Fosters article by Roni Reino from the Friday, August 12 edition covering the petition asking board member Jim Kach to resign over the content of his former Twitter stream:
Petition submitted seeking ouster of OR board member
By RONI REINO
rreino@fosters.com
Friday, August 12, 2011DURHAM — More than 300 Oyster River community members have signed a petition submitted to the School Board on Thursday that asks that board member Jim Kach voluntarily resign from his position for tweets on a former Twitter account.
The petition states that the tweets were "disparaging to women, gay people, people of color, Jews and Muslims," and claim many Oyster River students believe it causes a "hostile learning environment for them in our schools."
"Although Mr. Kach regrets that people have been offended, he has not retracted his comments nor apologized for his views," reads the petition.
It also states those who sign the petition believe Kach can no longer be trusted to uphold the National School Board Association's Commitment to Diversity and Equity. It asks the board as a body to issue a formal statement of reprimand against Kach for his comments and that each member state whether they believe Kach's actions are in compliance with the district's policy of non-discrimination and inclusion.
After learning about the petition, Kach said he was "saddened" and wished the community would focus on the children and their education, rather than comments he made more than a year ago.
See also:
August 14, 2011 — Fosters Opinion: Values MatterAugust 10, 2011 — Plying Faith, Courage at ORCSD - Response to Ruth Sample and David Taylor
August 4, 2011 — Fosters Opinion: About the Oyster River Petition...
August 2, 2011 — At least 174 people sign petition asking ORCSD school board member to resign
August 2, 2011 — Response from Ruth Sample to Mr. Jarvis
August 2, 2011 — Answers to Legitimate Questions - A Response to "ORCSD Searching for Truth..."
July 27, 2011 — Oyster River: Searching for truth - any truth
July 27, 2011 — Foster's Editor States that Kach Should NOT Resign
July 24, 2011 — Letters to the Editor - July 24, 2011 Regarding School Board Member Jim Kach
July 20, 2011 — Foster's Letters to the Editor Calling for Resignation of OR Board Member
July 20, 2011 — Foster's Editorial on OR Board Member Kach
July 19, 2011 — ORCSD Board Member Refuses to Resign....Defends Tweets
I tuned in to watch the board meeting and see another packed room -- I suspect there will be some discussion on the petition during public comment.
ReplyDeleteWondering how many signatures were on the petition, I checked it out [1] and noticed a few duplicates, anonymous, and nonsense signatures (Hello, Mr./Ms. Seriously Appalled!). In my opinion, if an individual is unwilling to sign their name, that "signature" is invalid and should not be counted. Not wanting to manually scrub the list, I wrote a little program to do it for me. As of right now, in the reported total of 311 signatures there are:
19 Anonymous and duplicate signatures
2 Nonsense signatures
1 Husband and wife signature
That means there are 291 real signatures (311 - 19 - 2 + 1) on the petition requesting Jim Kach resign. I suspect there will be a lot of characterizing this as "over 300" which is not a truthful representation, in my opinion.
For the curious, running the same program against the principal petition from this past spring yielded 388 real signatures. So it appears the "over 400" quote bandied around so much back then was also over-optimistic and an exaggeration.
[1] http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/orsb-kach-tweets