Arcadia superintendent apologizes for social media posts

Arcadia School District Superintendent Lance Bagstad issued an apology after posts he made on his personal Facebook page were brought to the attention of the district’s board of education last week.

The posts began to circulate throughout the area and on social media last week, before a special meeting was called on Wednesday, in which Bagstad’s apology was accepted by the board in closed session.

“I’m asking for calm,” Paul Servais, board president, said. “We are in a highly politically charged environment right now between politics and COVID-19, we are all seeing anxiety we have never seen in our lifetime.”

Some area residents had voiced their displeasure over posts in which Bagstad criticized President Donald Trump and those who support him.

REALTED: ARCADIA BOARD HEARS FROM ANGRY COMMUNITY MEMBERS

In a post dated Sept. 30, which was shared with the Times, Bagstad wrote: “Trump is a child. He is like the kid in the toy isle (sic) throwing a tantrum when he doesn’t get what he wants. If you continue to support him, you are simply being controlled by a child. Think for yourself. You might have to become a gown (sic) up. If you blindly follow trump and his childish behavior, I bet you also just bought your child that toy so you wouldn’t have to have a backbone and be a parent. You follow trump because you have no backbone to stand up to his behavior and you won’t stand up to your friends because you are afraid they might be upset with you. Again, be an adult and have a backbone.”

In another post he wrote “If you are blind enough to continue to support the clown in the White House right now, please unfriend me. I have no time for someone who continues to support a complete liar, racist and complete narcissist.”

On Monday, the board issued a release saying “the Arcadia school board does not condone our superintendent’s social media posts about politics. In fact, we find these comments divisive and not acceptable from the leader of our school district.”

Bagstad’s apology and discussion relating the posts was limited to closed session, however the apology was shared with the Times:

“Last week, I regrettably posted some comments related to the presidential election on my personal Facebook page. The comments upset some individuals in the School District of Arcadia community.  

I am writing to apologize.

Please know that these opinions were entirely my own and do not reflect the opinion of the School District of Arcadia board, our staff, or our students. I want to apologize to anyone I offended by the comments. While this was not my intent, I can fully understand why people would take offense.  

Although we’re all entitled to our thoughts and opinions, I should not have made comments in the way I did. I fully understand that people have disagreements on politics, and that we all have our reasons for believing and supporting the causes and ideologies we do. It is also important that we engage in discourse in a civil manner, which I did not do with my personal Facebook posts and comments. Again, I am deeply sorry for that.

I try to pride myself on being a civil person. My comments did not reflect the person I am or wish to be. Now, I must work to regain the trust of many of our staff and community members.

Respectfully,

Lance”  

Officially, the school board accepted Bagstad’s apology with an statement issued last week saying: “We are implementing corrective actions and plan to move forward as a school district with Lance Bagstad as our superintendent.”

The statement issued on Monday highlighted some of those plans including: A public apology; board members reaching out to all district staff and visiting schools to “make sure they do not feel threatened by the comments”; a training session for social media etiquette and cyber-bullying for all district board members, administrators, staff and students and implementing a social media policy for staff.

The statement went on to point out that the posts were personal beliefs of Bagstad’s and not of the board, teachers, staff or students.

“The Arcadia school board also believes in our First Amendment rights to free speech and everyone is entitled to state their thoughts in any way they choose.  That being said, as leaders in our community and as leaders in our school district we must teach respect for other’s opinions and find ways to work together despite differences.  As a school district we need to learn from this and teach our students that hate is not the way forward.”

The board’s statement concluded saying: “The school board believes we can move forward from this incident and make our schools a better place for all our students and staff to learn, work together and respect each other’s opinions and beliefs.”

“As a community we have to think about whether all the positives that Lance has brought to our school district outweigh one negative that we acknowledge is a big one,” Servais said.

Bagstad has been employed by the district since July, 2018.