Speaking out in public: citizen participation in contentious school board meetings

Abstract

A high level of citizen involvement in civic life is presumed crucial to the well-being of democracy, but the actual discourse of citizen involvement has rarely been analyzed. This article analyzes citizen participation in the school board meetings of one US community that was in the midst of conflict. After providing background on education governance practices and the community that was studied, citizen participation is examined. Citizen commentaries at school board meetings are shown to be a distinct speech genre and the genre is described. Then, we characterize the discourse practices used to express negative sentiment. Feeling-limned description, avowal of feelings, rhetorical questions, reported speech, use of god and devil terms, and using meeting rules as weapons were the main negative sentiment strategies. In the conclusion we suggest when low levels of citizen involvement should be acceptable, and why `reasonable hostility' is a desirable form of citizen expression.

Lived citizenship as the locus of political agency in participatory policy

“…All cities have some kind of a representative system but the Oulu and Tampere models take the idea furthest, adapting to the 'international standard' (cf. Matthews and Limb 2003;Tisdall et al 2006;Tracy and Turfy 2007). Geographically, their models follow the traditional idea of nested hierarchy beginning from the individual pupil and her school class, and moving scale by scale all the way to the municipal government (and potentially beyond).…”

“…Tisdall et al 2006;Tracy and Turfy 2007;Millei and Imre 2009;Lazar 2010;Percy-Smith 2010;Kallio & Häkli 2011a). The expansion of participatory policies to ever more aspects of social life has gradually built interesting tensions into local government: Officially it is obligated to building participatory systems on the basis of territorial jurisdiction, but to actually succeed in engaging people it should be able to recognize the dynamism and multifariousness of lived citizenship beyond any fixed areal frameworks.…”

Challenges of Interviewers' Institutional Positionings: Taking Account of Interview Content and the Interaction

“…The two segments of an interview in this second case come from a 35-month case study of the workings of ordinary democracy as it was played out in one community's school board meetings (Tracy, 2010; see also Tracy & Ashcraft, 2001;Tracy & Durfy, 2007;Tracy & Muller, 2001;Tracy & Standerfer, 2003).The interview we analyze was one done with the Dean of Education in a university in the same community. The 35 months was a time of conflict in this Western U.S. community: board meetings were well-attended, votes split, and stories of district and board trouble were regular occurrences in the local newspaper.…”

The Discourse of Crisis in Public Meetings: Case Study of a School District's Multimillion Dollar Error

“…There were also comments and questions from seated audience members. Compared to a neighboring school district that was only slightly larger in size (25,000 vs. 21,000 students), public participation in the St. Vrain meetings was relatively interactive and informal (Tracy & Durfy, 2007).…”