A weary public asks: Will the Fresno Unified school board please be civil? It’s past time

Another Fresno Unified School District board meeting, another round of chaos. A weary public wonders when it will all stop.

As if there were not enough already for parents tired of pandemic-driven impacts to schooling, the board’s meeting on Wednesday got cut short when Bullard High-area Trustee Terry Slatic began shouting over a speaker trying to address the group.

As reported by Bee staff writer Isabel Sophia Dieppa, Jessica Mahoney used some of her time at the podium addressing a failed effort to recall Slatic. It was a sore point with him, so he began to talk over her and board president Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas.

“Do your job,” Slatic repeatedly demanded of Jonasson Rosas, as he wanted her to silence Mahoney. She simultaneously tried to get him to stop being antagonistic.

But Slatic indicated he would continue to speak over Mahoney. “I will go all night,” Slatic said.

After several minutes, punctuated by Mahoney yelling “Stand down, Marine!” to Slatic — he being a former Marine major who served in Iraq — Jonasson Rosas adjourned the meeting.

It was the second board meeting in the past year to end early due to a Slatic outburst, the first coming in August when then board president Valerie Davis called it quits after numerous failed attempts to silence him.

Islas tweet

That was not the only drama at the gathering, however.

The vocal fireworks were preceded by speakers both railing against Trustee Veva Islas and supporting her. The issue: a posting she made on Twitter.

Islas is the founder and executive director of Cultiva La Salud, a nonprofit that provides health education and other assistance to farm workers and the Latino community. Her group has been busy in the pandemic trying to arrange vaccines for farm workers, and supply elderly Hispanic women with groceries, personal hygiene items and household supplies.

So she understandably has a point of view when it comes to people who won’t get COVID vaccines. Thus, she tweeted about a recent study that indicated short-term infertility could occur when an unvaccinated man gets COVID.

“While short-term, any limitation on an anti-vaxxers ability to reproduce is a win!” she wrote, adding emojis of clinking drink glasses, clapping hands and a hyperdermic needle.

That offended some who told her so at the board meeting. The Fresno Republican party called on Islas to resign.

That she will not do. “I am opposed to anti-vaxxers. I am. I won’t sugarcoat it,” she told Dieppa. “But I do not wish harm to anybody.”

Elected duty

Islas has the right to free speech, as does Slatic. But as elected trustees, their first duty is to the more than 70,000 children in Fresno Unified, the state’s third-largest district. It gets hard for the public to take them seriously when they get embroiled in controversies that are tangential to their elected calling.

To Islas, the advice would be to tone down the rhetoric, as her social media is amplified by her office. She might have meant the tweet in jest, as she claims, but that is not how it came across.

Slatic, meanwhile, has taken criticism quietly in other meetings. He should have done that again. He’s already under censure for the August outburst. He must stop losing his cool.

There school year is more than half over. It is past time for this school board to keep itself together. Focus on the kids, and, to repeat Slatic, “do your job.”