Newberg community testifies on school district ban on Pride, BLM symbols – By Jaimie Ding (The Oregonian/OregonLive) / Sept 22 2021
Newberg school board members heard testimony from close to 50 residents and students on Wednesday night, all weighing in on the board’s ban on political symbols, which vice chair Brian Shannon introduced over the summer in an effort to bar teachers from displaying Pride and Black Lives Matter flags and banners.
The special meeting, held over Zoom, gave members of the public up to two minutes each to comment on the proposed ban. Views from the community were fairly split in support and opposition to the ban, but the handful of district students and staff members who testified all opposed it.
A conservative majority on the Newberg school board has spent the last few weeks crafting and refining the policy, which began as an effort to specifically ban the Pride and Black Lives Matter symbols in schools but now is being styled as a ban on anything “political, quasi-political or controversial.” District lawyers and an attorney for the statewide school boards association have said the directive as drafted runs afoul of the First Amendment.
The meeting was held two days after a staff member showed up to work in blackface in an attempt to liken mandatory vaccinations to segregation, and about a week after published reports that some students took part in a virtual “slave trade” of Black Newberg pupils over Snapchat – incidents that several speakers mentioned in their comments supporting the inclusion of Black Lives Matter symbols.
