Detroit Lakes school board cuts public comments short amid rainbow flag controversy
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Fourteen people signed up to give public comment at Monday night’s Detroit Lakes school board meeting. Most were there to voice their displeasure with the school board over its recent efforts to remove rainbow flags from school grounds. Some commenters said the board has been ignoring community feedback.
They may have said more, but they were cut off by a one-minute timer.
Board Chair John Steffl decided to enforce a rule Monday that limited the total time for public comment to 15 minutes, leaving each commenter one minute to make their remarks. The rule was included in previous meeting agendas but hadn’t been enforced.
Steffl said recent meetings had “just gotten to be too long.”
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The packed meeting was another in a saga that began in July, when board member Sanford Nelson introduced a policy that would remove rainbow flags and stickers from school grounds. Some teachers display rainbow stickers to signal their classroom is a safe space for LGBTQ+ students.
Amid a legal challenge from the ACLU of Minnesota, the ban was eventually rescinded and the board began considering a broader policy revision regarding what teachers and students can display on campus.
But after pushback from school principals, a second reading of that policy has been postponed till next month. There was no action on the policy at Monday’s meeting.
The public comment portion of the meeting was short but tense and, at times, emotional. One speaker thanked board members Mary Rotter and Julie Smith-Yliniemi for their steadfast opposition to the rainbow sticker ban.
“Thank you for not bending while an intolerant wind blows,” Emily Buermann said. “The season is ending, and the wind will change. You are not alone.”
Rotter began crying as Buermann spoke.
Smith-Yliniemi said after the meeting she was grateful for everyone who came to speak. She also said she was grateful there were no surprises tacked on to the board agenda about the rainbow ban, as there had been in previous meetings.
“I don’t think anything was solved tonight,” she said. “But I didn’t feel like there was an uproar and confusion and all of these things that have happened the last few months.”
There was still some commotion. While most speakers were against the ban on rainbow stickers, the crowd overall appeared more evenly split.
When a speaker opposed the board’s action, there was, without fail, at least one voice yelling “time” as soon as the clock hit zero.
The same thing happened when proponents of the ban spoke, like Robert Koshnick.
He said he represents the Becker County Republicans and supports the proposed district policy revision that would change what teachers and students are allowed to display on campus. And he doesn’t think teachers should display rainbow stickers because he sees it as a form of “identity politics.”
“Identity politics, it has many different names: wokeness or DEI or critical race theory,” he told MPR News, “and the essence of it is people are grouped by particular traits, whether it be skin color or sexual preferences, etcetera, and these are not things that educators in public schools should really be promoting one way or another.”
‘We have to get our voices heard’
Before the board meeting, a group of community members who oppose the ban and other recent board actions spoke to reporters inside city hall. The event was organized by community member Terry Kalil.
“We got mad when the agenda came out and public participation got reduced from five minutes to one minute, per speaker,” she said. “Our reaction was, ‘We have to get our voices heard.’”
That group included teachers, activists and parents such as Nicole Hadding, who is suing the district and four individual board members over the ban alongside the ACLU of Minnesota. She identifies as LGBTQ+ and has a daughter in Roosevelt Elementary School.
“I’m proud of who I am,” Hadding said. “But this controversy has brought back feelings I thought I’d left behind. For the first time in years, I felt guilt and shame connected with my sexuality. I’ve worried about what people think of me and my family, and honestly, I feel a little sucker punched by the community I was so proud to come home to.”
Board members said they plan to again discuss the changes to district policy at meetings next month.
In the meantime, school board elections will take place next week. Three spots are up for election and two incumbents, Mary Rotter and Michelle Okeson, are running for reelection.
