This three-minute comment, given in the March 17, 2025, meeting of the Board of Education of Caledonia Community Schools, is a follow-up to “How not to prepare for the next epidemic.” The board chair is Tim Morris, who in the last several years has become a political ally or operative of State Representative Angela Rigas, a right-wing agitator who has been actively pulling strings in multiple school districts in this area for several years.
In this brief address, I note that a social-media post either written or approved by Angela Rigas (a screenshot appears below) indicates that the masking proposal brought before the school board by Tim Morris was prepared “with the help of a constitutional law firm.” This, I believe, is a stunning admission. I invite Tim Morris to deny that the law firm in question is Kallman Legal of Lansing.
I contend that it was inappropriate to propose a policy that responsible and competent legal counsel has previously warned could put the school district out of compliance with state law and provoke the cancellation of the district’s liability insurance. I suggest that doing so by bringing a policy drafted by Kallman Legal while simultaneously proposing to put Kallman Legal on retainer might pose serious ethical questions. It might look like trying to drum up business for an out-of-district law firm with a reputation for partisan-political activism at the expense of the taxpayers of the Caledonia Community Schools district, because unless this district brings litigation upon itself by adopting an unsound or illegal policy, it has no need for the services of Kallman Legal.
Despite the plea in the already-cited post for Rigas followers to attend the school board meeting and make their voices heard, no one stood to speak in favor of the anti-masking and Kallman proposals. Maybe the community is tiring of her provocations. Numerous speakers roundly denounced both of those proposals.
When the board got into its agenda for the evening—which did not include action on or discussion of the proposals from last Wednesday’s committee-of-the-whole meeting—everything went smoothly, with the usual unanimous votes. It turns out that the real work of the board of education, while important and requiring diligence, is nonpartisan, mostly uncontroversial, and undramatic.
I believe our board is composed of fundamentally good people who can serve our district well. They simply need to focus on the real work at hand and turn a deaf ear to the extraneous incitements and excitements of certain partisan-political agitators. Otherwise, I fear that are at risk of wasting district money and perhaps landing themselves, collectively or individually, in ethical or legal difficulties.
A videorecording of the March regular meeting should soon appear [update: is online] in the Caledonia Community Schools YouTube channel.
Members of the board:
In a letter that I wrote to you on March 9, and posted publicly on my blog, I provided summaries of and links to studies finding that the active public-health response to Covid-19 in Michigan in early 2020 probably saved tens of thousands of lives.
I also wrote that in 2020 “there were mistakes and missteps, both in substance and in style, both by public-health experts and by their . . . political opponents. . . . Can we put all that behind us and move ahead responsibly and charitably?”
I urged you to decline proposals to make a policy you are not legally empowered to make, that would reject in advance mitigation measures that have not been proposed, to a future epidemic that has not yet appeared.
And I urged you to reject proposals to spend money that this district does not have on an additional law firm whose services it does not need.
Others wish to urge you differently. Around 24 hours ago, someone posted a note to a local social media group, with 787 members, which included these words:
Our school board has been working hard to put forth a reasonable anti-mask policy draft with the help o[f] a constitutional law firm.
The conservatives on that board are now receiving emails from the raging liberals of Caledonia in opposition. Rumor has it a former and present left wing board member are calling for the libs to pack the meeting tomorrow night.
This post was anonymous. The founder and moderator of this group, and its most frequent poster, is Angela Rigas.
I have two comments on this post:
- This post says “raging liberals” have been sending emails to “conservative” members of the board. Parsing this community into “raging liberals” on the one hand and “conservatives” on the other strikes me as deliberately divisive. I hope you do not regard each other, and members of this community, as members of partisan camps to whom you do not owe respectful attention.
- This post indicates that the anti-masking policy proposed by your chair was drafted “with the help of a constitutional law firm.” I would like to know whether your board chair will deny that his proposed policy was drafted by Kallman Legal of Lansing or with Kallman’s help. The appearance created by this post is that you are being urged to pass a Kallman-drafted policy that would expose this district to legal liability, while at the same time you are being urged to put Kallman Legal on retainer in order to handle the resulting litigation. I know what I think of the moral character of these appearances. Depending on the choices you make over coming days and weeks, others may in time wish to investigate their legal character.
Thank you.
Update (March 19, 2025)
The revision history of the Facebook post pictured above shows this: The person who wrote this post originally did not include “with the help of a constitutional law firm.” They added that phrase a half-hour later. But then, after the school board meeting in which I called attention to the phrase and suggested that it presented the appearance of a moral or legal problem, they went back and deleted it. This deletion would seem to indicate that the “Anonymous poster” was either in the room during the school board meeting or received, and acted quickly upon, an urgent communication from someone who was in the room. This maneuver constitutes evidence that someone in the room during the school board meeting, on hearing my comments, came to the realization that the phrase “with the help of a constitutional law firm” might be incriminating (literally or figuratively) and decided to expunge it.
My conclusion: Whether or not the members of the Board of Education of Caledonia Community Schools have a legal problem (beyond my competence to judge that), they may have a ethics problem, and they certainly have a trust problem.
My question to board members, given that I asked in my public comment whether Tim Morris would deny that his draft proposals were created either by Kallman Legal or with the help of Kallman Legal: Have you asked him that question? And if so, has he answered it? And if so, do you believe his answer?
Verba Sparsa 