Oakley School Board Resignations Likely to Slow Classroom Reopening Plan
OAKLEY (KPIX) -- Less than a week has passed since the entire Oakley school board resigned after being caught on a hot mic bashing parents, and now the district is working to figure out how to fill their empty seats.
Thursday night's Oakley School Board meeting was only able to happen because two members of the County Board of Education stepped in to fill seats.
For parents hoping the big shakeup will speed up school reopening, things may not move as fast as they would like.
"Unfortunately, you gotta be careful what you wish for," said Contra Costa Board of Education Member Mike Maxwell. "When the board left, all of that board work kind of got set aside."
Maxwell is one of the two interim members of the Oakley School Board, and he stresses "interim." The only item on their agenda Thursday night is figuring out how to get the board refilled with local leadership.
"This is the reset meeting," Maxwell said. "This is the meeting that's going to reset everybody."
While it certainly will not match the outrage from last week's meeting, the procedural steps required to find a new board might lead to some more frustration for parents.
"We're just waiting for them to hopefully make negotiations with our district and give us a start date," said parent Rebecca Mears at a rally to reopen schools on Saturday.
That hope -- or expectation, even -- that the board's resignation will accelerate a return to the classroom might be optimistic.
"The community got what they wanted," Maxwell said. "However, it slowed the process down a little bit. They have a very little bit of traction going and now that's all gone and we basically have to start over."
The question now becomes who is ready to step up and be the next Oakley School Board.
"Right there in the community there are five people that are going to take on these roles," Maxwell explained. "They may not know who they are yet, but they are going to find five people from the community to take on these roles."
Maxwell says he personally supports a return to the classroom, but he also says it's not his role to make that decision as an interim caretaker on the board.
If the Oakley Schools are going to reopen, the decisions will have to come from the new local leadership. No one is quite sure yet how long it will take to find that.
