A campaign to recall two board members of Sunol Glen Unified School district, formally announced just two days ago, is already rapidly gaining momentum after the district’s teacher’s union on Monday expressed its support for the effort.
A recall election seemed all but inevitable after Linda Hurley and Ryan Jergensen, two members of the three-person Sunol Glen school board, pushed through a measure that banned the school south of Dublin from flying the Pride flag on campus in September.
“It is with shock, regret and great sadness that the Sunol Federation of Teachers, CFT Local 1494 puts forth a unified vote of NO CONFIDENCE in current board members Linda Hurley and Ryan Jergensen,” a statement from the teacher’s union read. “Their brief tenure has brought distrust, uncertainty and fear to both The Sunol Glen School and the surrounding community.”
The night the board voted to ban the flag, over 100 people packed the small cafeteria where the meeting took place. Hecklers shouted abuse at board members and each other. Board members engaged in intense, semi-civil debates. During the course of the evening, Jergensen, the board president, demanded on multiple occasions that sheriff’s deputies physically remove “disruptive” parents and others from the meeting. Community members accused him of limiting their right to dissent during public comment.
In the end, prior to a final vote, all attendees were ousted from the room as the meeting devolved into anarchy. The crowd was also cleared from the room in a second meeting, just a week later.
At the time, Matthew Sylvester, a parent at the school, said the community would consider a recall. That process was made official on Saturday, when a grassroots group, United for Sunol Glen, announced that the Alameda County Registrar of Voters had accepted and filed its notice of intention to circulate recall petitions.
The group, which is composed of former Sunol Glen school board trustees, former teachers, and over a dozen other community leaders in a town of just 847, has now grown to include the teachers of Sunol Glen, as well as the school’s support staff.
“The decision to pursue the recall of Trustees Jergensen and Hurley is a response to a profound loss of trust in their ability to serve our community and uphold the principles of responsible governance,” the United for Sunol Glen group wrote in a statement.
Jergensen, for his part, vowed to fight the recall campaign and said he would not be resigning. He framed the effort as driven by “a very small number of activists,” from outside the community who “try to divide us in order to politicize our small school.”
“I will not let the bullies win, and I intend to fight their recall effort vigorously,” Jergensen said.
History shows recalls are challenging to pull off. According to Ballotpedia, there were an average of 34 recall efforts against an average of 80 school board members each year nationwide between 2009 and 2022. Those recall campaigns–spurred by a variety of allegations ranging from bad behavior to mismanagement of funds–resulted in just 10% of the targeted school board members being removed from office.
According to Alameda County data, there are 816 registered voters in the Sunol Glen school district. Of those, 314 are registered Democrats, 229 are registered Republicans, and 193 have no party preference. A successful petition to trigger a recall will require at least 245 signatures from registered voters.