An apology and resignation

To the students offended by my actions after the board meeting regarding their classmates not allowed to walk in the LR graduation:

As you can imagine this was very hard on all of us and coming to this decision had me heartbroken for all the families of the students not allowed to participate in the graduation ceremony. In the meeting I spoke on how it’s unfair to be placed in this position at all and how the blame fell on our shoulders in their eyes.

When the meeting was over I approached a scene where another board member was being confronted by students. It’s my personality to assist and help and as it turns out, I got myself into a situation that I need to apologize for. Recalling this moment is very hard because I was still running on full adrenaline when I seen my family member being unreasonable and continuing to cause a scene. I did get carried away with what I thought was me addressing her and the young people I know. I didn’t realize there were others taking my words as targeted towards them. As a board member I am very regretful of my word choices and I apologize to the offended students of my use of curse words, but by no means did I intend this to go any further and thought my niece and her friends needed some harsh guidance from someone they know and someone their family knows.

To the students that I don’t know and the families of these students, I am truly sorry for them being present when this happened. To the families of the students that I do know, continue to understand that I plan to make changes in my approach to these situations but won’t leave words unsaid. In these 5 months of being on the GCD school board, I have learned a lot and I considered training to allow me to grow from this situation because I will not allow this to define me or my character.

With that said, it has sincerely been an honor to be a voice for the families who come from our small community. After the incident, I immediately was regretful in my word choices, but as a volunteer for the GCD School District, I can’t act like it’s ok to be baited and videoed knowing my heart is hurting and all of our feelings are on High. I did hope to continue my work until I realized that in this day and age you are taught to try and catch people doing something that may offend you and make a mockery of it, no matter how sincere we are. If I can’t speak with my heart and not be classified a bully, then this isn’t for me.

Please accept this apology and know that I cannot promise that I won’t get after kids who need it, so consider this my resignation from the GCD school board.

Thank you, with sincere regards,

Deidre Ellsworth

Former GCDSD board member