Did The Grand Ledge MI School Board President Resort To False Accusations? You Decide.

Did the Grand Ledge School Board President, Sara Clark Pierson, falsely accuse parents of something they never did?  If we can use plain language is she just outright lying about her School district's parents?

I will give you the facts and you make the decision.  The Michigan Capitol Confidential is reporting on many of these facts.  Let us first start with the accusation made by Pierson.  She claimed at a June 14, 2021, School board meeting the parents of students and residents rushed a stage “with their fists up and screamed into the faces of board members, just three to four inches away, as they walked to their cars”.

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Pierson then compared that meeting to, you guessed it, the January 6th riot at the Capitol.  Interestingly she did not compare it to the 100’s if not thousands of riots by the Black Lives Matter, Antifa and counter-protesters for over a year.  Pierson said:

“It really smacks of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. And I think many of us on the board felt that we had just experienced a mini Jan. 6th.”

Was she telling the truth?

Let us exam that.  One parent, Erin Jones, said:

“I was present at the June 14, 2021, Grand Ledge school board meeting. At no time did I witness anyone crowding board members’ personal space while screaming or shaking their fists. To have such accusations leveled at a large group of concerned parents, who were exercising their legitimate rights to address school board policies, is inaccurate and insulting. And quite, honest flat-out lies. If it was so scary for our board members, why did [Grand Ledge Superintendent Marcus] Davenport, [trustee Patrick] McKennon, [trustee Jon] Shiflett and [trustee] Ben [Cwayna] all stay for 45 minutes to an hour after the meeting to talk to parents in the auditorium?”

Interesting!

We then have the Michigan Education Association, the State union that the local teacher's Unions are under, that wrote a blog about the meeting which “contained no mention of parents rushing the stage”.

Very interesting!

Next, we have an article published by Lansing State Journal the very next day, June 15th, about that June 14th meeting.  In that article, there was no mention of the meeting being shut down, or any parents rushing the stage. In fact, in that article they wrote:

“The meeting’s public comment portion went on for so long…that the board did not take any action on the remaining agenda, Director of Communications John Ellsworth confirmed.”

Very, very interesting!

Need more, here it is.  The Lansing State Journal wrote and published an article about a June 21st school board meeting.  In that article, they stated that the District's new superintendent, Marcus Davenport, “called the previous week's meeting ‘interesting’ and joked that Monday’s turnout set the bar for future meetings”.

Davenport in a video also stated “and certain individuals have said to me, that people apologize. And I said, there’s no need to apologize because as parents you spoke your truth. You spoke your concerns.”

Very, very, very interesting!

We then have another parent Amber Redman, who stated: 

“At no time did I ever see parents or anyone take over the stage, raise their fist at the board or scream 3-4 inches from (board members) faces. These false accusations from board President Sara Clark Pierson never occurred.”

Ms. Redman said in fact the meeting “abruptly ended because of a board member’s outburst/disruption of another board member’s motion, where the disruptive board member made a disparaging comment toward parents. The audience verbally responded, it was spirited, but never were there any threatening actions, takeovers, or insurrections.”

Really Ms. Pierson your “board member’s outburst/disruption of another board member’s motion, where the disruptive board member made a disparaging comment toward parents”.  That sounds exactly opposite to what you said happened.

That is very, very, very, very interesting!

This is starting to feel like we are really piling on.

When Ms. Pierson was faced with the video evidence she actually said:

‘I believe the video of the meeting is incomplete and does not include the activities of the public before the second recess. The district did not record the meeting. I stand by my comments.”

It gets even better when Ms. Pierson was asked about all of the above News reports, MEA Union blog and all of those parents' accounts stating what she said never happened.  She simply said all of the news organizations, the teacher labor unions and the parents were “inaccurate” essentially lying.

Do you think she knows that when someone believes the whole world is lying and they are the only one with truth on their side that is a classic definition of paranoia?

Case closed, you decide.