The Fowlerville Community Schools Board of Education at its July 18 meeting revised policies that essentially remove Pride flags from its buildings and property.
So many people showed up that the meeting had to be moved to the Alverson Center for Performing Arts. The contentious evening included a heated exchange between board members John Belcher and Diana Dombrowski in which he accused her of being “disingenuous.”
The revised policy adopted by the board, which restricts what signage and flags can be displayed and where, also sets up approval standards for all displays.
The meeting, which started at 7 p.m., opened with a call to the public. Over 80 members of the public on both sides of the proposal — including former and current teachers, students, parents, and alumni — voiced their concerns. Cheers and boos from both sides were prevalent, with members of the board having to remind the audience that they were to remain quiet while others spoke.
A short intermission was called after the last public comment concluded at 10 p.m., after which came the exchange between Dombrowski and Belcher.
“I think that, in essence, what has happened here… some folks wanted to not have [pride flags] in the classrooms anymore, for whatever reason,” Dombrowski said. “And in order to do that, we got this policy … which included all this poster stuff. And so we made a bigger problem. I would have rather just had some kind of policy that was just about the flag.”
Belcher shot back, saying Dombrowski was being “disingenuous.”
“We do not let people stand at that podium and take shots at board members,” Belcher said. “You [are saying that] basically everything the policy expresses is a lie.”
Dombrowski said the policy should be more thorough in its language to better help those who enforce it know which clubs and organizations can display things and where, and to also outline what is needed to be done for displays that don’t necessarily fall under curriculum.
Belcher brought up amendments to the policy to better define examples of displays of academic achievement, and outlining where flyers for student clubs and organizations can be located. Both amendments were adopted.
Dombrowski requested that the definition go farther, as she felt its vagueness could affect the approval process.
The adopted policy “still does not cover things that are not organizations. They are social contracts, posters of authors, movie posters, inspirational posters of all kinds,” Dombrowski said. “All of which will now have to be approved by principals and administrators.
“We have just taken something that teachers do every year and told them that we’re going to micromanage it,” she continued. “So the stuff you’ve been putting on your walls, you can no longer put on the walls.”
After the short spat between the two, a roll call vote was taken on the amended policy, which passed 6-1, with Dombrowski voting against it.
The meeting concluded with those in favor of the revised policy cheering it, and some against it voicing their disapproval.
“Wait until the ACLU gets here,” one man shouted at the board.
A similar policy was adopted by the Hartland Consolidated Schools Board of Education on June 12; the Livingston Board of Commissioners also recently adopted a policy to regulate content that its various agencies include in their newsletters after one promoted Pride Month.
