Oakley Union Elementary School District.Photo: Google Earth
Oakley Union Elementary School District Superintendent Greg Hetrick announced that board members Kim Beede, Erica Ippolito, Richie Masadas and Lisa Brizendine, the president, were stepping down in aletter to the communityon Friday.
For more on the California school board resignation, listen below to the episode of PEOPLE Every Day.
The incidentwent viral on Wednesdayafter an anonymous person recorded it and shared it to YouTube, explaining that the board had provided log-in information on its website, and that they had begun recording after “one of the board members spoke poorly of parents of students.”
In the eight-minute video, the board members discussed remote learning and the negative feedback they’d received from parents, and Beede at one point asked whether the group was “alone” before she spoke.
“If you’re going to call me out, I’m gonna f— you up,” she said. “That’s just me.”
Masadas also said that his brother ran a delivery service for medical marijuana, and that some of his clients were “parents with their kids in school.”
“When you got your kids at home, no more smoking out,” he said.
The video ended when Beede said, “Uh oh,” and alerted the others that someone had texted her saying the meeting that they thought was private was actually open to the public.
“Nuh uh,” Brizendine responded, before a sarcastic voice said “great” and the screen went to black.
“That blew my mind,” Angela Palacio, who has four children in the district, toldThe New York Times. “I was like, what, are you kidding me? It just showed the lack of respect that our school board has for parenting as well as the people in our community.”
In their joint statement, Beede, Ippolito and Masadas said that they were stepping down so as to help keep the focus on the needs of the children.
“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,” the statement read.
Hetrick, who was present on the Wednesday call but did participate in the controversial conversation, said the “unfortunate situation will not discourage or detract” him from “working to build back the trust in our community and return our students safely back to school as soon as possible.”
According to theTimes, students in the district have been learning remotely since March.
source: people.com
