities and, as John Petersen put it so well last night, to introduce a punitive element into the discussion should be strongly discouraged.

Regards,

Charlie

The Board of Selectmen scheduled another Emergency Special Meeting for 1-11-2021 to discuss this issue. The Town Manager issued a statement denouncing these racist attacks. We wholeheartedly agree, but we reject the implications, and in some cases accusations, that these incidents prove that the Acton and Boxborough communities are racist. The accusers ignore the simple facts that the perpetrators of these incidents and their motives are not known, and that they may or may not have any connection to our communities. To expand these incidents into wholesale accusations of racism in Acton and Boxborough is unacceptable (a logical fallacy known as a Hasty Generalization). We must show the next generation that we can handle this problem with fairness, clarity, honesty, and integrity.

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