October 11, 2026
Board of Trustees
Superintendent Courtney Goode
Tamalpais Union High School District
395 Doherty Drive
Larkspur, California 94939
Re: Demand for the resignations of Trustee Kevin Saavedra and Board President Cynthia Roenisch
Dear Members of the Board of Trustees and Superintendent Goode:
We are demanding the resignations of Trustee Kevin Saavedra and Board President Cynthia Roenisch.
On October 8, according to EdSource's report, a Marin County Superior Court judge granted a restraining order against Trustee Saavedra to protect a district parent. A sitting trustee of this district is under a court order to stay away from a family it serves. That alone should be reason enough. President Roenisch had his emails in hand by November 21, 2025, and took no public action on them for ten months, until the court ruled. In our view, the ruling is what moved her.
The censure resolution on Tuesday's agenda quotes Board Bylaw 9005. Board members are to "govern responsibly and hold themselves to the highest standards of ethical conduct," to "recognize and respect differences of perspective and style on the Board and among staff, students, parents and the community," and to "act with dignity, and understand the implication of demeanor and behavior." Bylaw 9000 says the board "shall ensure that the District is responsive to the values, beliefs, and priorities of the community."
At the start of the December 15, 2025 meeting, the board read its Elements of Effective Governance aloud, including that "board members model professional, respectful, and courteous behavior." The 2025-26 Governance Handbook posted on the district's website says the board "wishes to be accessible, consistent, and fair in dealings with all complaints and concerns."
In our view, both Trustees Roenisch and Saavedra have fallen short of these standards, repeatedly, since November 2025.
On November 19, 2025, at 10:49 PM, from his district email account, Trustee Saavedra wrote to the parent: "Go f--- yourself you stupid old crone." In the same email: "I circulated your email to a few friends who live in your community, those who may know you, soliciting perspective about you."
Two days later, after the parent had apologized and complained to the board about his email, Trustee Saavedra again wrote from his district account: "You are a coward." He told her he had shared the thread with an IJ columnist and "met up for coffee this morning to discuss you," and that at the December 9 meeting he planned to "read the worst parts to the audience and into the public record." He closed: "You are a civic embarrassment."
On December 12, another parent wrote to the board that his emails had "created the appearance of pressure or retaliation" and would "discourage families from engaging in the public process." Fourteen minutes later, Trustee Saavedra answered from his district account. His reply went to that parent, every other trustee, the superintendent and the district's public-comment inbox. He added the parent he had written to ("I have cc'd [her] on this email"), attached his correspondence with her, including her original email, and wrote: "I would respond to her email the same way now as I did the first time."
This fall, on channels branded for his re-election campaign, he went further. In a September 13 video on his campaign YouTube channel, the same channel that carries his candidate statement, he said: "I think [she] is a bad person. Her behavior is shameful. Her husband and her children should be ashamed of her." He told viewers, "If you want to see my correspondence with [her], email and I'll send it to you," and the video's description repeated the offer. By September 26, on the same channel, he had posted a link to a public Google Drive folder, on his campaign email account, holding "the correspondence between [the parent] and our board." By his own account, he was handed her court papers at the September 29 board meeting. The next day, in a second campaign video, he told viewers about the correspondence: "Download it, share with your friends."
According to EdSource, the restraining order also cites an email in which he told her he was "asking your neighbors about you," and one from his campaign email account calling her a "s--- person." At the hearing on October 8, the judge asked him, as EdSource reported: "You used district email to send that to a parent whose child goes to the Tam schools? ... I don't want a parent to be publicly shamed." The order requires him to take down the YouTube videos. And in the courtroom itself, EdSource reported, the judge reprimanded him for taking a photo of her and ordered him to delete it.
That is not dignity. It is not respect for a parent's "differences of perspective." And "crone" is not a word anyone uses for a man. It is an insult aimed at a woman's age and sex, not at anything she said. In our view, that alone falls far short of the "professional, respectful, and courteous behavior" the board's own Elements of Effective Governance require. Using a district account to tell a parent you have circulated her email to "friends who live in your community … soliciting perspective about you," then using campaign channels to tell the public her husband and children "should be ashamed of her" and to invite people to request her emails, is the opposite of "the highest standards of ethical conduct." President Roenisch's own motion says his conduct "runs afoul of Board Bylaws 9000 and 9005." The parent's first email, to President Roenisch, was not right, she knew it, and she apologized the next day. Nothing in it excuses what a trustee sent back that night, or what he did after she apologized: the December 12 email, the campaign videos, and the public folder of her correspondence.
Both trustees have described his words as a response to hers. In court, EdSource reported, he said he was responding to her email to President Roenisch. And in May, President Roenisch told the Marin IJ that his "old crone" email came "in response to a vicious constituent email directed at me." We can find no public statement from President Roenisch that his words were wrong until her motion, after the court ruled. Trustee Saavedra has said he would respond "the same way now."
And the proposed resolution's answer, beyond the censure itself? It "encourages Trustee Saavedra to attend training on establishing appropriate boundaries when interacting with District community members," along with CSBA "Masters in Governance" training. "Encourages." Nothing is required. A judge has ordered him to stay away from a parent and the proposed resolution suggests a class.
On November 19, the parent emailed President Roenisch, and only her. Seventy-nine minutes later, the president forwarded that email to Trustee Saavedra, noting the parent had been "in front of us holding up signs." His "stupid old crone" email that night went out on that same thread.
On the night of November 20, the parent wrote to the other four trustees and the superintendent, quoting his email in full, and asked that he be held accountable.
On December 5, the parent asked the board to remove Trustee Saavedra as clerk and to censure him. On December 9, President Roenisch seconded his re-election as clerk. On December 12 she was among those he sent his "same way now" reply to.
On December 15, early in public comment, a speaker read aloud the most insulting lines of the parent's private email to President Roenisch. The lines read were about the president herself. The president, who was chairing, did not comment on it, and we can find no record that she did later.
Later that night, Trustee Uhlhorn said, "the reactions have gone against our policies, against our elements of effective governance." President Roenisch answered, "We can talk about that at a future date." That future date never came before the court ruled.
In May 2026, when the Marin IJ asked her about board decorum, including the "old crone" email, she called the parent's email "vicious."
After the court ruled, she brought a censure motion. It says: "Our school community thrives when we, including our elected leaders, engage in civil discourse." The "old crone" email it condemns had been in her inbox, quoted in full, since November 20, 2025.
The parent asked that President Roenisch not judge her complaint, and a president cannot discipline a trustee alone. But the president helps set this board's agenda, and a colleague asked on the record for the board to take this up. Ten months with no public action on his conduct falls at the feet of President Roenisch. We can find no public record that discussion took place before the court ruled. That is not handling complaints in a way that is "accessible, consistent, and fair," and it undermines the "public confidence in district governance" that Bylaw 9005 exists to protect. President Roenisch must resign.
What a parent learns from this: if you complain to the board president, your email may be forwarded to the trustee you are complaining about. That trustee may write back from his district account, tell you he has been asking people in your community about you, and promise to read your words aloud at the next meeting. If another parent objects, the trustee may send your original email, unasked, to that parent, the whole board and the district's public-comment inbox. Take it to the full board, and the person responsible for your complaint is the president who forwarded it. At the December 15 meeting, one speaker told Trustee Saavedra that when he "doubled down," "as a woman myself, it felt very threatening." A board that parents have reason to be wary of writing to cannot be "responsive to the values, beliefs, and priorities of the community," as Bylaw 9000 requires. As long as these two are on this board, we don't believe a parent can raise a concern with either of them and expect to be treated fairly.
On December 9, 2025, asked by a fellow trustee to reflect on her reactions to people who disagreed with the board, President Roenisch answered, "I was at the board meetings. I heard the comments. I had my reactions. Those stand."
Our demands
- Trustee Saavedra: resign.
- President Roenisch: resign.
- File your written resignations before the board's next regular meeting. Do not wait out the rest of your terms.
- Expand the amount of public comment time at Tuesday’s board meeting to afford the public to share their feelings on this.
- Trustees Uhlhorn, Holden and Green: if they do not resign, put the election of a new clerk on your next agenda. To whoever sits on this board in December: do not make Trustee Roenisch president. And put on an agenda the discussion a trustee asked for on December 15, about trustees' conduct toward the public, and with it how this board handles complaints about its own members. No reply to this letter is needed; we ask that you take it up in public.
The parents and students of this district are owed a board they can talk to without fear. These two trustees have shown they cannot provide one.
Sincerely,
Brendan Mullins
Principal Officer
Tam Union Governance Alliance
District parent, San Anselmo
cc:
Keri Brenner, Marin Independent Journal
Dave Allen, Digital/Opinion Editor, Marin Independent Journal
Jennifer Upshaw Swartz, Managing Editor, Marin Independent Journal
Thomas Peele, EdSource