A Recap from the Week of 12/8/25
Hello BSDB Community,
It’s been a full week of developments at BSD and we thank you for your patience as we’ve tried to find a minute to share this update with you. We’re a volunteer group of moms and dads - all of whom work full time - so the advocacy we’re doing for the schools has to fit into the wee hours and “spare” moments, of which there aren’t many!
Here’s a rundown of the main events this week:
Mandatory Staff Work Session about Workplace Culture (view video recording here, highly recommended): On Monday the School Board hosted a mandatory work session with all district staff to address workplace culture. It seems this was the Board’s response to multiple and repeated requests from teachers for a safe, open dialogue to discuss the ongoing issue of hostile, retaliatory workplace. The Board required all staff to attend, not just teachers, and they met in the Oceancrest Gym ahead of the Board meeting.
The meeting kicked off with Board member Martha Lane reading a very negative and critical statement directed at teachers. Teachers and staff were taken aback and described it as an inappropriate “public shaming.” Staff had hoped the meeting might be a constructive step forward towards healing. Instead, it set a divisive, tone. Many individuals - including non-teaching staff, aides, and teachers - took the mic to express genuine concern about the toxic climate in the district.
12/8 Board Meeting (view video recording here): The Board considered three formal complaints in executive session during the Monday meeting, collectively representing 30 individuals (four former employees + 26 teachers):
A complaint regarding unabated asbestos in the district office and the Superintendent’s allegedly illegal handling of that.
A joint complaint from four former employees describing their experience of construction termination over the past four years – essentially when a workplace is so hostile and retaliatory an employee is driven to resign.
A re-submitted complaint from Bandon Education Association (the teachers’ union) describing hostile, retaliatory workplace conditions that resulted in an 85% vote of no confidence among union members. This complaint was originally submitted in early October but the Board ignored it and BEA’s request for an independent review of the Superintendent. In November the Board passed a motion to only consider complaints that are submitted with the district’s formal cover page, so BEA filled out that cover page and resubmitted their complaint.
When they returned from executive session the Board proposed to initiate an investigation into the Superintendent (oddly, the Superintendent interjected mid-sentence that it would be an “inquiry,” not an investigation). Chair Cardas also announced she would recuse herself from “the entire process.”
This is a first step in the right direction after months of public pressure, but it falls short on three key fronts:
The Board needs to initiate an investigation, not an inquiry. The investigation needs to be conducted by an external, independent, third-party agency such as the Teachers Standards and Practices Commission, which licenses all teachers and administrators. An investigation would consider all evidence and documentation, whereas an inquiry would be held to a lower standard and be inherently less rigorous and comprehensive.
In addition to Chair Cardas, Board member Briana Hutchens also needs to recuse herself from the entire process due to her close friendship with the Superintendent. The need for that was made even more evident at the Town Hall on Wednesday, where a close friend of the Superintendent and Board members Cardas and Hutchens proclaimed that “Angela and Briana will never turn their backs on Shauna – we’re like family…” This admission underscores the fact that there are clear conflicts of interest for these two Board members. You can’t be an impartial and objective overseer of your sole employee if your first priority is shielding her from accountability.
The Board needs to place the Superintendent on immediate administrative leave pending outcome of the third-party investigation. This is standard practice to prevent interference with the investigation, especially given the seriousness of the allegations at hand.
Action Step: This is an important moment for the community to speak up and express these concerns. Send a quick email to all board members requesting the following (feel free to copy and paste):
Request that the board undertake a full, comprehensive investigation into the Superintendent, not an inquiry.
Request that both Chair Cardas and Board member Hutchens recuse themselves fully from all aspects of the investigation and any votes or deliberations pertaining to the Superintendent.
Request that the Superintendent be placed on immediate administrative leave.
School Board Email Addresses:
Town Hall Recap (view recording here): For months the community has been asking the board to facilitate an open dialogue about the serious leadership concerns facing BSD. We have been denied and ignored over and over again, so we decided to create that opportunity ourselves by hosting a Town Hall on Wednesday 12/10. We had a packed room of over 100 people and the goal was to share information, hear from impacted district staff and former employees, and offer time for respectful, civil Q&A and discussion.
A lot of information was shared and some important back and forth took place, which was long overdue. But unfortunately a small group of people chose to be disruptive and disrespectful, repeatedly interrupting the meeting and making pointed attacks on some of the speakers and BSD staff. The Bandon police had to intervene to control them. We had not asked the police to attend, but two officers appeared at the start of the meeting and we were soon grateful for their professional presence to manage the few individuals who were trying to derail the meeting. Their behavior was a real-time example of the very issue that Do Better BSD is trying to shed light on: the bullying and intimidation that are currently plaguing our district culture from the top down. Throughout it all, our speakers stayed committed to respectful, civil engagement and demonstrated remarkable grace in response to that kind of treatment.
The Do Better BSD effort has been referred to a few times by district leadership as “an angry mob” (a narrative that’s pretty funny to this group of concerned, peaceful parents), but it’s interesting to note that the two times the police have been needed was when Board Chair Cardas’s husband insulted and tried unsuccesfully to provoke the union representative in public at the end of the November Board meeting, and this Wednesday when supporters of the Superintendent bullied parents, teachers and community members.
Given the depth and breadth of issues at BSD under current leadership, and the disruptions from the crowd, it was a tall order to describe every concern in under two hours. More importantly, many people are still afraid to speak up about their negative experience in the district for fear of retaliation. Others simply couldn’t attend, so our speaker line-up was missing a few key perspectives: specifically that of the families with special needs children who have had their needs egregiously ignored and that of former non-teaching staff who have experienced abuse and mistreatment in the workplace. We need more brave voices to help bring light to these serious problems and hope that little by little, together, we can give each other the courage to speak up.
There was a question posed at the end: “Will things get better if the Superintendent resigns or is fired? Will all this end?” We believe that the answer is Yes, that with new leadership – that which is competent, ethical and compassionate - we can recover as a community. We suspect that an independent investigation into the many formal complaints that have been filed will provide grounds to terminate the Superintendent with cause. The Board holds the power to undertake that action – an investigation and termination – so they must be held accountable by the community in the coming weeks and months. Please email them with the key requests listed above to help ensure that the process moving forward is legitimate and rigorous.
Thank you to everyone who attended the Town Hall and for being engaged, even when it’s uncomfortable. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out with questions or concerns, or if you want to become more actively involved in efforts to make Bandon schools better.
In gratitude,
The moms and dads at Bandon School Deserve Better.