AUSD Trustee Resigns, Cowan Claims She Was “Minority of One”

A day after Antioch Unified School District Superintendent Donald Gill announced he was resigning at the end of the school year, Trustee Barbara Cowan announced Wednesday night she was also resigning effective immediately.

During last nights School Board Meeting, Cowan addressed the Board where she resigned and will be moving to Oregon in a few weeks.

She first took office in December of 2012.

Here is a copy of her comments:

At the end of my term in November, 2016, my husband and I planned to move back to our home in Oregon.

Since my election in 2012, I have felt that my mission was to support the District, Staff and our students with wisdom, caring, and using my experience to make the best decisions for our children. For the first two years of my term, the Board, the Superintendent, and Antioch staff created and implemented progressive policies and programs that enhanced and enriched our students’ education and their lives. We improved school culture, relationships, and academics through PBIS, Restorative Justice, the African American Male Initiative, and by working closely with community advocacy groups such as Parents Connected. We expanded the very successful linked learning and academies that have become renowned throughout the State as model programs. We recognized and awarded teachers who have demonstrated excellence in special ceremonies at Board meetings. We made our schools safer by hiring and training more effective security personnel and hiring a professional security company, Strategic Threat Management. We wholeheartedly embraced LCAP and its requirements to demonstrate our successes by stringent metrics and outcomes. We enjoyed a special alliance with AEA and CSEA. The principals and school site administrators we hired during those two years have proven to be outstanding and very effective.

November, 2014 proved to be the beginning of a new and unfortunate direction that the Board has taken. Individual staff members have been criticized and scrutinized. Proposed programs by school sites and District personnel have been rejected time after time which resulted, in some cases, in employees not being paid in a timely manner. The low morale and apprehensive atmosphere in the District office is palpable. The calling of multiple special Board meetings sent a disconcerting message to staff and community.

I have come to the conclusion that this Board will continue on its negative course and I, as a minority of one, have no power to pull us out of this morass.

I am, therefore, submitting my resignation as Trustee of the Antioch Unified School Board of Education effective this evening, Wednesday, September 23, 2015.