School board workshop moves to revise Rule Development Policy 10-20 on public participation, committee reports and student-centered time

BROWARD COUNTY — The Broward County School Board discussed a set of changes to Rule Development Policy 10-20 during a workshop session, signaling consensus on three principal items: changing committee-reporting frequency to quarterly in-person presentations with monthly written submissions, adding guidance that workshops should devote at least half of meeting time to student-centered topics, and removing a clause that gave the chair authority to interrupt speakers for "obscene, personally directed or abusive" comments.

The board chair opened the workshop item on Rule Development Policy 10-20 and turned it to staff for discussion before public comment. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh, a public commenter, urged the district to make workshop agendas publicly visible three months in advance and cited Florida law she said the policy should reference, including Florida Statute 768.295 (a provision addressing strategic lawsuits against public participation) and what she described as the Florida Volunteer Protection Act (cited verbally as 768.1355). Walsh also raised concerns about committee members’ legal protections and memos from the deputy general counsel.

The board then debated committee-report timing. Board member Mrs. Leonardi proposed moving committee reports from monthly to quarterly to reduce burden on committee chairs; she said the monthly schedule felt "onerous" and limited substantive discussion. Other board members opposed eliminating monthly engagement: the board chair and several colleagues said they preferred to keep monthly in-person reports to ensure timely feedback. After back-and-forth, the board reached a working consensus to switch to quarterly in-person committee reports while still requiring or allowing monthly written reports, and directed staff to prepare a red-lined policy return for formal consideration. Doctor Holness stated, "I support quarterly because it appears that many of the...committee chairs and the committees would favor that." The board agreed the change would be returned for debate and a future vote.

Separately, Doctor Zeman proposed adding a sentence to the policy requiring that "school board workshops should allocate at least 50% of the total time of each meeting to student-centered topics." Zeman said the change was intended to keep workshops focused on students and instruction rather than "adult issues." The proposal drew discussion about wording: some members preferred guidance language such as "should" rather than a binding "must," to preserve flexibility. Doctor Hepburn (staff) told the board his team had not found difficulty meeting the 50% guideline during the current year. The board signaled support for including the guidance language in the red-line version.

Board member Mr. Severa raised a legal concern about language in Section 7, subsection 4(e) that said the chair "may interrupt, notify, and warn" a speaker if comments were "obscene, personally directed or abusive." Severa cautioned that nearly identical language in a prior Brevard County policy was struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in litigation involving Moms for Liberty and that the phrasing could chill First Amendment-protected speech. Legal counsel Miss Batista advised the board that the allegedly problematic paragraph on page 11 was a leftover from an earlier draft and could be stricken; she said the policy's current, more detailed prohibitions and definitions appear on page 13 and were drafted to address the court's concerns. Miss Batista told the board, "So the way that the policy reads the answer, it would be no" when asked whether the policy would allow obscene or abusive speech, indicating that the page-13 language is intended to prohibit disorderly or defamatory conduct while providing clearer definitions.

The board asked for clarification about the forum’s scope. Miss Batista said the district maintains a limited public forum devoted to educational issues and that speakers who stray to unrelated matters would not be within the forum’s subject-matter scope. The group also discussed how a public reading of a book containing profanity would be handled: counsel said the chair could stop a reading that was purely objectionable and that questions about library materials would go through the district’s review process.

No formal motions or roll-call votes were recorded on the floor during the workshop; the board directed staff to produce red-line revisions reflecting the committee-report frequency change, the 50% student-centered guidance language, and the recommended deletions and alignment of public-participation language for subsequent debate and formal action. The board recessed the workshop to begin a public hearing and asked staff to review the public-comment requests and legal language before returning the item for vote.