For Second Time in 3 Weeks, Flagler School Board Members Reject Declaration Against Hate

School Board member Janet McDonald called hate speech subjective and free speech.

“To coin certain words as hate speech is all a personal perspective,” she said. “It happened during the conversation about the books it happened about the conversation about what happened in a class incident three years ago. That was a firestorm because it was viewed negatively. The story that got out into the public wasn’t what happened in the classroom.” (McDonald, who has fabricated stories at times, was downplaying or reimagining the way a transgender student was derided in a Matanzas High School classroom by his teacher.) “We’ve had a level of intolerance for certain things and people and words because they’re not in people’s comfort zone. Freeze speech is not a comfort zone thing.”

At a workshop in early January Woolbright and McDonald shot down a proposal by fellow-Board member Cheryl Massaro to issue a proclamation denouncing “hate groups.” They were opposed to the use of the word “denounce,” too. The proclamation they ended up favoring was an aqueous declaration for civility. Board member Colleen Conklin had been absent from that meeting (she had a Covid infection). Today, she submitted a revised proclamation that restored some of the language, this time “Denouncing Hate Speech,” as she had it in the headline of the proclamation. After researching the subject, she also included 2020 hate-crime data totaling over 11,000 reported incidents.




She got no support either for the reworded headline or for the data. “About the title denouncing hate speech, that was what my constituents had requested,” Massro said of the proposal from three weeks ago. “When we discussed it, you know what, it doesn’t matter. I agree. I don’t think we have to have it, as long as it outlines civility. A lot of people don’t understand the rules and the regulations. I don’t know if we have to have it. I could live without it and stick to the statement promoting public civility.”

Conklin said she did not view the statement as a political issue. Nor was the proposal a statement directed at people–or parents–addressing the board. “It is specific to some of the hate speech, the epithets, the slurs, the the name-calling, the threatening, creating an environment where we have community members that have said they don’t feel safe and comfortable,” Conklin said. “As a body I agree with the comments from the original conversation around the importance of us taking a stand to say we are not going to tolerate hate speech, which is quite different. Hate speech is very similar, like I said to you when we have somebody coming up and calling people ‘faggots’ and ‘an abomination,’ and that’s not appropriate. That is hate speech.”

“And racist and homophobe,” Woolbright said.

“But Jill, I agree with you, that shouldn’t be allowed,” Conklin said.

Woolbright then went on a long harangue about the proposed proclamation, asking who it was directed at, if not parents in the audience, and claiming that only two people who were not even from Flagler had been referred to as individuals who may have been an issue. “That’s two people that don’t even come to this county, so why are we so adamant about denouncing hate speech, and putting in all this stuff?” she asked.




In fact, going back to late 2019, board meetings have been the scene of outright insults and commotions, as when the board allowed a homophobic pastor to insult a student in front of his father over his gender in December 2019. The pastor gathered allies and faced a pro-LGBT student demonstration with similarly insulting messages, outside the Government Services Building the following February. Woolbright wasn’t on the board then. But McDonald never denounced the insults, applauding public engagement instead.

A school board meeting in the fall had to be recessed because of the vulgarity of the audience and the use of language, directed at speakers, that by any definition would be considered hateful. Sheriff’s deputies had to intervene and urge school board members to seek safety (commands McDonald and Woolbright ignored or, as Woolbright claims, did not hear). The following meeting was almost as unruly, and required the unprecedented intervention of sheriff’s deputies, ahead of time, to coach board members on what to do and where to go should the crowd again turn unruly. Board members in their own “retreat” that fall were rancorous toward each other over the way they interpreted the reasons behind the unruly meetings–much as Woolbright and McDonald reduced today’s debate over hate speech to matters of subjectivity.

But to claim that the issue of “hate” could be segregated to two out of towners was preposterously, demonstrably false.

“I don’t think we have the right to determine what hate speech is,” McDonald said.

“So what is the point behind it all,” Woolbright asked. “I think we need to be doing things that don’t make our people feel like we’re pointing fingers at them.” She added shortly later, “I’d really like us to move beyond this. I believe this just stirs the pot.”




Conklin differentiated between debates among board members or the freedom of constituents to speak their mind, which she said is not the issue, and the board’s responsibility to take a clear stand. “Why I think this is important and who is this for?” she said. “It’s a message to our students. It’s a message to our community. It’s a stand as a board to say that we are we’re not going to accept that type of behavior here. And I will agree with Cheryl and as a compromise, we don’t need the data, but I think referencing the policy and state statute is valuable. Taking again directly from our policy about the use of epitaphs and slurs, that is not acceptable during a public meeting. And it’s it is not a message to our parents and community members that come and share opinions about things that maybe are different from all of us.”

Conklin said had she been at the meeting three weeks ago she would have supported the original statement denouncing hate, and the statement would have had a majority. She was providing a revised version. But there was no support, even from Board Chairman Trevor Tucker, who said he’d rather have no statement than continue debating the issue. “Maybe we don’t say anything at all. I mean, that’s kind of how I’m getting to this point,” he said.

Rather than go that route, the board agreed to revert to the liquefied statement from three weeks ago.

“I am only good with it because obviously I don’t want it to be nothing,” Conklin said. “But I will tell you a hate speech is not protected speech.”

But there would be no denunciations of hate, hate speech or hate groups from this board, conversely lending hate implicit protection at the Flagler County School Board.