Check your zoom privacy settings.
Or better yet, don't be a dirtbag.
Shittiest job in the world done by a bunch of nice people who only want the best for kids, and then get shit on by useless parents. I've run dozens of volunteer organizations, and know first hand that getting someone to volunteer is the finest way to drive a person from the community forever. You work your ass off - in your spare time - to try and address the problems you can reach, and get nothing but hate from the community. Made up bullshit. Misinterpretations of actions. Lies. Political bullshit. Whatever. Eventually you will discover the community you loved and wanted to help is actually a collection of complete fucktards who don't deserve even a moment of your attention or time. No matter what the organization does, the people who step up to do the real work will be lambasted and demonized until they leave. Every single time.
Urgh this rings way too true. I've witnessed this happen too many times in the past few years, since getting involved in the BM community, a makerspace and starting our own plastic recycling non-profit. Even if you don't get demonized, you just start sinking hours into a volunteering black hole with no-one helping. So then you sink more hours into recruiting people to help, to find out they ghost the organisation immediately and you're back to doing everything. It really sucks, because I hate how everything these days is so transactional. But if there is no exchange of money, people have no qualms about wasting your time or not appreciating your work. Value is seen in monetary terms, and your volunteering time is judged worthless by outsiders, while feeling entitled - maybe because they assume you get an immense amount of satisfaction from it? It's been especially hard in Covid times, because now people are left with only the boring remote work side of things, without the social aspect (beer after a meeting/organizers cookout / whatever) that redeemed the thanklessness a little.
Thanks for bringing up your experiences, too. Everyone that starts a volunteer-run organization, or who heavily uses volunteers, loves the idea so much. But then humans get involved and bring the whole thing to a grinding halt in petty bickering. There's something to learn there, but not many organizations have figured it out yet.
Angry volunteers sick of your shit, quit en-masse: film at 11 LOL OB check the video Chick recorded SEVEN MINUTES of normal shit before Kim Beede was asked about a facebook post in which she got harassed. At which point she acted human, so did everyone else, it blew up on NBC news, and to a man, they all said fuck this shit and noped out of an unpaid volunteer position taking care of other people's kids. I used to think you mostly liked vengeance porn against the religious. Nope. You hate everyone.Or better yet, don't be a dirtbag.
If you own a business or are a public official you don't have the luxury of acting human without consequence. I know people who are the presidents of large hobby clubs that will only talk about certain issues by phone, never text or email. If I were a few of the people in that zoom call I would be dying inside after watching it. School board service is usually something more than selfless public service and if you resigned you lost something you cared about more than the children. I look forward to my next career as a ditch digger because there are about a half dozen people who have a giant go fuck your self's coming but in the mean time I'll bite my lips and count my money.
My initial reaction does seem unjustified. I find it hard to understand where the bar is for acceptable behavior from a public official, of any capacity. A friend of mine would like to run for school board/ city council. I've been trying to explain to him that I support him and he needs to be aware that the criteria for having a public figure castigated is not the fact of any kind if impropriety, but the appearance.
You go to war with the army you have, d00d. It's almost always petty griefing and it's always tied to the target audience. The Dixie Chicks were burned at the stake for saying "we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas" but Morgan Wallen saw a 300% spike in album sales after he got busted saying the n-word. This is small-town bitter-ass politics in a bay-area commuter community. The median home is $640k. It's a 64% white city that wasn't even incorporated until 1999. The bar is "just this side of whatever I need to get that bitch for saying mean things on Facebook" and always will be. Note that in Fresno, a mere 3-hour drive away, a member of the school board suffered no blowback for pointing a gun at someone in a fight at a school barbecue. Friend of mine watched it happen.I find it hard to understand where the bar is for acceptable behavior from a public official, of any capacity.
Because I was bored, I decided to look up the full video of their conversation (if you're curious: I have to say, those comments were tame as FUCK. I cannot believe they had to resign over that shit. And the woman being interviewed in the OP? Hoooly shit, as soon as she opened her mouth I could tell she was an entitled cunt. I feel bad for the board for having to deal with people like that. Maybe I don't get it and it's an American thing, but from where I'm standing this was just some trivial banter, and the parents at that school need to grow a spine.
this is relevant as I'll be in the board meeting for my kids' school this evening. I already know we've got angry parents on both sides of the equation for discussion on the agenda - returning kids to school. I am REALLY not looking forward to this one. Interestingly - the board should have known that what they are doing, even if no one else was admitted yet, is a violation of most sunshine laws. You cannot meet to discuss school business in private. This is one of those cases where playing by the rules would have protected them from themselves.
There was nothing private about that meeting. If you watch the recording through to where the "saucy" shit hits, person after person after person after person is joining. It was a public meeting, the board was talking among themselves, probably not particularly concerned that anything they said was going to be used as a weapon against them, because they were comiserating about particular parents, no names mentioned. Then the mob kicked in.
I know - but they were talking as if they were. "Are we alone?" - and that's my point - they shouldn't be - any time more than two board members are talking about school business, it constitutes a board meeting and MUST be public (at least in CO - don't know about CA). My point is... there's a time to talk shit and a time to be in a public meeting. having said that - parents are the worst - and being an unpaid volunteer board member draws the worst from people. goobster said it well above.There was nothing private about that meeting.
the people who step up to do the real work will be lambasted and demonized until they leave.