A Lawrence school board member on Monday said she won’t be silenced by incessant harassment mostly directed at women on the board.
Shannon Kimball, current member who previously served as board president, said in the past four days she’s received more than a dozen “harassment, bullying and intimidation attempts” via voicemails and emails.
She said the messages are from people in the Lawrence community and outside — even in other states, because YouTube content criticizing the board has been shared “in extremist online groups.”
“They’re almost exclusively from men between the ages of 30 and 65,” Kimball said. “They use hateful, obscene and misogynistic language in their voice messages. It’s really disturbing.”
After a confrontational exchange between the board and a frequent public commenter during the Feb. 10 meeting, where the commenter used explicit language and approached the board refusing to sit down, the board made modifications to its decorum procedures. Effective at the Feb. 24 meeting, general public comment was moved to the end of meetings for the time being.
Normally, the general public comment period — when the board hears comments that are not related to specific agenda items — occurred near the beginning of each meeting. But board President Kelly Jones previously said it was starting to disrupt the board’s business.
Three public commenters have consistently spoken at meetings, two of them returning virtually on Monday, to challenge the rules against explicit language.
At the conclusion of Monday’s meeting, Kimball said she wants people to be aware that the personal attacks continue, and worsen, outside of the board room. She did not say whether any of the voicemails or emails she received came from the frequent commenters.
“This is something that I would wager that the volume of hate speech that’s been directed at me personally is probably less than what is being experienced by other women on our board, because I’m not the current board president; however, I wanted to share with the community that I refuse personally to be silenced by these bullying attempts,” Kimball said.
“Our community and our peers in our community at the county and city government need to know that the joint collective efforts that we are all trying to make (are) to ensure that civil, safe and inclusive civic dialogue is preserved and continue in this community.”
The board had no regular agenda items or reports during the meeting. Board members had two executive sessions as part of opening items, approved the consent agenda and heard public comment.
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Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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