What do you see?

Several images were displayed on a video screen. Middlesex Borough School Superintendent Dr. Roberta Freeman invited members of the Board of Education and audience to weigh-in on what they were seeing. One was a popular optical illusion involving an apple.

Freeman was about to present her district’s New Jersey Student Learning Assessment results on Tuesday, Oct. 15. Her point was that district scores should be viewed in relation to Garden State averages. Those using the “perspective” she advocated, could arrive at a different analysis of the testing outcomes than first glance.

Perspective, Freeman pointed out, is what leads two viewers of the same optical illusion to arrive at differing assessments of what they see. Was the one image really an apple core or the silhouettes of two faces?

Like the apple image, the board’s method of answering public comment can be viewed in varying ways. The board and its administrators see it as efficient and appropriate. Constituents have begun to view it as frustrating and unnecessary.

Dr. Freeman might want to follow her own advice and view the Board of Education’s public comment response policy from the other vantage point. At the board’s November meetings, Freeman – and perhaps the board’s leadership – should sit in the audience. There, they might see a constituent or two ask about various matters and be met mostly with demeaning silence.

The superintendent and one board critic engaged in a back-and-forth that bordered on a debate at the Oct. 15 meeting. The response policy was one of the topics. The following evening, school officials lightened up slightly and answered a couple of questions on the spot.

The typical public comment optics are awful. Constituent questions usually don’t receive an immediate answer, just a reminder that this method of operating is backed up by a board policy. But don’t worry, you’ll get an email in a few days. The responses will also be posted on a new website.

It borders on disrespectful, similar to the typical run-around from an online retailer’s customer service department. It seems appropriate, however, if you adhere to suggestions from the New Jersey School Boards Association (NJSBA). 

The NJSBA offers advice to local school boards and can explain away nearly any heat-producing decision or error. In nearby Watchung, one board member’s unexpired term was mistakenly omitted from the 2021 general election ballot. An NJSBA field rep later came to a public meeting and downplayed that horrendous administrative snafu.

Yes, the NJSBA can shoo it away even when voters are denied their constitutional right to re-fill a school board seat.

It would be hard to argue the Middlesex board and its administrators are not taking their cue from the NJSBA. The new public info website has only one link to an outside site. You guessed it. The link connects to the NJSBA site.

The Middlesex board’s reluctance to engage publicly mirrors policies used by many NJ boards during the pandemic, when emotions ran high. in fall 2021, NJSBA field rep Mary Ann Friedman authored an article for School Leader, the association’s quarterly magazine.

In her article, entitled “Calming the Crowd,” Friedman offered advice to beleaguered Garden State school boards. Some of the suggested tactics mirror Middlesex school board meeting practices. Board members should refrain from engaging with the audience. Instead, administrators should respond in writing in the ensuing days, she advises.

“Recently, members of the public who are angry about COVID-19 issues, such as mask mandates, testing and vaccination, and remote instruction, have been making their views known — sometimes in a disruptive fashion — at board meetings,” Friedman wrote.

Friedman advises board members to watch their body language and offers additional tips. “It’s a public comment period, not a question- and-answer period,” she wrote. “Board members should avoid getting drawn into give-and-take with members of the public.”

The COVID-19 pandemic was an extreme situation with a lot of moving parts. Most of us were severely stressed just trying to maintain a sense of normalcy within our households. It’s understandable that school board members wanted to limit the verbal pounding received at public meetings.

We left that world a while ago. Now, it’s again reasonable for parents and taxpayers to question the teacher shortage’s salary fallout or why a popular principal was reassigned.

If Middlesex Borough school board members – or their administrators – don’t think so, perhaps they’re in the wrong business. Those asking the questions, after all, are among those paying the bills.

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