Lehighton Area School District is proposing new meeting rules that would cap how long its own board members can speak on an agenda item and give the meeting’s chair the power to shut down debate. The change drew objections during a workshop Monday and is headed for a final vote at the board’s legislative meeting later this month.

The proposed update to Policy 006, the district’s meetings policy, would limit each school director to 3 minutes per topic and put the presiding officer in charge of enforcing it.

“The presiding officer shall stop any discussion of an item if the discussion limit time has been used up or the discussion does not apply to the pending motion/subject matter,” the proposed language reads.

The district already holds members of the public to a 3-minute limit, which the board president may extend. The new additions, which appear under the policy’s “Presiding Officer” section, apply a comparable cap to the board’s own members and spell out the chair’s role. One states that “it shall be the duty of the presiding officer at all times to preserve order at the meeting and to decide questions of order.” Another would bar directors from indulging in “personal reflections that do not have a direct nexus to district operations.” A separate provision exempts a request for clarification made to the chair before a vote from the three-minute cap.

Supporters linked the change to the length of recent meetings.

“You see now over the last six months we’ve had meetings that have bled into 9 p.m., 10 p.m., and it’s difficult,” board President Alex Matika said, adding that keeping order is the chair’s job.

Board member David Bradley argued the changes hand the board president authority the state does not grant.

“This policy is exceeding what’s in Pennsylvania school code,” Bradley said. “The president is now being given extra powers not standardly codified within school code, allowing for selective enforcement of the conversation that takes place within the school district.”

Bradley said the board already has the tools to manage long or unruly discussion. “This is already addressed in Robert’s Rules,” he added. “There is a process for it, and the debate and deliberation is what the board is about.” He pushed back on the idea that the board should soften its exchanges.

“(Conversation) is required to be in public, and it should be as caustic as it needs to be to make sure that the points are made,” Bradley said.

The new rules, Bradley said, concentrate power in a single person.

“You have rules of order that allow the board at any time to table a discussion, hold the vote and move on, but instead you’re empowering one individual,” he said. “You’re basically blocking an individual director from information that he has to get from or give to the board.”

Director Denise Hartley said Monday she would be in favor of the policy change.

“We have seen over and over again where we say respect the gavel, and that isn’t respected, and sometimes policies have to be put in place,” she said.

The district’s solicitor, Jeff Sultanik, told the board that a time limit can withstand a legal challenge as long as it is applied to everyone the same way.

“If we uniformly apply a 3-minute rule to all individuals and enforce it uniformly, we are consistent with the school code and the federal constitution and the state constitution,” he said.

Sultanik said the Constitution permits reasonable limits on who speaks and for how long.

“The Constitution does not give an individual an unfettered right to interrupt the board meeting, nor an unfettered right to have no limitations on the amount of time that they have to speak,” he said.

Sultanik pointed to a federal court case involving the Pennsbury School District, which he said forced the district to revise an earlier public-comment policy. He said that case settled for about $240,000 to $250,000, paid by an insurer.

Policy 006 is up for second reading and final approval.

Director Jeremy Glaush asked that it be separated from a batch of other policy updates so it can be voted on by itself at the legislative meeting later this month.

“Removing the filibuster is a very bad thing,” Glaush said. “This is, for lack of a better term, a bully pulpit. You get to say your piece and it’s picked up by the media, it’s picked up by the video. I just think it’s a bad precedent set.”