ALAMEDA COUNTYVoters have officially removed two Sunol Glen Unified School District board members, the culmination of a recall initiative sparked by their push to ban the flying of Pride flags on local school grounds last 12 months.
Results certified by Alameda County on Friday show the recall was an in depth call, with 52% of voters supporting the ouster of Board Chairman Ryan Jergensen and Trustee Linda Hurley. Voter turnout was 64%, with 533 of the county's 828 registered voters casting ballots.
In September, Jergesen and Hurley – who made up the vast majority of the three-member panel – proposed a rule change that will have allowed Sunol Glen School to fly only the “statutory flags,” meaning the flags of the state of California and the United States. Although the Pride flags weren’t specifically mentioned within the resolution, it got here just months after school officials flew the flag on school grounds.
The recall campaign quickly gained momentum, with parents accusing Jergesen and Hurley of bigotry and censorship—not just for the flag ban, but in addition for Jergesen's demand that Alameda County sheriff's deputies remove the general public from the board room before the board voted on the resolution.
In a press release, leaders of the recall initiative, United for Sunol Glen, said the vote “puts an end to the chaos that the school board majority has brought to the community and puts the school district on a path that refocuses on the well-being of Sunol Glen School and its students.”
“Our victory is marred by the knowledge that the past year has created much division and we must now figure out how to move forward as a community,” Erin Choin, a mother and substitute teacher at Sunol Glen, said in a press release.
With Jergesen and Hurley not on the board, that leaves only Peter “Ted” Romo, who opposed the flag resolution. Romo and Jergensen were elected to four-year terms in 2022, while Hurley was elected to two-year terms that very same 12 months.
The Alameda County Board of Education is anticipated to temporarily fill at the very least considered one of the possibly vacant seats.
Staff author Katie Lauer contributed to this story.
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