Public Comment from Rebecca Farrell 11/17/25

My name is Rebecca Farrell. I have 2 students in the district and 1 employed by the district. We moved to Bandon in Dec of 2023. We joined the district in the new year. And truthfully I didn't pay any attention to what the inner workings of the district were. All I saw was a tiny school with a big heart, because the ladies that run the offices at the high school and middle school have big hearts. And I hoped my kids could find some peace in Bandon.

You first got my attention with the out of the blue letter I received from Math teacher Mr. Kruse. Stating that he was leaving due to lack of support from the District and environment that he could no longer tolerate. My sons quickly told me about the rumors that they had heard at school about what happened and why he left. What the heck was going on at Bandon School District?

You got even more of my attention when my oldest came home to tell me about what the district was trying to do to one of his teachers. If you are unfamiliar with what happened to Ashley Pearson I encourage you to go to www.bsdbetter.org and read her letter.

So I made a choice and did something I never wanted to do. I went to a school board meeting. I was stunned and flabbergasted at what I listened to at that meeting. The level of disrespect from some of the board and the Administration was shocking. That's when you got my full attention.

Let's make no mistake about this, I have not sat down and had a conversation with most of the people facing me. With the exception of having a very hard interaction with Dr. Dockery and other staff involving one of my son’s and his PTSD response to some of the bullying he was overhearing on the bus on his way home from school. The SS was not involved in these meetings. I felt heard, and I felt my son was treated with love and respect and he started to feel just a fraction safer at school. I have had passing interactions with Becky A, these have mostly been passing small talk about weather and my sons, with her and other staff praising my sons for who they are as young men and who they seek to be. There are truly amazing people that live in this community and work in this district.

I wanted to seek out to learn more about what my sons were coming home and telling me about what they were witnessing at their schools. I didn’t really know anyone in town and I honestly preferred that way. So I started to dig on my own.  And the more I dug, the more board meetings I attended, the more people I listened to, the more facebook posts and messages I read.  The more appalled I became at the patterns I was witnessing. 

It is often hard to look at mistakes, to look at abuse and misconduct. Lies are so much more beautiful than the truth. Lies are easier to look at, lies can bring in money, lies can keep you in the company of powerful people. Lies can push a career to the next level. Lies also stack up. When you lie you have to start hiding more and more so that the ugly truth is not known. So you keep covering it up. I liken this to an injury that has been ignored. It doesn’t go away and often as more time passes the injury starts to get so much worse. The cure for this type of injury is looking at the truth. It is admitting the lies. It is asking for forgiveness.

  In any healthy relationship there needs to be transparency, communication, respect, and compassion. I see none of those qualities being displayed from certain members of the board nor from the very head of the Administration. And I think it's time we sat down and had a deep uncomfortable conversation. Abuse in any form is never okay. And turning a blind eye to the abuse for whatever the wide variety of reasons are does not make abuse okay. There needs to be a very serious 360 review of this Administration from a 3rd party with no ties to the members of this community. It is clear that because this community is so small and so intertwined it is unable to be objective about itself. Full transparency of this investigation no matter how ugly the truth is, needs to be made public. 

Bandon School District you are losing your heart. You are bleeding staff, the loss of just the 3 teachers that have had to walk away from the middle school this year will have a profound impact on the children enrolled in your district. The number of families that have fled from this district due to claims of abuse is shocking. The level of disrespect is appalling.

So let me clarify what I am trying to say. There is a sickness in this District and there is an increasing number of the community that does not trust the things you say, they do not trust you to do the things you say you will do to make it better, they do not trust you with the financial decisions, and most terrifying of all are the people that do not trust you with their children. 

I don't know what the answer is to all this, I am but a single mother who moved her sons here because we needed a place to rest after the life we had been through. I am asking you to look at this mounting evidence of wrong doing. To ask yourselves the hard questions. What if everything that these people coming forward to tell us is all true? What if you are protecting an abuser? What if you are believing a beautiful lie because the truth is ugly? 

Bandon Schools Deserve Better.