BUCKEYE, Ariz. — It was a school board meeting that involved yelling, cursing and teachers resigning.
At one point, a police officer had to step into the room to calm the crowd.
Liberty Elementary School District 25's regular meeting on Monday night was standing room only. Teachers and parents filled the gallery to express the problems they've faced with district leadership. Seven teachers resigned with the board's approval.
One of them is now former Westar Elementary School teacher Wendi Merkle.
"I resigned because our board and our superintendent have been spending a majority of their time attempting to bully teachers into submission, " Merkle said.
Sheila DeBattista, an educator at Liberty Elementary with 30 years of teaching experience, also resigned.
“Due to the unsafe working conditions and the learning environment for students,” DeBattista said.
Both teachers claimed certain board members created hostile work environments for educators within the district. They felt disrespected and unheard when bringing these concerns to leadership. Merkle and many other's also disagreed with certain policies implemented by the district.
"We have a board who has consistently driven policies that are not based on student learning and student goals and student outcomes in public schools," Merkle said.
According to Merkle, one of them is that teachers and school counselors are not allowed to intervene when students argue with each other unless parents have given permission.
"While I don't disagree that parents should know what's happening, I don't think that a child should be negated from that opportunity to have a teacher help them through a friendship issue," Merkle said.
Another policy Merkle said is teachers cannot sit on the board of the Parent Teacher Organization which she said is a separate organization of the district.
All of this led to them and others to resign. During public comment, parents also expressed concerns with the board.
“Your focus on targeting teachers rather than protecting students is unconscionable," one said.
Many of the comments went after the district's superintendent and former governing board Vice President Bryan Parks who on the same night was voted to be the governing board president after the previous one resigned last month.
Some during public comment called on Parks to resign. 12News asked for an interview with Parks following the meeting but he declined.
Board member Kris Kenyon replaced Parks and Vice President. When he spoke about the resignations, he said if teachers are not happy with the district's policies then they should be free to leave. Which lead to jeers from the crowd.
The yelling continued until Parks announced the board would go into a brief recess.
Once public comment started again more people spoke out against Parks and the superintendent. Until two men came up in support of them and agreed with the policies.
One of them turned on the crowd.
“There are street gangs in New York that have talked less violently than these people have tonight," he said.
12News tried to interview the speaker but he declined.
Toward the end of the meeting, that same speaker and another member of the audience started arguing which ultimately ended once a police officer entered the room and a board member told them some people may need to be removed from the meeting.
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