Franklin-McKinley board censures Trustee Marc Cooper, asks him to resign over remarks about Muslims
The board's resolution says Cooper called the 9/11 attackers "cowardly, radical Muslims." He says he will not resign.
The Franklin-McKinley School District board voted Tuesday, Oct. 27, to censure Trustee Marc Cooper and ask him to resign over remarks about Muslims, according to the board's resolution and a statement from the Muslim civil rights group CAIR-SFBA. The vote was 4-1, with Cooper casting the only no vote, San José Spotlight reported.
Franklin-McKinley is an elementary school district in San Jose with 16 schools serving transitional kindergarten through eighth grade, its website shows.
The resolution says that at the board's Sept. 8 meeting, Cooper handed out Bible literature to fellow trustees and the superintendent while discussing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It says he called the attackers "cowardly, radical Muslims" and "asserted falsely" that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled three times that America is a Christian nation. The board says that broke its policy against statements that degrade people because of their religion and its standards for trustee conduct.
Cooper said he will not step down. "I'm not going to resign. People in our republic form of government elected me to represent them," he told San José Spotlight. "I have nothing against anybody: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians," he said, adding that the board should not "point fingers."
What a censure does
A censure is a formal statement of disapproval. It does not remove Cooper from office, and the resolution can only request his resignation. "There is not much more we can do because he is elected," Trustee Rudy Rodriguez, who brought the resolution, told Spotlight.
The resolution gives district administrators 90 days to recommend a trustee code of conduct with "clear, enforceable consequences" for discriminatory remarks, such as removal from committee and liaison assignments. It also asks for information on trainings about religious liberty and the Establishment Clause, the part of the First Amendment that bars government from establishing a religion, and a public report on support for Muslim students and how religion-based bullying complaints are handled.
How it got here
The board approved an open letter rebuking Cooper's conduct on Sept. 22. The NAACP San Jose/Silicon Valley branch, on Oct. 2, and CAIR-SFBA, on Oct. 5, then wrote to the board calling for his resignation, the resolution says. CAIR-SFBA is the San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "He should heed the Board majority's call and resign immediately," its executive director, Zahra Billoo, said in an Oct. 28 statement.
Some speakers defended Cooper. "I know him not to be anti-Muslim," Brandi Madison told the board, according to Spotlight.
Cooper is one of four candidates for three at-large board seats on the Nov. 3 ballot, along with Rodriguez, Trustee Steven Sanchez and Gilbert Borrayo, according to Ballotpedia. The district's posted copy of the resolution leaves the roll-call tally blank, and meeting minutes had not been posted.
Source: FMSD Resolution 2026-46; CAIR-SFBA statement, Oct. 28; FMSD schools list; Ballotpedia); San José Spotlight, Oct. 29.