Superintendent Apologies to Candidate After Mic Silencing Incident

Superintendent Marcus Chambers apologized to a school board candidate’s family after he revealed that a school district employee silenced her microphone on the live feed to the district’s Youtube channel during July 25th’s meeting.

Candidate for School Board District 5 Cara Marion and her Husband Craig spoke at the August 9th meeting to decry the silencing of their microphones at the previous meeting.

Superintendent of Schools, Marcus Chambers explained the situation to the board members, “It was brought to my attention that during that last board meeting – I’ll be very honest, I thought it was technical difficulties, Chambers said. “But, we found out that we had an employee who did mute mics. Once I found that out, I did take action, wrote that employee’s supervisor and we also took action with that employee.”

Chambers did not specify what action was taken against the employee.

No School Board Involvement in Muting Microphones

School Board Member Dr. Lamar White asked about the possibility of a board member being able to mute microphones from the dais where the five members sit during the meeting. He noted that during his previous tenure as a school board chairman, there was no way for him or any other member of the board to mute someone’s microphone.

Superintendent Chambers confirmed White’s suspicion. “I’ll be very clear, none of the school board members had anything to do with any of the actions [concerning the muting of microphones.] This was the sole decision of the employee and that has been rectified and should not have happened.” Chambers added that the full unmuted version of the meeting was recorded as an audio file and is available upon request from the school board.

Accusing Employees of a Vast Conspiracy

At the end of the meeting, during final public comment, Craig Marion – the husband of candidate Cara Marion – stood up to speak for a second time. He continued his comments concerning the release of information concerning his daughter to Crestview Community Television by candidate and incumbent School Board Member Diane Kelley.

Craig Marion told the board, “Yesterday, my neighbor asked me if my daughter was found at fault [in a situation from last school year where the Marion’s daughter’s AICE Classical Studies teacher showed a film which was not approved by the school district.] There is a massive social media disinformation campaign by school district employees, some of which are still in this room. It needs to stop.”

Marion did not specify which teachers creating the disinformation campaign were in the room.