BOE members confronted with claims of ‘lawlessness’

By Michelle Wagner | Outer Banks Voice on February 10, 2022

Ed Board Atty calls the allegations ‘frivolous nonsense’

Audience members placed letters of intent in front of the board members.

During another heated Board of Education meeting on Feb. 8, Dare County Citizens for Constitutional Rights, also known as Dare to Share OBX, delivered to board members and Superintendent Dr. John Farrelly 28 letters of intent to file claims against the school district.

The letters, the group states, are based on 26 state, federal and international laws they contend the district is violating. “We have been patient…we are done being patient,” Dare to Share OBX representative Courtney Haynes told the board during the public comment part of the meeting. The group’s members have been vocal at recent board meetings, raising concerns about mask mandates, pandemic funding and Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Despite a new district procedure requiring that all documents from the public be submitted prior to the meeting, a handful of audience members approached the board to deliver the letters as Haynes spoke.

“We are allowing you ten business days to correct your lawlessness or these claims will commence,” she continued as Board of Education Chair Joe Tauber and several Dare County Sheriff’s deputies tried to defuse the situation. Board Member Margaret Lawler tossed the papers on the floor.

Letters of intent are essentially a warning that an individual or individuals intend to file a lawsuit.

The group, according to Haynes, is demanding a number of things from the district, including the “thorough sweep and removal of all obscene material on school premises,” to cease all “advertisement/coercion” regarding COVID-19 vaccines, and to halt all policies that require universal masking.

The group was also asking for the end of what they claim is the unlawful quarantine of healthy children and for the district to craft and pass a policy prohibiting CRT in any form. In addition, the group wants the district to return 20 percent of state and federal pandemic funding “with SEL [Social Emotional Learning] stipulations attached.”

During a telephone interview with the Voice on Feb. 9, Dare Education Board Attorney Richard Schwartz described the letters of intent delivered by the group “a bunch of frivolous nonsense. It’s like someone took [spaghetti] and threw it up against the wall with bizarre claims that don’t amount to anything.”

Schwartz said that in the letters, the school board is accused of violating such things as the Geneva Declaration, the Nuremberg Code and other international humanitarian laws. “Quite frankly, this is a new one for me,” Schwartz said. “Any lawyer trying to file this claim ought to be laughed out of court.”

Referring to the physical placing of the documents on the board members’ table, Dare Board of Education Chair Tauber told the Voice, “I didn’t know anything like that was going to happen.”

When reached by the Voice, Kate Cerino of Dare to Share OBX, in a text message, wrote that “I would refer you to the Dare County Citizens of Constitutional Rights statement delivered during public comment…We are no longer in possession of the signed letters of intent. If you have further questions, then we would suggest you contact the BOE.”

Tauber said he turned the letters of intent over to Board Attorney Schwartz for his review and to direct the board on next steps. He also noted that at the March board meeting, members would discuss how to prevent a similar occurrence in the future. “We can always agree to disagree,” he said of the Dare to Share OBX group. “I understand the frustration…but let’s be civil about it.”

For his part, Dare County Schools spokesman Keith Parker declined to comment.

It appears that the strategy of serving letters of intent to sue is not unique to Dare County. According to a Jan. 20 News & Observer article, the Wake County Public Schools Board of Education was delivered similar letters of intent last month, again claiming 26 violations of state, federal and international law.