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Parents in Chula Vista, Calif., are demanding answers from Kate Bishop, a member of the school board whose years-old vile messages on Twitter recently went viral after a concerned father shared them on social media. The interim superintendent distanced the school district from Bishop's tweets and Bishop herself acknowledged the tweets as "past mistakes" and said they were meant to be funny.
"I'm pretty sure I hit my sexual peak today. Somebody bring me an 18 year old boy, STAT!" Bishop tweeted in 2012, with the hashtag "hormones." Parents criticized a second tweet sent in 2011, which read, "Off to the park to see what hot 3-year-old girls my kid can hit on," with the hashtag "#ValentinesDay."
Katie Davidson-Brock, a Chula Vista native and mother of three children, one of whom attends Chula Vista Elementary School, told Fox News in an interview on Tuesday, "I think that someone with this type of character is unfit to serve."
Davidson-Brock did not demand that Bishop resign, but she did demand answers.
"I get that most of this stuff is just bad jokes but I would still like to hear or tSe district address it," the mother said.
Some of California school board member Kate Bishop's older tweets have triggered an uproar. (Chula Vista Elementary School District)
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Kimberly Dickson and Matt Dickson, parents of two, called on Bishop to resign, describing her "jaw-dropping" tweets and raising concerns about the school district turning a blind eye to such behavior.
Joe Thomas, a father in the school district, shared these two old tweets, along with a number of others, from Bishop on Facebook last week. "Her comments are appalling, disturbing and unprofessional for any educator in the public school system," he wrote in a Facebook post. Thomas said he reached out to the superintendent's office on Thursday and on Friday, Bishop made her Twitter account private.
Thomas also posted a picture of the school district's response to him, suggesting that no action had been taken.
"Ms. Bishop received the Let's Talk Dialogue on Friday. I am not aware if there was any further action taken regarding this dialogue," Nancy Teahan, assistant to the superintendent and school board, wrote, according to the posted screenshot.
Facebook screenshot.
"She is the perfect example of who not to put in charge of decisions that affect our children," Thomas concluded.
Jonathan Zachreson, founder of Reopen California Schools and a father of three, highlighted two tweets.
"Those tweets, I feel, are disqualifying for anybody involved in K-12 education," he argued.
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"I'm pretty sure I hit my sexual peak today. Somebody bring me an 18 year old boy, STAT!" Bishop tweeted in 2012, with the hashtag "hormones."
Twitter screenshot
"The 18-year-old boy one is definitely disturbing because 18-year-olds can still be enrolled in school," Davidson-Brock said. "I have a 17-year-old boy. The thought of a school board member writing that is really disturbing to me."
Matt Dickson called the tweet "very frightening."
"To choose an 18-year-old boy as opposed to somebody her own age, it appears to have a predatory context," he said, noting that Bishop seemed to be "looking for somebody young and vulnerable. Having somebody who looks at young people in that manner is very scary."
"If she’s a leader with this kind of – in my opinion – predatory thought process, is this going through the rest of the board and of the school district? Is there an acceptance of this kind of behavior?" Dickson asked.
The concerned parents also pointed out a tweet from 2011, in which Bishop said she was "Off to the park to see what hot 3-year-old girls my kid can hit on," with the hashtag "#ValentinesDay."
Twitter screenshot (Twitter)
Davidson-Brock said Bishop ran on a platform of being "a parent advocate," but she argued that Bishop "doesn't represent Chula Vista. This isn't how the people I know talk."
The concerned mother also noted that there were comments that "just don't have any place being written by someone who serves on a school board."
In a 2012 message, Bishop wrote, "I wanna hate-f--- Paul Ryan, while he is g-gged with my absentee ballot on which I voted for Obama." In 2013, she wrote about having a d**do purchase on her credit card statement. On Election Day 2016, she wrote of Donald Trump, "Dear Rust Belt, He lied. Your manufacturing jobs are NEVER coming back. You f---ed us. No love, Kate."
Twitter screenshot. (Twitter)
Davidson-Brock also noted another 2016 tweet in which Bishop mock-quoted Trump.
"It's terrible all the cholera these Mexicans are bringing across the border. Still, nobody loves like I do. Believe me," she tweeted with the hashtag "#TrumpBookReports."
"Not everybody gets that," Davidson-Brock explained. "A lot of people think she's talking about Mexicans, they don't realize that this is a poke at Trump."
"I understand she may have been joking," Davidson-Brock admitted. Even so, she insisted that "someone with that type of character shouldn't be making decisions for our children."
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Chula Vista Elementary School District Interim Superintendent Oscar Esquivel distanced the board from Bishop's tweets in a statement to Fox News.
"The social media posts occurred years before Kate Bishop’s election to the Board of Education. Her personal tweets do not represent the opinions or beliefs of the Chula Vista Elementary School District," Esquivel wrote.
Kimberly Dickson insisted that the age of the tweets is irrelevant.
"The content of the tweets puts her character into question, whether they were made last week, last year, or ten years ago," she said. "Is the fox watching the henhouse?"
Bishop responded to the backlash in a statement to Fox News on Tuesday, saying, "As a parent involved in education, I see this as a teachable moment that things put on the internet last forever. The intent of these tweets was meant to be funny, but they weren't, and without context years later, they have actually hurt people that I care about."
"I own my past mistakes and I have been more mindful of things that I post publicly online since then," Bishop concluded.
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