Duplin County’s Board of Education needs to rethink its so-called public comment policies.

With all the limitations currently built into the rules, citizens have no way to fully express the concerns they might have and, in fact, might as well stay home for all the good it would do them to sign up to speak at a school board meeting.

They certainly can’t feel welcome to communicate with the board they elected unless they jump through an assortment of hoops that virtually eliminates discussion about any specific issue.

The existing policy, which limits speakers to three minutes, also ties the hands of citizens, forcing them to speak in generalities and gagging them when it comes to open discussion about school issues and public officials who, under every law and unlike ordinary citizens, are fair game to public scrutiny and discussion.

While we completely understand, and agree, to limitations that would prevent citizens from discussing personnel issues that should be kept behind closed doors, what the Duplin Board of Education is doing is hiding behind a cloak of secrecy that shields them from those things which they don’t want to hear.

That was apparent earlier this week when citizens, there to discuss the ouster of superintendent Dr. Wiley Doby, were halted in their tracks when their three minutes at the podium turned from generalities to real concerns about their children’s education and the system’s educational leader.

While the numbers and the furor which has only built over the past several years ended in Doby’s decision not to seek renewal of his contract, it changes nothing about the public comment policies or the fact that the rules are far too stringent and do more to stifle the public than to invite them to be a part of their educational system.

We wholeheartedly support governing bodies which offer a time in meetings for the public to speak; however an appearance of openness does not openness make. As it stands, that’s what Duplin’s Board of Education offers — a thinly veiled welcome mat that isn’t all that welcoming.

School board members have a unique opportunity to begin now to rebuild trust with parents and Duplin residents, offering an olive branch at a time when peace rather than confrontation should be encouraged.

What better way to start than to rethink the poorly designed comment policies that have put a governmental hand over the mouths of those who have specific concerns about specific problems.

Allowing them to be aired, rather than swept aside, would go a long way in the healing process that is needed if school board members, and parents, too, are to get back to what the system should be about — educating children.