Letter: Board needs transparency, accountability

Censorship is a tool used by “public servants” to hide their actions from public scrutiny.

The Moses Lake School Board’s efforts have been increasingly aggressive since a June 10 board meeting. People began to speak out in opposition of bringing CRT and comprehensive sex-ed to our schools. The district’s administration and some board members have chosen to obstruct and obfuscate our requests for transparency, forcing us to use public records requests, the Open Meetings Act and attorneys to get the actual facts. We uncovered things we weren’t even looking for.

There is only one board member left since then who has continued to ask hard questions and consistently called for more transparency and accountability. Many things have been exposed, implicating the need for several people to be questioned about what they knew and when they knew it. The board’s president has made increasingly more radical rule changes to unilaterally silence voices that would expose cover-ups, culpability and principled representation of the public’s interest by board members and administration. The president took the unprecedented action to take closing comments away from board members who’ve been elected to be the eyes, ears and voice of the people, in positions of trust. This board’s president is doing all she can to get past the upcoming election without the full extent of non-feasance being revealed.

Transparency, accountability and accommodation of the public’s questions and concerns should be paramount, from all board members and administration personnel. We have been receiving belligerent obstinacy, disingenuous obfuscation and outright cover-ups not allowed by district policy and law. To have the board’s president and vice president colluding to keep the public as uninformed as possible is unacceptable and an ongoing breach of the public trust. New leadership is our only chance to put an end to such a betrayal.

Jon Smith

Moses Lake