Becka Thompson addressed the MPS school board at a regularly scheduled board meeting on April 16. Stating that she was not there to defend her job, Thompson discussed problems at MPS, saying, “I’m here to ask you to believe me when I tell you that there is a cancerous rot running right down the middle of this organization.”

Thompson, who also happens to be a commissioner with the Minneapolis Parks & Recreation Board, described the rot as an “old and grafted chauvinism that deals in harassment, intimidation, threats, coercion, gaslight, and compelled speech, with which it continues to exist in certain corners. It investigates anyone who tries to speak out and removes anyone, hello, who does so repeatedly.”

A math teacher, Thompson said she was being let go because her presence and relationship with the school board “threaten that status quo.”