Entire California School Board Resigns After Mocking Parents For Wanting Schools Open
“The school board forgot who it works for,” said Jonathan Zachreson, founder of Reopen California Schools
On Friday, Mary blogged that “A California School Board is in Hot Water After Mocking Parents for Wanting Kids in Class (Update: School Board President Resigns). During a meeting the board members apparently believed was private, board members insulted, ridiculed, and mocked parents for wanting schools open.
As a result, the school board president resigned immediately, and then in short order, the rest of the board members who took part in the public meeting resigned.
The president and three other members of a Northern California school board resigned Friday after reports that they made mocking comments about parents during a public video meeting about reopening schools.
The resignation of President Lisa Brizendine of the Oakley Union Elementary School District was confirmed to Fox News by Schools Superintendent Greg Hetrick.
The other members — Kim Beede, Erica Ippolito and Richie Masadas — who constitute the rest of the board, resigned later Friday, FOX 2 of the Bay Area reported.
. . . . Brizendine issued an apology after announcing her resignation. “I am raising a 10-year-old with special needs and having him home during this pandemic, while also holding down two jobs to support my family has been a huge stress,” she said. “I suffer with many of the same things that parents are going through from mental health issues to regression. My remark was callous and uncalled for and for that I am truly sorry.”
The recorded meeting from Wednesday night was posted on social media and shows board members who appeared to believe the meeting was private. Brizendine appeared to mock parents who “want their babysitters back.”
The Charlotte Observer has more:
Beede said a parent had attacked her on social media for attending a party while schools are shut down, The Mercury News reported.
“B—, if you call me out, I’m going to f— you up,” Beede said, according to the publication.
. . . . “The school board forgot who it works for,” said Jonathan Zachreson, founder of Reopen California Schools, according to the publication. “It works for the parents and the children.”
“To hear that, it was appalling,” said parent Jennifer Cardinale, KGO reported.
An online petition calling for the board to resign collected 7,000 signatures.
“My remark was callous and uncalled for and for that I am truly sorry,” Brizendine said, noting that like other parents, trustees also have been under great stress, KTVU reported.
“I was frustrated and I apologize for that,” Beede said, KNTV reported. “I apologize (that) everybody had to hear that but again it was supposed to be a private conversation.”
. . . . The county Board of Education named two of its members to serve as interim trustees for the district until a new board can be chosen, The Mercury News reported.
Beede’s non-apology apology illustrates Zachreson’s point. She’s not sorry for being so hateful and disrespectful toward the parents for whom she works; she’s sorry she was frustrated.
She further has no understanding of the problem with her and the others’ comments. Threatening to “f—” up a concerned parent who has every right to “call out” a public servant who attends parties while keeping schools closed is horrifying behavior.
She, like far too many of our elected officials and appointees, had certainly forgotten who works for whom.
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Comments
Were the resignation letters spelled correctly with good grammar and punctuation?
There wer no speillin and grammer mestakes in ther lettors.
California has a nasty culture among the State officials. They enjoy abusing power, however little it may be.
The babysitting thing bugs me so much. Our society is structured such that public schools do provide care for children while parents work. Maybe I just flatter myself that I am more than a babysitter, but why get upset at a parent that is upset they have to either quit their job or incur a massive new monthly expense?
Many people seek employment specifically to complement school hours. They may well make less money making that accommodation.
In my business, before CCP Virus, I allowed flexible hours, mostly to accommodate children.
Teachers are paid much more than babysitters, specifically because they teach. The public pays a great deal for schools and the public deserves fair value. We have not been getting that for a long time. In my opinion, most of that problem is the fault of crappy administrators.
Good parents teach, and when their child starts school, they are usually already performing above their grade level. And then you have children who are short changed from the day they are born, and that is crappy parents.
The problem with the “public” schools is not the administrators or the teachers or the teachers unions. It’s the fact that they are run as government bureaucracies. America’s best example of totalitarian socialism.
Why can’t people see this?
The problem is that while a few people fell on their swords, their assessment isn’t completely incorrect.
They know that the public schools have most people’s kids and always will no matter how bad the public schools get. Even conservatives who know how schools are teaching students to be the new “Red Guard” and indoctrinating with Critical Race Theory and other woke “Social Justice” nonsense will say that it would be child abuse to not send kids back to these schools!
Most parents can’t handle home schooling or afford a decent private school, and are going crazy trying to deal with it, which is why they will put up with so much. And it seems that they will blame anyone except their own kids’ teacher, even though teachers are being taught a “woke” pedagogy and are responsible for the indoctrination of the kids.
Actually, they only have themselves to blame. The school board president wasn’t really wrong when she said that parents just want their babysitters back. If someone has kids, it should be their responsibility to raise them. If they don’t like being around their kids, that’s their own fault, because they abandoned them to strangers when they were five years old, or even younger. You think kids don’t realize their parents’ “career” or their “me time” is more important to them than they are?
It all depends on the parents.
If I am mandated by law to send my children to the local public school unless I can afford some form of private schooling, then I expect the school will be open when it is supposed to be. And given that single-income families are taxed disadvantageously, parents will expect the schools to be open to their children so they (the parents) can be in the paid workforce and support the family. But it’s never just “babysitting”; I expect the teachers to properly instruct their pupils in the “3-R’s” as well as showing by example respect for all.
Frances, The only requirement are that your children receive an education and that you pay your school taxes. Some states make it more difficult to homeschool, but (unlike Germany) none make it illegal.
You raise an interesting point that single parent families are taxed disadvantageously. This is also true of single income families.
Sadly, the government schools are not required to fulfill your “expectations”. They are required only to comply with federal and state legislation and bureaucratic rules. Try telling a government school administrator about your expectations, and this is what you will find out. The pandemic is making this clear to an increasing number of parents.
“The school board forgot who it works for,” said Jonathan Zachreson, founder of Reopen California Schools, according to the publication. “It works for the parents and the children.”
This is a popular myth. The school board works for the schools, which are a government bureaucracy. They have no obligations to parents and children. They have only to comply with federal and state legislation and bureaucracies.
Don’t blame the school board members for this. They are working for a system which was designed to not be responsible to parents and children. It was originally designed to indoctrinate the children of Irish Catholic immigrants into Protestantism. Now the leftists are in charge.
You’re going to have to provide something more than a drive-by comment for that last paragraph to stand. Cite to authority, please.
School boards in my area are elected.
You could read “Disestablishment a Second Time” Skillen (ed).
This is a pretty good article. It also mentions the anti-Catholic Blaine amendment(s) which have been used to prevent school vouchers for non-secular schools in general, and which have been dealt a blow recently by Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue.
This is an excellent article by a friend of mine:
https://blogs.cornell.edu/envirobaer/publications/to-the-advantage-of-infidelity-or-how-not-to-deal-with-religion-in-americas-public-schools/
Anti-Catholic bigotry and oppression has morphed into anti-religious bigotry and oppression.
BTW, I am not Catholic, but I appreciate the preservation of Western Civilization (i.e. the Greek philosophical tradition combined with the Biblical tradition) by the Catholic intellectual tradition.
“Don’t blame the school board members for this.”
I absolutely do blame them. They are sentient human beings able to make decisions for themselves, not extensions of a bureaucratic hive mind. They chose to run for their positions, chose to govern poorly, and chose to have this amazingly cynical attitude about education.
I think you would be a great school board member. I suggest you volunteer.
Bet U-Haul is busy getting these fucktards out of town. Imagine you being forever known as the “I’m gonna fuck you up” bitch in that community.
I’d like a three-piece meal. If you ask me if we have unsweetened tea, I’m gonna fuck you up!
Where is your bagged topsoil? If you ask me where the fertilizer is, I’m gonna fuck you up!
I’d like a hot dog with mustard and relish. If you ask me if it is dill relish, I’m gonna fuck you up.
I’d like a turbo wash and vacuum. If you ask me how much it would be for the hot carnauba wax, I’m gonna fuck you up.
I’ll repeat my comment on the earlier article that no one has yet answered — the sound on Beebe’s end leading up to that comment was crappy enough that I couldn’t be sure what she was saying, but it sounded to me like she was telling a story of how someone sent HER that vulgar message on a social messaging site. Can anyone hear it better than I could?
They’re only apologizing because they got caught. They really do think and believe exactly what they said.
And so do most of the school board members and teachers in most of the urban-suburban school districts across the country that Dems have run decades. While constantly making financial demands that drive up skyrocketing property taxes.
School choice and breaking the teachers unions are the only way out of this.
So Beede thinks the real problem is that this was supposed to be a private conversation? She sounds like an idiot.
School board elections by the teachers union are pretty well rigged so they think parents don’t count.
the parents, and others, only count come tax time.
other than that? sit down, strap in, shut up and hold on.
look for an amendment to the “Brown Act” here in #Failifornia, making it a felony to record and/or distribute a A/V copy of a government meeting, other than the officially released one.
a perfect example of what happens when a hoodrat is put in a position of authority–“f— you up” indeed
small wonder they want meetings kept private
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch.
It looks like cancel culture is contagious – many commenters here have caught it.
Think about some things you have said in private conversations. How would they hold up if they were made public? Nobody posting comments here uses their real name. Why not?
Most school board members are unpaid volunteers. They take unimaginable amounts of grief from parents. Since the government school is “the one best system”, it cannot possibly serve the conflicting needs of different groups of parents. An example is “tracking” – a blessing to some, and a curse to others. A school cannot both have, and not have, tracking.
The problem with the government school system is not the people in it – it’s the system. It’s so broken that it makes the people in it worse.
Judge righteous judgement.
Ms. Brizendine at least makes a reasonable apology. None of this “I’m sorry if you’re offended” nonsense, she’s truly sorry. Good for her. She still has to resign, but at least she feels shame. If I lived in that district I would consider the matter closed with her.