The Equity Council is yet another expensive ideological boondoggle initiated by former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s race-obsessed Department of Education. The stated purpose of the council is to work in concert with the newly created “Equity Compliance Officer” to oversee, investigate and adjudicate complaints made about Council members.
The flagrantly unconstitutional scheme which purports to be an “anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policy” follows the illiberal trend of silencing disfavored speech instead of engaging, disputing, or debating ideas. Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 states that elected school board members can be removed if they engage in “frequent verbal abuse and unnecessary aggressive speech” with others or if the member’s conduct is “contrary to the best interest of the New York City school district” or if their conduct at public appearances “creates or would foreseeably create a risk of disruption within the district or school community.”
A quick look at some of those elected to the Council make clear that the Kafka-esque adjudications which are sure to occur under their watch will serve to push an elitist, leftist, extreme ideological agenda by silencing anyone who disagrees with the reigning narrative.
Leading the way is Brooklyn’s Tajh Sutton of District 14, a long-term Community Education Council President who has routinely violated State Open Meetings Law by refusing to hold in-person meetings regularly removing parents from the zoom who disagree with her. After October 7th, Ms. Sutton organized a walk out in support of the terroristic barbarism of Hamas and urged students, teachers and staff to leave school to call for the annihilation of Israel by providing a toolkit for students with chants such as “from the river to the sea” and signs calling to “decolonize” Israel. Notwithstanding these helpful suggestions, some students opted for the more straightforward “F-ck the Jews.”
Also elected to the Equity Council as a representative for the Chancellor’s Parents Advisory Committee is Adriana Alicia who is currently in a messy local standoff with Queens Borough President Donovan Richards who appointed her to a Education Council District 28 after she was disqualified from the election due to violating election rules. He now claims (and she disputes) that she resigned and he accepted her resignation after her offensive statements “including an explicit defense of Hamas and a justification for students targeting a Jewish Teacher at Hillcrest High School” came to light.
As drafted, the so-called anti-harassment regulation would provide grounds to remove Ms. Sutton and Ms. Alicea, instead they will now sit in judgment of others. But the Equity Council is not meant for far left activists who promote the preferred ideological positions of our far left city; it is meant to silence parents with disfavored views and suppress the very democracy it claims to uphold.
This rampant speech suppression was on full display this month as we exercised our constitutional rights by participating as panelists at a Moms for Liberty Town Hall on education. Several politicians, including Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and State Senator Brad Hoylman, stood outside and called us “racist,” “fascist bigots,” and of course, “MAGA!” for our crime thoughts of dissenting from Kendi-style anti-racism and the “gender-affirming” ideology embedded in our schools.
The politicians were invited to participate in the discussion, sadly, they preferred to stand outside and participate in character assassination. Senator Hoylman went so far as to pressure the hosting venue to cancel the event. Protestors called upon Chancellor Banks to remove us from our elected positions on the Community Education Council to punish our presence at the event.
To be clear, neither of us believes that the Chancellor's new anti-harassment policy should be used to remove any elected parent leader–even those whose ideas we may find noxious–that’s what elections are for. We simply believe that the Equity Council is a speech-chilling, unconstitutional, Orwellian farce.
Instead of the absurd Equity show trials, where inevitably we, or those who tend to agree with us, will be accused of wrong-think and/or wrong-speak, NYC Public Schools and the Chancellor should adopt a version of the Chicago Principles–a firm commitment to free speech which acknowledges that in the nation’s largest and most diverse school district, there will always be a gloriously wide range of opinions about how to best serve and educate our students–and the very best place to start is for the adults to model how a free society honors free expression.
Charles Love and Maud Maron are public school parents and elected parent members of Community Education Council District 2.
