Demand for board resignations reaches peak

Community also sticking to calls for staff firings

Emotions were raw and frustrations were high for parents and students at the Oxford school board meeting on Tuesday night.

It was the first board meeting since the release of the Guidepost Solutions report on mass shooting at the high school on Nov. 21, 2021 and the majority of the people who spoke during public comments wanted one thing: the resignations of Heather Shafer, board president, and Mary Hanser, treasurer.

They are the only board members left from the period two years ago when the attack occurred, and no one at the meeting wanted them around any longer.

“I want the resignation of board members Hanser and Shafer,” said Coree VanDerKaay. “I don’t understand why you are sitting here? Your part in helping these families heal is to resign. We all need you to go.”

“I am going to say this very clearly, two of you have blood on your hands and you are never going to remove it,” said Oxford parent Kit Drabowski to Shafer and Hanser.

“We’ve gotten nothing from you the last two years and we want you gone,” said parent Cara Erskine.

Shafer opened the meeting with the first official response from the board since the release of the 572-page independent report reviewing the events leading up to, on the day of and in the days following the shooting that left four students dead and seven others injured.

“To all our students, families and staff and especially the families and friends of Hana (St. Juliana), Tate (Myre), Justin (Shilling) and Madisyn (Baldwin), we are all deeply sorry,” she said in a statement reviewed by all seven board members.

During the meeting the board was presented with a formal complaint signed by several parents asking for the “immediate re

moval of these individuals from any aspect of the operations of Oxford community schools” and to “immediately begin disciplinary actions against all individuals listed” in the complaint.

Those included Shafer, Hanser, interim Superintendent Vicki Markavitch, administrators and staff named in the Guidepost report and staff who did not cooperate with the report.

According to district policy, “the board, after reviewing the request, may grant a hearing before the board or a committee of the board or refer the matter to an executive session” to address the complaint.

A recall effort was also raised by several speakers.

“I don’t care if it takes 60 days to collect the signatures to remove every single one of you, we are flipping this board.” said Mark GIllim. “You are all part of the biggest cover up in the history of this county.”

Buck Myre, father of Tate, and Jill Soave, mother of Justin, addressed the board, but the most powerful words of the meeting came from Nicole Beausoleil, mother of Madisyn.

Beausoleil read what she called her “impact statement” and recounted what her daughter went through on the day of the shooting, what she has been through in the months since her daughter’s death and her frustration with the reaction of the board. It left several members of the audience and some board members in tears.

“The actions that have been made toward our family have been completely disgraceful,” she said, fighting back her own tears. “I want you to be reminded every day of how you failed our children. We grieve to the point of exhaustion and we are tired of your excuses.”

People also continued to call for the resignations of staff singled out in the report and still working in the district.

Those include: Shawn Hopkins, a counselor at Oxford High School when the shooting occurred and who is now a counselor at a district alternative high school; Pamela Fine, then a restorative practices/bullying prevention coordinator and now one of three family school liaisons at the high school; Becky Morgan, who remains a math teacher at the high school; Steven Wolf, then the principal at the high school and now the assistant superintendent of secondary instruction for the district; and Jacquelyn Kubina, who remains a language and literature teacher at the high school.

“… Why does he (Hopkins) still have a job? Do I really have to stand here and ask you what the hell are you thinking?” Jarrod Watson, whose son, Aiden, was wounded during the shooting, shouted at the board. “At least (Nicholas) Ejak gave us the courtesy to quit.”

Ejak was the former dean of students at the high school during the shooting.

Three others named in the report are also no longer employed by the district. They are Allison Karpinski, former special education teacher at the high school, Kimberly Potts, a retired Oakland County sheriff’s deputy who had worked as a high school student monitor, and Timothy Throne, former superintendent.

Guidepost was critical of the low staff participation in the investigation, reporting that only 51 of 143 current or former employees agreed to be interviewed by investigators.

Within district policies, under “Workplace Safety,” it states that “all members of the staff are responsible for maintaining a safe work environment and participating in investigations as necessary.”

Corey Bailey was board treasurer when the investigation began in early 2022 and said the school board had the power to compel district staff to talk to Guidepost.

“In (the district’s) policies it states that teachers and staff will cooperate with an ongoing investigation,” said Bailey, after the report came out.

“We had the power to say, ‘Here is your appointment, show up or don’t show up again.’ “

Bailey said he tried to push a vote on mandatory cooperation by the Oxford staff, but knew it would have failed.

“I knew we did not have the support for me to go and make a motion and say, “We will require teachers to cooperate with Guidepost or face termination,’ “Bailey said. “We didn’t have the votes. It was Tom (Donnelly) and I against five.”

Bailey stepped down a week after board president Tom Donnelly resigned in September 2022.

Several people also chastised the board for not seeking input from students in the aftermath of the shooting.

“No one has explicitly asked for our opinions,” said Avery Bluenstein, who was 14 at the time of the shooting and now a junior at the high school. “No one has called on the student body, the survivors of November 30, to speak at all. You are hypocrites. We want our survivor voices heard.”

“From day one you people have shut us down. You invalidated our emotions. You told us we should be fixed. You ignored our cries for help and you put bandaids on our bullet holes,” said Giselle Gillim, also a junior.. “What kind of support is this?”

A few people even went as far as asking new board members to take action against Shafer and Hanser.

“Heather and Mary, if you are not willing to set your egos aside to step down, I am calling for a vote tonight from the new members, at minimum, to remove them as President and Treasurer,” said Danielle Krozek.

But the majority of the night was focused on the lack of accountability from the board as the two year anniversary of the shooting approaches.

“For the last 23 months, I have watched gaslighting, lies and denials,” said Laura Lucas, whose daughter Ashlynne was in the school on the day of the shooting. “There has been a lot of blame that your guys have earned over those 23 months and it is time for new leadership.”

“You are responsible and guilty of wanton indifference and gross negligence,” GIllim told the board. “Now you have the blood of four and the trauma of 1,800 more on your hands.”

Trustee Amanda McDonough was the only board member to speak at the end of the meeting.

“What I want to reiterate to my fellow board members is that for closure and healing, they need us to acknowledge the failures that Guidepost found in that report,” said McDonough.

Hanser and Shafer did not address the calls for their resignations at the meeting and did not respond to requests for comment afterward.