Rutherford County Parents Say 1st Amendment Rights Limited By School Board
Photo Credit: RCTV
The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –
Rutherford County parents are upset after the school board voted at the October 14th meeting to inhibit 1st amendment protections at future meetings. Director of Schools, Bill Spurlock, put out a tweet shortly after that had parents confused, angry and demanding clarification.
In a Facebook post,
Rutherford Students First observed:
“RCS board has made it clear, they don’t care about 1st amendment protections. New limitations below.
– Speakers from the same organization should pick a single speaker to represent them.
– Posters and signs are not allowed.
– The chairman can have a speaker removed if the speaker is making repetitive comments already made by other speakers.
– Visitors must request to speak no later than 2 days before the meeting.
– Must provide proof of Rutherford County residence when you request to be a speaker.”
About the tweet, Rutherford Students First had this to say:
“Either it’s arrogance on a special level, or it’s pathetically tone deaf. Both show just how much RCS leadership considers parents. #NoChoiceNoVoice”
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Kristin Aune, a concerned Rutherford County parent, spoke to the Tennessee Conservative about the school board meeting and subsequent tweet made by Spurlock.
“I was shocked to see a tweet made by Rutherford County Schools director, Bill Spurlock. The tweet featured a photo of a lion and read “Words of wisdom: The lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of the sheep”.
This tweet came on the heels of a vote that took place last night that limits parent speech in school board meetings by only allowing one person from an organization to speak at a given school board meeting, giving power to the chairwoman to remove speakers if she deems what they say to be “repetitive”, not allowing anyone who lives outside Rutherford County to speak even if they have a child in the school… and limiting signs.
After Bill Spurlock’s tweet, parents took to Twitter with concern and to respond and ask for clarification only to be blocked by Bill Spurlock.
Regardless of where parents or teachers stand on any issue, they have the same desire to be heard! This type of leadership should absolutely be in question. I, as well as other parents, are outraged that they chose to give power to a man who clearly does not care for the “sheep” (children, parents, teachers). The board has also voted to give him solitary power in changing COVID policies. I have often sent emails to Bill Spurlock with concerns and do not receive replies and now [parents’ voices are] limited in meetings and [are being blocked] from his Twitter account.”
Spurlock deleted the tweet sometime Saturday and later attempted to clarify what he had been trying to communicate in the following tweet:
“I recently tweeted a quote that may have been misinterpreted. The past 19 months I’ve witnessed RCS students & staff (lions) achieve success despite criticism, heckling & overall disrespect from outsiders (sheep). Let’s continue excelling and remain united & determined.”
Rutherford County’s school board is not the first in Middle Tennessee to place limits on speakers at school board meetings. In Williamson County, effective October 18th, the school board has changed the process for selecting speakers from in person to online via email. No more than 30 speakers can be selected in order of submission (verified by time stamping) and a time limit of 30 minutes is devoted to public comments, giving each speaker a maximum of 60 seconds to speak.
About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and contributor to The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
Communism has arrived to TN. People better start standing up or TN will be lost to these commies.
Pull your children out of the communist school system. Refuse to pay your School Taxes. You can also recall your school board.
If the parents could just commit to taking their kids out of school for one month, they would all back down after losing funding. Honestly, it’s not going to hurt your kids to miss some school. These issues are much bigger than education. We need to stop bowing down to the education gods. Our country is too obsessed.
Take the kids out and homeschool them. It works. Not for just a month.
The tyrannical RCS is another real problem Rutherford Co. has. AFTER taking your
children out, then you need to go after this SOB. Recall? If not then the others on the
board? They seem to be the sheeple giving this SOB total power to rule on COVID policies.
There is a Covid virus. Killrate is less than the flu. It does kill folks of all ages if certain
underlying conditions are present. Just like the flu. HOWEVER, the numbers show it is less than the flu.
Do you wear masks for the flu? Have you ever? Masks, by the way, are not effective for a
virus. But if you have to wear one because some idiot says so, then it’s purpose is ‘CONTROL’.
Has nothing to do with your wellbeing. These vaccine mandates are not laws. Sounds pretty ominous and legal doesn’t it. They are simply a method of control of the sheeple. If everybody gets a shot and everybody wears a mask then the morons in DC will know that the sheeple will wilt and bow down to anything they want you to do.
It’s called Socialism (brief forerunner to communism) sheeple. Please, pay attention, stay safe but
do a thorough housecleaning of your schoolboard. Be sure to write or call your elected reps in
Nashville and DC (for what that’s worth). Good luck.
I keep hearing the argument for mandatory Covid vaccinations compared to mandatory Polio and Smallpox vaccinations but there is one critical difference: Smallpox and Polio vaccinations were made mandatory only after extensive testing regarding side effects and long term effects, neither of which has been done for Covid vaccines. And even with the short-term testing, Covid vaccines seem to have significantly more adverse effects than the other two.