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Contention continued among the Sunol school board earlier this month as the trustees’ annual reorganization meeting saw Ryan Jergensen reappointed as board president rather than the leadership role being transitioned as has been custom for the district.
Trustee Peter “Ted” Romo, who has often found himself as the dissenting voice on the three-trustee board, initially tried to nominate himself for board president in 2024 so that Jergensen would not serve for a second consecutive year.
But with an annual shift in leadership considered a norm by past board members and not set in policy, Trustee Linda Hurley vehemently opposed Romo’s request in light of the tense past several board meetings and the politicization experienced by small-town Sunol Glen Unified School District over the last few months.
“I could not, in good conscience, vote for you as a president,” Hurley told Romo during the Dec. 12 board meeting. “You have disrupted this community in such a vicious and hateful way. When you talk about Sunol against hate, there is nothing that embodies hate more than what you have done and your contention in our board meetings has been replete from month to month.”
Supporters of the United For Sunol Glen pro-recall campaign — who are aiming to get signatures to place a recall for Hurley and Jergensen on the ballot next spring — were not happy with the decision to pass over Romo. The recall campaign, which is now picking up steam as an anti-recall campaign has also recently launched, said the decision to keep Jergensen as president was another example of poor leadership.
Vic Cloutier, a former Sunol trustee who supports the recall effort, told the board that even if she didn’t agree with her fellow board members at the time, they always respectfully rotated board roles so that everyone can equally get the experience of being president.
“We have always allowed every single board member a turn to be president, regardless of our feelings, regardless of our politics,” Cloutier said. “It is part of the civil contract of the board.”
Jergensen challenged that when he said he has seen a former board president serve a second time as president. Superintendent Molleen Barnes confirmed that, but she also doubled down saying the general practice has been to rotate.
Hurley made the motion for Jergensen to serve as president again. Romo did not second the motion, but Jergensen did because he said the board needs to have a president.
“I see the only way to move forward in this situation would be to second that I would be president and I am willing to do so, although I do not really enjoy it,” Jergensen said.
That early December meeting was also another contentious one in the K-8 school district for other reasons as well.
Prior to the school board session that day, Castro Valley Pride — a longtime LGBTQ+ Pride organization in Alameda County — led a rally in Sunol to show support for the LGBTQ community. The district has been under a spotlight since the board majority voted in September to authorize only the U.S. flag and California state flag on the school pole following an intense debate that saw many people focus on inclusion of the LGBTQ+ Pride flag.
However, the main issue that came up later in the board’s Dec. 12 meeting was when the board discussed the need for a new member to be added to the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee, which oversees spending of the $10.9 million Measure J general obligation bond.
Three other Sunol community members and parents had already submitted their names for the position, but the issue at the meeting was that Romo said that the board needed to follow the procedure of putting out a notice that the district needed to fill the position so that more people could apply and then go through the process of vetting each of the new applicants, rather than doing what Jergensen had proposed.
“When Trustee Romo advised Trustee Jergensen not to break the bylaw, Trustee Jergensen said they could just amend the bylaw right then and appoint whoever he wanted,” according to a press release from the pro-recall group on Dec. 13. “Trustee Romo wouldn’t agree to amend the bylaw right then because that would be breaking another bylaw to amend without first placing it on the agenda for public notice. Trustee Jergensen would break the rules and bylaws if he weren’t held publicly accountable by Trustee Romo.”
Jergensen said that he didn’t want to drag the process out longer than it needed to be, which is why he wanted to amend the process so that they could choose a new member that night.
Jergensen repeatedly denied that he was breaking any bylaws or that there was any wrongdoing after a good amount of back and forth with Romo.
Barnes ended up saying that she recommended that the board follow procedure and they decided to send out the notice and have the three applicants reapply next month for the committee.
That exchange represented yet another example of poor leadership cited by the recall group, which is working to begin its signature gathering very soon — they already have some tabling sites and are hoping to make the announcement of the start within the next few days, according to Erin Choin, a Sunol resident, parent and member of the committee.
A newly formed anti-recall group called One Sunol also announced its presence in December, claiming the pro-recall group is made up of outsiders who are dividing the community by been fabricating lies about the two trustees.
Made up of dozens of Sunol residents, One Sunol has become very vocal against the assertions that the pro-recall group has been making and has been strongly defending Hurley and Jergensen.
“We are a group of Sunolians called One Sunol that stands opposed to this divisive recall. We believe in honesty, fairness, dignity, and respect for all,” according to an email sent by One Sunol.
The group stated that it did not want specific names attributed to its statements, even though they made a list of their supporters public, out of fear that they would be targeted for their beliefs and views. The group said that Jergensen and Hurley are the committee’s co-chairs while Sunol resident and parent James Lowder is the committee’s secretary.
Lowder, who previously ran for the school board but lost to Jergensen and Romo in November 2022, was one of the four residents who initially went to the board to ask they place the flag resolution on the September board agenda.
“There has been misinformation, verbal attacks and outright lies in our community created by a few Sunol residents and a large group from outside our community. For example, the two board members they are trying to recall received threats of death for their lives and the lives of their families,” One Sunol stated.
“We stand apart from the recall folks most distinctively because we are able to see the diversity in our community and welcome all people and families to participate equally in our community. We welcome everyone and want to actually demonstrate it genuinely, so all may feel that welcoming and not feel the current in-fighting and division,” they added.
One Sunol has stated that while United For Sunol Glen claims to be the majority, the signature gathering hasn’t taken place yet and they won’t know until then. They said that the recall group is silencing the majority of Sunolians who are opposed to the recall by labeling them as bigoted and those residents against the recall are afraid of being bullied or threatened.
They also reiterated their argument that the recall group’s committee is made up of outsiders and people who want to divide the town. They pointed out that the recall committee’s headquarters, according to the recall group’s official filing with Alameda County elections officials, is in San Jose.
However, members of the recall group said it is wrong to label parents of Sunol Glen students who live outside of Sunol as outsiders.
“Sunol Glen School is not just made up of people who are residents of this town … The majority of our teachers and staff do not live in Sunol. Are they outsiders? Should they be feared? Should their voices and their politics not be heard in our school?” Choin said.
“The majority, 80%, of our student body — 80% of the funding that pays for our school — is from out-of-district parents who do not live in Sunol … should we characterize them as outsiders?” she added. “It seems to be this stigma of them creating a fear around this idea of outsiders and that seems incredibly hateful, and that seems to be excluding and trying to silence voices that are active within our community (by) just saying that they should be disenfranchised because they don’t happen to have our or zipcode on their address.”
Choin added those “outsider” voices, as the One Sunol group likes to call them, are mainly made up of out-of-district parents and said that, while either side really won’t know who is the majority until there is a vote, the anti-recall group is resorting to scare tactics because it doesn’t have much else to say.
“To say ‘One Sunol’ and we don’t like outsiders, sounds very close-minded to me,” Choin said. “I think anybody who’s talking about inclusion and diversity should really stop yelling out of megaphone outsiders, outsiders, because it kind of sounds like the exclusionary language of someone who isn’t very welcoming and who doesn’t really understand the demographic of our school or how it runs and operates.”
Just think, if it wasn’t for Jorgensen & Hurley there could be a Palestine/Hamas flag flying over Sunol Glen today. Wouldn’t that make the recall folks happy.