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Following a dispute between Mountain View Whisman’s school board president and a frequent public commenter, the time for community members to speak about items that aren’t on the agenda has been moved to the end of board meetings.
Starting with the Thursday, Nov. 6 meeting, the agenda item for community comments will come after all of the board’s action and discussion items. Previously, the board took public comments for non-agendized topics after closed session but before the bulk of its open session agenda.
The board will continue to take comments about specific agenda items as each matter is reached throughout the meeting. However, anyone wishing to speak about other topics will have to wait. School board meetings typically start at 6 p.m. and sometimes run until 10 p.m. or later.
Board President Bill Lambert confirmed this week that the decision to move public comment was directly tied to “continuous criticism of the staff” by community member Steve Nelson, a frequent public commenter who previously served on the school board himself.
Nelson said in an interview that he thinks the decision to move public comment to the end of meetings is “disrespectful to the rest of the entire community that supports this public school district.”
Lambert acknowledged the inconvenience this poses to other community members but said that his primary objective was to help the district “move forward in a positive direction.”
At the last two school board meetings, Lambert has taken issue with Nelson’s public comments. On Oct. 2, Lambert read a general statement asking speakers to “focus their comments on matters within the board’s jurisdiction and direct their comments to the board.”
After Nelson started to raise concerns about the meeting procedures, Lambert interrupted and told him to “speak to the topic,” before ultimately refusing to let him comment at that time. Nelson spoke later in the meeting on three specific agenda items.
At the following meeting on Oct. 16, Lambert addressed Nelson directly before allowing him to comment, saying that his consistent “negative comments” have impacted the morale of board members, the superintendent and other district staff.
“Under the First Amendment, I cannot prevent you from speaking,” Lambert told Nelson. “Under the Brown Act, I cannot prevent you from speaking, but I can reorganize the agenda so that everybody doesn’t have to listen to you really denigrate the hard work we do.”
Lambert told the Voice that he worked with board vice president Charles DiFazio and Superintendent Jeff Baier to rearrange the meeting agenda. Discussions about the change have been ongoing for a few months, Lambert added, with the trio working with an attorney for the school district to try to figure out a way to “minimize the impact” Nelson has on board meetings.
Nelson served on the Mountain View Whisman school board from 2012 to 2016 and was often the lone dissenting voice on both controversial topics as well as routine board business. Nelson’s fellow trustees, including Lambert, censured him in 2013 for his behavior at board meetings and with district staff. Since his term ended, Nelson has regularly attended meetings to provide public comment, often drawing attention to the district’s large achievement gaps between student groups.
In an interview, Lambert said that Nelson’s behavior at meetings had sometimes been “abusive and disruptive,” specifically citing a June 12, 2025, meeting at which Nelson “verbally went after Cyndee Nguyen,” the district’s director of curriculum.
At that meeting, Nelson addressed Nguyen directly, accusing her of presenting student test scores in a misleading way.
“You’re obstructing what the segregation has done to the academic performance of these kids, and it continues decade after decade,” Nelson said, raising his voice. “I guess I can yell rather than swear.”
When asked about this, Nelson told the Voice that he felt it was “entirely appropriate” for him to raise his voice instead of swearing.
At the meeting after this incident, the board room had been rearranged so that when people stood at the microphone to speak, they were standing directly in front of the board members. Lambert attributed this change to his and district administrators’ efforts to ensure that public comments were directed toward the board and not to district staff.
In accordance with the Brown Act, school boards are required to give members of the public an opportunity to “directly address the legislative body on any item under the subject matter jurisdiction of the body.”
Passed in 1953, the Brown Act is a California state law that guarantees the public’s right to attend and participate in local legislative body meetings. Under the legislation, school boards have the authority to create certain rules for managing public comments, such as imposing time limits.
Nelson acknowledged that regular meeting schedules can be rearranged but told the Voice that he thinks moving community comment to the end of the agenda discourages the general public from commenting on non-agendized items.
Nelson said that at this time, he is not planning to file a lawsuit because doing so would require the district to spend money on a lawyer as opposed to students.
Unfortunately, as seen during his board service, Mr Nelson doesn’t seem to understand how what he says may be correct but how he says it is even more important.
He might want to reconsider if his decade+ cantankerous approach has actually served the students well. Smart people realize sometimes they need to change before the system does.
Civility is important but Lambert is missing the point. It’s like Nelson and the staff are mad at each other and aren’t speaking. So Nelson could just preface his comments to the board all with “You should use your oversight to correct this malfeasance on the part of the staff to wit:”. He may appear to be addressing staff but of course he’s actually addressing what he sees as lax oversight by the board. It was amazing what they let the last Superintendent get away with.
Nelson’s approach may not be appropriate, and this board is relatively new, but the issue remains.