Ilana Kowarski

FLORIDA TODAY

School Board candidate Dean Paterakis was charged with disrupting a school function and resisting an officer without violence Tuesday after he was ejected from a school board meeting dealing with LGBT issues. The incident was caught on video.

Paterakis was released on $750 bond before midnight on the two misdemeanor charges.

Paterakis was asked by School Board chairman Andy Ziegler to step away from the speakers' podium after making what Ziegler said were inappropriate remarks. A school district security officer asked him to leave, and Paterakis refused. Sheriff's deputies then stepped in to ask Paterakis to leave, according to a statement from sheriff's spokesman Cpl. Dave Jacobs.

"Paterakis then refused several lawful orders to leave the premises by uniformed deputies,'' Jacobs wrote in a statement released to the media. "In further effort to intentionally refuse the orders, Paterakis protested by dropping to the ground and continued verbally disrupting the function of the School Board meeting.''

School board divided on LGBT policy

Paterakis, 48, was eventually carried from the meeting by several deputies and handcuffed outside the meeting room.

School board members were voting on whether to schedule a public hearing about a proposed non-discrimination policy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. That meeting included many outbursts from the audience, including yells, cheers, and jeers.

Before the LGBT policy can be voted on, a public hearing must be scheduled. Though a vote on whether to schedule a public hearing is typically a pro forma vote, this is the point in the political process when a previous version of the LGBT policy was tabled by the school board. Since February, the debate about an LGBT policy in Brevard Public Schools has been heated and emotional on both sides.

During Tuesday's meeting, the board voted 3-2 in favor of scheduling a hearing on the LGBT policy. with school board members Andy Ziegler, Misty Belford, and Amy Kneessy voting in the majority and school board members John Craig and Karen Henderson voting in the minority.

Brevard Public Schools responds to federal LGBT guidance

Ziegler said that threats regarding his re-election chances would not deter him from moving the policy forward in the legislative process.

"We pretty regularly upset everybody," Ziegler said. “Once I got used to the idea that I can’t make everybody happy, my job got much easier.... Right now the decision is to move forward with a public hearing... I can tell you that based on the confusion I’ve seen on this topic, I support moving forward on this policy.”

This was not a final vote on the policy, and the formal debate on this policy will continue throughout the summer.

More than 40 Brevard residents signed up to speak about the LGBT policy Tuesday, including both supporters and opponents of the policy, but not all of the people who signed up to speak had an opportunity to do so, due to time limits on the public comment portion of the meeting. Critics of the policy have said that they believe an LGBT policy would legislate social values they disagree with on religious and moral grounds, and that it would threaten public safety and they have repeatedly emphasized the idea of majority rule. However, supporters of the policy say that it would give LGBT students and staff an official recognition of their dignity which would help ensure that they are treated with respect.

Contact Kowarski at 321-242-3640 or ikowarski@floridatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter @IlanaKowarski.