DEARBORN (WWJ) – A school board meeting in Dearborn was forced to take a mandatory recess Monday night, then shut down for good as a crowd gathering to discuss the banning of books in Dearborn Public Schools became unruly.
During the meeting, streamed live on the district's YouTube page, the overflowing crowd was often ordered to quiet down as they booed or cheered during public comments.
Eventually, school board member Roxanne McDonald announced around 8:30 p.m. the board would be recessing "until we can get the situation under control."
"This is breaking the fire code. We need to get the fire marshal's opinion and we need to get some people cleared out of the room. This is a dangerous situation. We are taking a recess," she said as the crowd booed.
The stream then went to a screen that read the board meeting "will resume in a few minutes" after going into "a brief recess."
Around 30 minutes later, the meeting was officially shut down when Dearborn Police Chief Issa Shahin announced the meeting would resume Thursday at a larger venue.
It was not clear how many people were in attendance at the meeting or why officials waited nearly two hours to enforce fire code.
The meeting comes in the midst of controversy throughout the district, which recently decided to remove seven books from their libraries after parents said they contained inappropriate content.
During Monday's meeting, officials laid out the process of a new book review process that allows parents to opt their children out of being able to check out certain material.
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