*Editor’s note: This article will be referencing and quoting slogans alleged to be antisemitic.
The Edina School Board meeting on Jan. 8 featured the arrival of three new board members and community comments from returning protestors. It was the first regular board meeting of 2024, and the first since Dec. 11, which adjourned early amidst protests regarding two Edina High School students who were suspended in November.
Three new School Board members, Elliot Mann, Cheryl Berry, and Jennifer Huwe (absent), assumed their positions, and commendations were given to the departing members Julie Greene, Janie Shaw, and Regina Neville.
The floor then opened for community comment, in which members of the public who had signed in and requested to speak had three minutes to address the board. For the following 45 minutes, Edina residents and pro-Palestine protestors voiced their opinions on the disruption of the School Board meeting on Dec. 11 and the suspension of two EHS students in November for the use of the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Many Edina residents in attendance took the opportunity to express their discontent with the protestors and the early adjournment of the Dec. 11 board meeting. “I truly hope that everyone that comes after me takes a deep breath and that [we] make sure that we don’t get into the spot that we were last time because last time we weren’t able to continue,” Edina parent Sarah Quayl said. “I do think that the majority of these people are from outside of our community, and have chosen this as a forum to air their grievances for political issues that are not the purview of Edina Public Schools,” another Edina parent, Maria Loucks, said.
Many speakers reiterated their right to speak irrespective of whether they were Edina residents. “I’m hearing a lot about people coming from other places, so I have to say that the children [who were suspended] are from these families [that] called us and told us that they need help. They are Edina students, they are the families that go here,” speaker Asmin Ahmed said. “If you go to any school you have a Somali student and you have a Muslim student and you call it diversity, and those families call us and ask for help, and when you say that [we] don’t live here, we don’t have families here, we do have families here.”
Most of the audience left after community comment, with the protestors dispersing entirely.
The School Board continued by discussing the Social Studies Guiding Change document and Fiscal Year Cost Containment for 2025. Additionally, the Legislative Action Committee (LAC) presented its 2024 Legislative Platform. “[2024] is typically a non-funding year, and so many of the platform items are not focused on financial funding, but they’re focused on policy,” Superintendent Dr. Stacey Stanley noted.
Later Policy Review included topics such as the Student Hazing Prohibition, the Food and Nutrition Services Program, and Library Materials, which delegated the responsibility for the reconsideration of library materials in the event they were challenged.
This piece was originally published in Zephyrus’ print edition on January 25, 2024.
