Picture this outlandish scenario: CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta attends a South Butler School Board meeting. He picks a fight with the board over their proposal to shut down questions from the public at the end of meetings.

Directors promptly toss Acosta out on his ear.

This would be the end result of the district’s altered policy eliminating the question session at the meeting’s end. A public comment period remains at the beginning of each meeting. Board President Matt Cimbala explained the action taken Wednesday was intended to cease pointless debate on decisions that had just been made and are final.

The amended policy also aligns more closely with policy recommended by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, according to Cimbala.

At South Butler, district resident and parent Tim Danehy frequently takes issue with the board over transparency. Danehy took one last parting shot on Wednesday, the final meeting to include the second comment period, to tell the board he’d sent an inquiry to individual members in October regarding the changes they would support in the way the public can address them. Some responded; some didn’t, he said. He said the new policy impedes this kind of communication.

It’s a hard sell. In the digital information age, modern standards demand a level of transparency unlike any previous era. Not only is school business routinely reported in the Butler Eagle, but the meeting minutes and agenda are posted on the school district’s website, in a timely fashion and with sufficient detail to accommodate the most rudimentary search for information.

In addition, any individual or group has ample opportunity to post whatever opinion, based on as much or as little research as they care to do, on any school-related subject. Launch a campaign. Put up candidates to run for board seats. Free speech? Free press? In some regards we have never been more free.

Regardless, it’s almost amusing that the conflict in South Butler bears resemblance to what transpired last week at the White House, when an opinionated Acosta was stripped of his press credentials after flat-out telling President Donald Trump during a news conference that Trump was wrong on immigration policy. When the president and the rest of the press corps were ready to move on, Acosta refused to give up the microphone.

Maybe these incidents only resemble each other and are not related, or maybe they suggest a trend. But consider: while the White House responded to a lawsuit filed by CNN that it has the legal authority to ban all reporters, South Butler likely would not have taken any action if it had not been challenged over issues of openness and transparency.