Posted on 02/21/2021 7:22:45 AM PST by Kaslin
My RedState colleague Bonchie first reported on this story Friday.
Members of the Oakley Union Elementary School Board of Trustees were engaged in a videoconference Board meeting on Wednesday last week, discussing various matters seemingly in preparation for a meeting of the Board open to the public that was to follow. The Board members were participating from their own homes, and after discussing various issues about how to work through the items on the agenda, there was a discussion about how the Board members reacted to criticism they were hearing from parents who want the schools to reopen to normal operations as has been done in many parts of the country.
Oakley, California is a community in Contra Costa County, a relatively upscale and prosperous county in Northern California that is east of the San Francisco Bay. The Oakley Union Elementary School District Board is overseen by the Contra Costa County Board of Education. Oakley has a population of approximately 45,000, and the School District consists of seven elementary schools and two middle schools, with a combined student population of over 5000.
During the course of the videoconference, the Board members mocked parental concerns with one of them stating that parents just “want their baby sitters back” — a reference seemingly to the district’s teachers.
Another Board member made reference to a medical marijuana delivery service operated by his brother, and the fact that many of the service’s customers are parents who are at home and still have their children in the house rather than in school. He mentioned it was hard for parents to take delivery and smoke marijuana during the daytime with kids in the house and not at school.
Just a few moments after these comments, one of the Board members advised the others that the District’s IT personnel let them know that their videoconference was actually open on WebEx to the public.
Entire School Board Resigns After Members Caught Disparaging Parents
There are other videos on YouTube that show the entire 8 minutes of video captured by someone who was taking a video of the videoconference as it was taking place.
On Friday morning the Board President, Lisa Brizendine issued a written apology along with her letter of resignation. That was followed later on Friday by the resignations of the other four board members.
Superintendent Greg Hetrick, also a participant in the videoconference but who did not make any derogatory comments, remains in his position as he has a contract. He issued a letter to the public in which he wrote:
Under the current circumstances, I feel an increased sense of responsibility. With that responsibility, I am committed to returning the attention to student learning and getting our students back in school. This unfortunate situation with not discourage or distract me from working to build back the trust in our community and return out students safely back to school as soon as possible.
Hetrick also set forth part of the resignation letter sent by the Trustees:
We love our students, our teachers and our community, and we want to be part of the remedy to help the District move forward, returning its full focus to student needs. To help facilitate the healing process, we will be resigning our positions as Trustees of the Oakley Union Elementary School District, effective immediately…This was a difficult decision, but we hear the community’s concerns, and we believe yielding to your request that we step down will allow the District to move forward.
Members of School Boards in California are elected by the voters who live within the geographical boundaries of the district. They are intended to be representatives of the parents, and working with the district’s employees — headed up by the Superintendent — they set policy and oversee operations of the schools. They are supposed to be responsive to the needs of the students and the parents, and not shills for the teachers.
I have begun a few stories over the past few months to offer my opinions on the role of teachers and their unions in keeping kids out of school and hiding behind “public health” policies offered up by friendly politicians as an excuse to do so.
I haven’t finished any of them because, as a father of five, currently in attendance in schools from 2nd Grade to college, I’m simply exasperated and irate over the attitudes of teachers and their demands with regard to their workspace.
For months hard-working Americans have returned to their workplaces — some never left. They have endured the risk to their own health in doing so — from fast-food workers and grocery store clerks to municipal maintenance workers and office support staff.
But across the country, many teachers’ unions refuse to agree to return to the classroom out of fear that they will be exposed to COVID by their students or co-workers. Welcome to Earth, 2021.
Yet in many places, teachers have returned to the classroom.
It is not a question of it being safe to return to the classroom in one geographic location and not being safe to return to the classroom in another. It is all a simple question of whether teachers or a teachers’ union in a particular area want to go back to the classroom.
What I suspect is true is that a good number of teachers are quite content to draw their full salary while their only obligation in terms of teaching is to conduct a few hours of Zoom instruction from their kitchen table, leaving it to parents — or whomever — to handle the hands-on learning aspects of the job which was part of the classroom experience. Why have the kids in class for 5 hours a day and give them 1.5 hours of homework when you can have them on a video session for 1.5 hours a day and give them 5 hours of homework to be supervised by some other adult — or not supervised at all as the case may be?
In California, school districts operate on revenues received primarily in the form of property taxes. Parents aren’t asked to write checks to the school districts in order for their children to attend. That makes it easy to lose focus on how little the districts are actually providing in the form of an educational benefit when compared to the tax burden still being imposed on the parents.
Tax dollars paid for the construction and maintenance of the school’s physical facilities that are being denied to students. Tax dollars paid for the operation of extra-curricular activities that are shut down where the schools are not open. Students are missing out on educational opportunities that are perishable — once they are missed they are often impossible to offer again in a “make-up” fashion.
If teachers demanded to go back to work in the classroom, the schools would open.
But they are doing the opposite, and that has been true for almost a year in some places.
Simple as that.
These people think they are baby sitters? No wonder Nader our kind da aren’t big educated.
Take away their pensions.
Yikes I wish we had an edit button. Autocorrect gone wild
Elite snobs looking down their noses at the unwashed.
I turned autocowrecked off on my phone. I don’t need any help in making mistakes!
Mmmm.......if this was overheard in a red state, the cops would be all over the dealer and users.....even the school board snitch.
B-u-t..... this is the Bay area.....Pelosi's purview ......there's not a thing to worry about.
As you were users, dealers and snitcher.
I don’t know how it is in California, but school board officials in Texas (an elected office) get no pay for being on the board.
Historically, pretty much everybody in that backwater of the Bay Area was unwashed. My people. I know them well.
Teachers hate Trump supporters and they take their hatred out on our children. Mocking parents is part of the game.
Why would they resign en masse? This is California, after all. It’s not like there would be much of a pushback. Are the powers that be trying to put in people even more left?
The well-paid and perked Supt Greg Hetrick also was videoed but did not join in the derogatory comments nor did he attempt to quiet the errant fun-filled board members. Herrick's under contract so he remains in his job although he felt constrained to issue a letter:
"Under the current circumstances, I feel an increased sense of responsibility. I am committed to returning the attention to student learning and getting our students back in school. This unfortunate situation will not discourage or distract me from working to build back the trust in our community and return out students safely back to school as soon as possible." Hetrick also included part of the resignation letter of the loud-mouthed Trustees:
THE PARENT HATERS SAID: "We love our students, our teachers and our community, and we want to be part of the remedy to help the District move forward. To help facilitate the healing process, we will be resigning our positions as Trustees of the Oakley Union Elementary School District, effective immediately…"
Integrity is what you do when you think no one is looking
I think you did
That on Purple!
When you listen to this tape.....
...just remember this group of loud mouth, obscene do nothings WERE responsible for moving curriculum through our schools....and making judgment calls on all kinds of school related activities...
Years ago, when Sex Ed curriculum arrived at our county school board, it had already been voted on and approved by our state legislature....
....It was being called a ‘done deal’
...they were ready to rubber stamp it for our county....
....but some of us found out about it because we belonged to our ‘school improvement committee’
When we saw the curriculum.....ie highly inappropriate for kindergarten, grade school.....and Planned Parenthood fingerprints all over the jr and high school level!!!!
It made us mad!
We took our copies and networked the whole doggone county.....
Copying and disseminating this disgusting junk to parents, churches, business folks etc
We offered an alternate curriculum, one that reflected abstinence.
They refused that....
BUT!!
They rewrote the original curriculum to reflect ABSTINENCE ONLY!!!!!
Now this was long ago........my son was in jr high and is now grown, married and has his own child....
BUT IT’S STILL LOCAL
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
DON’T GIVE UP!!!
God Bless those that have placed their priorities in perspective and rather then placing emphasis on material wealth, they have chosen instead to homeschool.
I live in a city of less then 50,000. Over the past 50 years we have lost more than 50% of the population. While many remaining residents have chosen multiple options in order to keep their kids out of the city public schools. The school district has hemoraged students.
We are still paying a previously passed school bond millage of tens of millions of dollars. And this past November the school board sucessfully passed another 100 million dollar bond proposal. Guess what voting system was used? Dominion.
So now we could have many empty schools while students sit at home connected to zoom.
The teachers unions have too much clout.
These are the same type of people who vote for democrats hoping they will use government to murder us.
“Yikes I wish we had an edit button. Autocorrect gone wild”
Don’t we all, but in this case I think it added to your a flair to your comment.
most folks that want their kids back in school DON”T want to have them home anymore. Whether they are smoking pot or not. JMHO
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