A California high school teacher was caught on a Zoom video telling students to “dare” their parents “to come at” her in response to parents’ collective push to end remote learning and have their children return to in-person classes full time. The teacher added, “I am so sick to my stomach of parents trying to tell educators how to do their job.”
San Marcos High School teacher Alissa Piro can be heard on video raising her voice in a virtual Zoom class in what appears to be a reaction to an ongoing lawsuit launched by parents seeking eased coronavirus-related restrictions and an accelerated return to in-person classrooms, according to a report by Fox News.
“If your parent wants to talk to me about their profession, and their opinion on their profession, I would love to hear that. I know very little about anything else in the world, other than education,” Piro can be heard saying to her students on video.
“However, if your parent wants to come talk to me about how I’m not doing a good enough job in distance learning, based on what you need as an individual, just dare them to come at me,” the teacher continued.
“Because I am so sick to my stomach of parents trying to tell educators how to do their job,” Piro added.
The video was reportedly filmed by a family member of one of Piro’s students attending the Zoom meeting, and was later shared to a private Facebook group advocating for the reopening of schools in the district.
Reopen California Schools, a group aimed at reopening schools, also posted the video to Twitter.
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“I have never once gone to a doctor’s appointment and tried to tell my medical health provider how to treat me. You know why? Because I know nothing about that. I didn’t get my degree in medicine,” Piro lamented in the video.
In another video, Piro yells at a student in response to him asking about a “white student union.”
“You don’t need a white student union, Jake. You get everything,” Piro retorts.
A mother of a student in Piro’s class told Fox News that she brought the videos to the school’s principal, Adam Dawson, several weeks ago. The report added that Dawson agreed the English teacher’s behavior was “inexcusable” and vowed to address it, but has yet to do so.
A group of parents filed a lawsuit in February against state officials and several school districts in an effort to get students back to in-person learning, according to a report by the Coast News.
Several residents — with the support of the Parent Association of North County — took legal action against California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), other state officials, and San Marcos Unified, Carlsbad Unified, San Dieguito Union High, Poway Unified, and Oceanside Unified school districts.
“Distance learning was never intended to be a long-term solution to education. Over time, the distance learning model has proven to be wholly inadequate as an educational experience,” said Ginny Merrifield, executive director of the Parent Association.
Merrifield added that “no matter how hard teachers try, it’s an inadequate way to teach students.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.
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