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School boards across the country have faced increasingly hostile public input this year over the purported inclusion of Critical Race Theory in K-12 schools, indoor masking and a host of other topics—and the school board in Bend and La Pine has definitely seen more than its usual share of this type of input.

In this podcast, Bend-La Pine Schools’ board chair Melissa Barnes Dholakia and Superintendent Steve Cook talk about the role of school boards and how they manage public input, and offer an open invitation to members of the public to meet with them to discuss more about parental concerns.

Listen to the podcast:

Watch it as a video:

This article appears in Nov 10-17, 2021.

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Listen: School boards and public input with Supt. Steve Cook and Board Chair Melissa Barnes Dholakia 🎧

by The Source Staff, The Source - Bend, Oregon
November 11, 2021

<h1>Listen: School boards and public input with Supt. Steve Cook and Board Chair Melissa Barnes Dholakia 🎧</h1> <p class="byline">by The Source Staff, The Source - Bend, Oregon <br />November 11, 2021</p> <p><span class="fdnDropCap">S</span>chool boards across the country have faced increasingly hostile public input this year over the purported inclusion of Critical Race Theory in K-12 schools, indoor masking and a host of other topics—and the school board in Bend and La Pine has definitely seen more than its usual share of this type of input.</p> <p>In this podcast, Bend-La Pine Schools' board chair Melissa Barnes Dholakia and Superintendent Steve Cook talk about the role of school boards and how they manage public input, and offer an open invitation to members of the public to meet with them to discuss more about parental concerns.</p> <p><b>Listen to the podcast:</b> </p> <div class="wp-block-group newspack-embed-container align"> <div style="font-size: 10px;color: #cccccc;overflow: hidden;white-space: nowrap;font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif;font-weight: 100"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-779383396" title="Source Weekly - Bend, Oregon" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc;text-decoration: none">Source Weekly - Bend, Oregon</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-779383396/school-boards-amp-public-input-with-supt-steve-cook-and-board-chair-melissa-barnes-dholakia" title="School boards and public input with Supt. Steve Cook and Board Chair Melissa Barnes Dholakia" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc;text-decoration: none">School boards and public input with Supt. Steve Cook and Board Chair Melissa Barnes Dholakia</a></div> </p></div> </p> <p><b>Watch it as a video: </b></p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"> <div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> https://www.youtube.com/embed/IaRLPvLwxdU </div> </figure> <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://www.bendsource.com/news/listen-school-boards-and-public-input-with-supt-steve-cook-and-board-chair-melissa-barnes-dholakia-15717081/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://www.bendsource.com&quot;&gt;The Source - Bend, Oregon&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/www.bendsource.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/cropped-Untitled-design-4.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;</p> &lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://www.bendsource.com/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=54508&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://www.bendsource.com/news/listen-school-boards-and-public-input-with-supt-steve-cook-and-board-chair-melissa-barnes-dholakia-15717081/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/bendsource.com/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

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