Police were called to a meeting at an Orem charter school this week after several heated exchanges, and parents who were soliciting signatures demanding a no-confidence vote of the school's board were ordered off school property.

Noah Webster Academy's headmaster, Kennan Beckstrand, was fired on Dec. 20. In a letter to him, board members cited Beckstrand with insubordination and mistreating an autistic student who refused to come to class after recess.

The public meeting Tuesday was for parents to ask questions about the school's future. As a charter school, Noah Webster Academy is a public school, with grades kindergarten through sixth.

School officials and parents have given different reasons for the police presence at the school, with officials citing security concerns and some parents saying the police were there to intimidate.

"We have received many threats, so we felt the need to ensure the security of everyone involved and so we had a police officer there for security purposes," said school founder Sharon Moss. "When things were looking like they were out of hand, what has been told to me is that parents called police for reinforcements."

Jim Gaul, who attended the meeting and is the father of two students at the school, saw the police presence differently than Moss.

"They brought police to the school to intimidate the parents," he said. "It's ridiculous."

Orem police Lt. Doug Edwards said he could not immediately confirm what had happened at the meeting.

Merrill Oveson, the father of two students at Noah Webster Academy, said board members asked a police officer at the meeting to remove the microphone from his hand as he demanded that a representative elected by parents be allowed on the school's board. Parents spoke for and against the board at the meeting.

The school has one parent representative on the board, Paula Abbott, who is president of the school's parents organization. She was elected to that position by parents using paper ballots, Moss said.

Oveson said he's upset for other reasons, too. He said the school's new headmaster has no school management credentials and has not taught school in more than 30 years. Also, board members told parents the state-funded school is "not a democracy" but a private organization.

"The term 'not a democracy' is a polite way of saying 'We are a dictatorship,' and they have been acting as dictators with all the classic examples -- there is no communication between the board and the parents, no parental input," he said.

Comments from the board about the school not being a democracy "are being taken out of context," Moss said. "If this school were a democracy, we would be voting on a curriculum from year to year, and values from year to year, and that would not work. In the true sense of democracy, parents get to vote for a parent representative. We haven't done anything wrong here."

Demonstrators at the meeting were informed by school officials that the school building, which the school rents, was private property and petitions calling for the board to step down would not be allowed and could be "grounds for dismissal," Moss said.

"This was a board meeting with a specific agenda," she said. "We were opening it for questions in regards to the future. This was not a venue for filibuster or taking over the meeting. We wanted to make sure there was a controlled environment."

Sam Forsythe, mother of four students at the school and organizer of the petition, said she has pulled her children from the school since the meeting.

"We were told it was private property and not a public school and we had to get off the school property," she said. "We went to the sidewalk, and we gathered close to 250 signatures."

Moss said no petitions have been presented to the school board.

"I don't even know what the petitions are for," Moss said.

Forsythe said she also was upset because "there is no special education program at the school and they don't have a reading program right now."

Moss said some of the school's reading curriculum books were on back order and were expected to arrive next week, and the school is interviewing special education teachers. The school is meeting the state's special education requirements "the best we can right now," she said.

Only two families have pulled their children from the school since the meeting, Moss said.

"We are in a position now to rebuild trust," she said. "We are making every effort to move forward in a positive direction and create unity, to be in partnership with parents. That is what we have always been about."

Caleb Warnock can be reached at 443-3263 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it