On Friday, Oakley Union Elementary School District announced that all four of its school board trustees have submitted their resignations from their position on the OUESD school board.
Here is a copy of the letter that went out Friday night which was released by Superintendent Greg Hetrick.
Dear Oakley Union Elementary School District Family,
I want to inform you that Board Members Kim Beede, Erica Ippolito, Richie Masadas and Lisa Brizendine have submitted their resignations from their position on the OUESD School Board.
As a District, we will continue to proceed with the work that we are engaged in to bring our students back to school. There will be a lot of details in the coming days about what will be taking place and I will be providing you with a complete update.
Board members Kim Beede, Eric Ippolito and Richie Masadas asked that the following statement be shared with you:
We deeply regret the comments that were made in the meeting of the Board of Education earlier this week. As trustees, we realize it is our responsibility to model the conduct that we expect of our students and staff, and it is our obligation to build confidence in District leadership; our comments failed you in both regards and for this we offer our sincerest apology.
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 students needs. To help facilitate the healing process, we will be resigning our positions as Trustees of the Oakley Union Elementary School District, effective immediately. The Superintendent will be working with the Contra Costa County Office of Education to address the vacancies on the Board of Education.
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. Please do not let our failure in judgement cast a shadow on the exceptional work that our teachers, administrators and hard-working employees are doing for the students of this District. They deserve and will need your support as you move forward.
I want you to know that it is a tremendous privilege to serve as the Superintendent of the Oakley Union Elementary School District. Oakley is and has been a special place to me and it is truly a community that loves its children and wants what’s best for them. With that 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 detract me from working to build back the trust in our community and return our students safely back to school as soon as possible.
I will be providing you with another update as to our next steps in the coming days. I want to say thank you for all that you do and I truly believe that working together, we do make a difference. Hvae a great day. Be well,
Respectfully,
Greg D. Hetrick.
Superintendent, Oakley Union Elementary School
The announcement comes hours after Oakley Mayor Sue Higgins called on the remaining members of the school board to resign
According to Superintendent Greg Hetrick, with a lack of quorum do to no board members, , Ed Code 5094 provides that the County Board President would appoint members of the county board to the Board until new members are elected or appointed.
On Thursday, Trustee Lisa Brizendine resigned from her position immediately while Superintendent Greg Hetrick issued a formal apology on behalf of the District.
Brizendine made a comment explaining how parents just want their children to return to school so they can have their “babysitters back.”
At one point, Trustee Kim Beede stated “bitch if you are going to call me out I am going to f—k you up” which prompted laughter from the board.
Note – Oakley’s school board is five members, however, they already had one vacancy which they hoped to fill with Wednesdays meeting. With Brizendine resigning on Thursday, that made two open seats. On Friday, the three remaining board members also resigned.
- Vacant – Area 1 (ends 2024)
- Vacant – Area 2 (ends 2022)
- Erica Ippolito – Area 3 (2022)
- Kim Beede – Area 4 (2022)
- Richie Masadas – Area 5 (2024)
In an open dialogue between Trustees Richie Masadas and Kim Beede, Masadas explained how easy it was for people to talk behind a screen but when face to face it’s a whole different ballgame.
Beede shot back asking “if they were alone” which was told they were and proceeded to state “bitch if you are going to call me out I am going to f—k you up” which prompted laughter from the board.
Trustee Lisa Brizendine chimed in explaining how the public forget that they are real people on the other side of the letters and have kids or who have a vested interest in this or what happens behind the scenes because “they want their babysitters back” — referring to teachers babysitting students.
This prompted a “right” from the other board members with Masadas talking about his brother having a delivery service for medical marijuana and clientele with their kids in school—which again, prompted laughs from the board with one board member calling it “awesome”.
Masadas continued saying “when you have your kids at home, no more Friday” and began quoting from the movie Friday “smoke dog”
At about the 7:30 minute mark, the Board realized the meeting was open to the public before cutting the video.
27 comments
I’m sorry but the Superintendent needs to resign as well. His silence tells everything. He should have at least made an effort to stop the behavior. Why should he be allowed to appoint another board.
Time for a fresh start. Maybe now the Kids can go back to school?
Mary, A School Board is elected not appointed by the Superintendent .Maybe you should hold off on making ignorant comments on matters you are clueless about.
Kim B. works as a massage therapist where she promises to rearrange your parts. “Bitch, if you’re gonna call me out, I’m gonna f**k you up!” . She assures you on her resume that:
“My strongest work related qualities that I possess are customer relations, customer service, working in a fast-paced environment and resolving problems.” No… “customer relations” etc. is NOT your strongest quality KIm unless you hope to be a bouncer at a strip club. Your poor kids.
The Superintendent should also Resign. He should have put a stop to the conversation immediately. If he would have and they didn’t then he would have been Get out of Jail card – He said nothing – He needs to step down because he has NO Leadership skills and can’t be trusted
Why should these people resign? Because they told THE TRUTH? Jeeeeeez!
You miss the big picture, Tom. It’s the board members’ attitudes, lack of professionalism and lack of judgement that are (were) the issue. They SOUGHT their former positions – no one forced them to run.
Oh good Kim Beebe can now get a job working for Kamala Harris…birds of a feather flock together…and I nominate Little Tommy Gardner for school board…
While the resignations will be welcome by most, their “mic drop” moment was just true government transparency. We need MORE such transparency.
They are resigning because they “outed” themselves — NOT because they said something that they don’t believe.
Here’s the one thing voters should remember. Doubtless the teacher labor unions got these clowns elected. Odds are, these unions funded all their campaigns with “independent expenditure” support.
The sad thing is that the teacher union will elect NEW sycophants to the school board — vassals who will do the labor bosses’ bidding. Nothing will change.
It’s vitally important for voters to know who the public employee labor unions are endorsing for office. There is NO BETTER INDICATOR concerning who to vote for. If these unions endorse a candidate, that’s the rock solid proof that voters should vote for the OTHER candidate.
@Tom Gardner:
? truth ?
Mr.Hetrick has been an amazing teacher and leader to our children for 25 years.
This cancel culture mentality is ridiculous. How about recognizing that some mistakes were made and lets move on!!
Anyone who has never made a mistake please stand up!
Kim B..will F*** you up if you don’t tip her well after her provided special service
Gregory Hetrick needs to step down too imo. He’s either with them or is completely spineless and unable to stop that disgusting conversation. Fucking hypocrite.
Do people understand that the School Board is Hetricks boss?
CSmith,
You are clearly too stupid to have a relevant opinion. Please refrain from posting your gibberish! Fucking moron!
CSmith you’re clearly too stupid to contribute a relevant thought!
Please refrain from posting your gibberish!
Fucking moron!
Isn’t the Superintendent appointed by the school board? No one should be held responsible for failure to shut up their boss. Hetrick didn’t participate himself, that’s all he could do.
“I will not make excuses for what happened or why it happened. I am the superintendent. I am responsible and accountable.” -Greg Hetrick
Interesting how a person who is responsible and accountable in neither accountable or responsible for any of this. Cancel culture isn’t great, but neither is having an unethical leader. If the consequence of all this was having the board resign, might as well start fresh and get a new superintendent too. It’s like removing Tesla’s board but keeping Elon Musk…still tesla
The superintendent fostered an environment that was anti-parent and anti-child. That is why the board felt it was okay to hate on parents and, by default — students — so openly. Parents should circulate a petition to demand his resign immediately.
For those calling for the superintendent to resign, the board is his boss. They hired him. They can fire him. When’s the last time you saw your boss do something inappropriate and call him out on it?
GENERAL — I’m hardly “little” — I’m 6’6″ 300 lbs. At your service!
Looks like the weed smokers are out in full force after this! They were finally exposed. The board members have no need to resign. They did the rest of us non-weed-smokers a big favor. We hired tutors for our kids. No need to go back to the schools and put up with disruptive kids.
Hetrick needs to go. as super he had the highest level of responsibility in stopping the conversation. i have been in the area since hetrick worked at ohara park, where his nickname amongst the children was “boner man hetrick” for the way he spoke to female students. the ENTIRE board, including hetrick, needs to be washed. start fresh with people who actually want to do good.
I’m so glad that all our children attend private schools. The board members did people a good service by exposing pot smoking deviants in Oakley. You can smell the stench from their weed and watch them stagger around the neighborhood and they are raising kids? Where are the CPS people?
I’m not local to CA, but saw your school board’s heaping blunder on national news. What amazes me about this forum is that nobody seems to have a problem with this Hetrick clown “schooling” his own bosses on how to use the district’s I.T. department to thwart public commentary at the board meetings. I realize y’all live in Harris/Pelosi country, but everyplace outside of liberal California, elected officials work for their constituency. Hetrick should be tarred and feathered. Then fired, and never work in public education again.
The parents ( and grandparents) have every reason to be outraged! District Superintendent Gregory Hetrick must resign! He was the leader. He sets the course for the board. He was silent because this is not the first time it has happened. During the meeting he talked about ways to curtail the voices of parents with concerns they want heard. With a salary of nearly $300,000 a year, taxpayers are outraged! We can do better! I have no confidence to the superintendent. This district needs a fresh start. Greg Hetrick, please do the right thing and resign!
@caroline While I respect your opinions I think you are way off base. Greg Hetrick was not the leader as he is hired by the Board of Education and reports to them. I think you are missing the point with the public comment section he was discussing. The point of having the call in number was to provide the parents a way to comment while the meetings are being held virtually. Not sure about a Brown Act violation as that will be up to a prosecutor to decide. I have never had a negative dealing with Mr. Hetrick while he was the Principal at Delta Vista and he was always professional IMO. Not sure how the rest of the people in Oakley feel but I can tell you that he is a good leader and a good change from some of the previous Superintendents.
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