"Free Speech? Not At Our Public Meetings;" said Barter's actions.

On February 27th of 1996, TVCSD Superintendent Mary F. Barter murdered free speech.

7:50 PM: Five Waking Bear© documents were delivered to a Board of Education meeting. They were arrayed on a table traditionally used to distribute documents by the Board and local political action groups.

They dealt with:

• * The 1995 budget votes,
• * TVCSD's breaking NYS Law
• * Political manipulations of district residents,
• * Personal agendas of public administrators,
• * Recent events at our Board of Education meetings.

Two of these same documents had been published in local newspapers.

7:55 PM: An irate teacher's union official swept them up and brought them to the Board, then meeting in closed session in an adjoining room.

8:20 PM: The Board convened in open session. The documents did not reappear. The night's first speaker asked: On what grounds were the documents removed? And, who on the Board voted against their distribution?

The Board members sat in grotesque and embarrassed silence, each member peering first to their left, then right. Not a word was uttered for perhaps twenty seconds. Donald Murphy, the Board's president then whispered something to Mary Barter, the District's Superintendent, whereupon she announced that documents not published by the Board would not be permitted at Board of Education meetings. As most of the people in the room did not understand what the exchange was all about -- the documents had been removed before nearly all had arrived, there was an almost palpable pale of silence throughout the balance of the evening.

Ladies and genetlemen, the appearance of the documents was merely symbolic. Nearly all present at Board meetings have an unalterable mind-set. The documents were otherwise distributed in the thousands throughout the district and on the internet. Barter & Company had just shot themselves in their collective foot.

Then, on March 5th, more nonsense. Records of Board minutes as far back as January 5th of 1995 show that public participation occurred twice at each meeting, in accordance with district regulations 1230 and 1230-E. These rules require that there be two 30 minute segments, one at both the beginning and end of each meeting. Without so much as a word of explanation, the Board proceeded into the Superintendent's Recommended Budget for 1996-97: no open and public discussion was permitted until the vast majority of attendees had left the meeting.

On March 12th, though an open forum was provided for, only one theme was heard. The audience was barraged with a well orchestrated assortment of mostly athletic supporters always pleading the same thing: "Don't cut anything but most certainly don't cut [fill in the blank]." The only bit of Public Participation not of this persuasion, of the evening's entire allotted hour, was area resident and Stony Brook professor Albert Haim's three minutes of unappreciated common sense.

Then on the 17th, there was again no scheduled Public Participation on the printed Agenda. But upon his opening of the meeting, the Board's President announced that Special Education advocates were to get their chance to plea their case to the Board.

On March 19th, there was no Public Participation either scheduled or permitted.

So, summarized: following the February 27th Board of Education fiasco, when Barter refused to allow literature unfavorable to herself to be distributed, there were four scheduled meetings. In three of those cases, NO public participation was to occur. In the fourth, the Board deviated from its 'no participation' agenda and turned the podium over to the over-inbred-never-ending spenders.
Barter and Company does not seem to understand that most of the thirty thousand eligible voters in the district are looking for some relief. And they aren't walking around with distended bellies filled with smoke blown up their behinds, an affliction so common to many attending the Board meetings.

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