Brewster Board Won't Ask Trustee To Resign For 'Racist' Posts

BREWSTER, NY — The Brewster Board of Education decided not to call for the resigniation of Trustee Krista Berardi Thursday over two social media posts that enraged many members of the community. SEE: Calls For Brewster Schools Trustee To Resign Over Facebook Posts

After an online petition started by a Brewster High School student collected more than 1,100 signatures in a few hours, the board met in executive session at 5:30 p.m. to discuss the matter.

One of Berardi's posts drew some sympathy from some members of the community. It concerned being stuck on I-84 in Danbury June 3 when some participants from a protest to express outrage and sorrow over the death of George Floyd marched onto the highway, which state police then closed for several hours while dispersing the crowd.

Everyone who drives has been caught in bad traffic on I-84 in Western Connecticut.

However, calling for the protesters who blocked I-84 to "be hosed" was too violent for some people who signed the petition. It was an eerie echo of the 1963 civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama, where police turned high-pressure fire hoses on children in the crowd.

The other was a re-post of one that's been circulating recently on Facebook. It claims that Floyd's death, after a police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes, was a hoax. According to Politifact, the claim has been thoroughly debunked.

That conspiracy theory was shared last week among several Republican leaders in Texas, which infuriated Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who demanded some of GOP committee chairs resign, according to The Texas Tribune. "These comments are disgusting and have no place in the Republican Party or in public discourse," Abbott spokesman John Wittman said in a statement last week.

The Floyd conspiracy theory is also reminiscent of a right-wing conspiracy theory closer to home for Brewster residents: that the massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School didn't happen. Conspiracy theorists threatened the grieving families for years. SEE: Remembering Sandy Hook Victims 7 Years Later.

Other community members argued over a third post she put on Facebook claiming Floyd was counting money he was paid for the hoax as he watched his own funeral on TV, with some insisting Berardi hadn't done anything wrong and others expressing both outrage and astonishment.

Berardi, an art teacher who was elected to the school board in 2019, has two more years to go in her term.

The petition calling for Berardi to step down now has 2,271 signatures.

"This is not over," Sullivan wrote after the board met. "This is unacceptable. We need to continue to call for her resignation or removal. Kerry Cunningham and Erik Grutzner have said that they want to put this event in the past... Can they so easily put the death of George Floyd in the past? Can they so easily put the centuries of systematic oppression in the past? We cannot allow her to remain on the board. We must continue calling for change."