A Night of Reckoning for QVSD School Board
Following a devastating $250,000 federal verdict against the Quillayute Valley School District for cultivating a hostile work environment, the community is weaponizing the public record to tear down the district’s bureaucratic shield.
At the Board of Education meeting last night, the district attempted to reinstate its standard playbook: silence the critics and shut down the conversation.
It spectacularly failed. The public comment period of Tuesday night’s meeting devolved into a blistering reckoning.
Community members stood before the board to expose glaring hypocrisies in moderation, bringing forth explosive allegations regarding buried security tapes, and the district’s horrifying defense of an alleged predator in open court.
Educational Defense
The reckoning began with Rod Larson, whose stinging rebuke exposed exactly how the district defended its negligence during the recent federal trial.
Drawing upon his 200-plus hours of professional USA Track and Field training, Larson tore into the district’s “Safe Sport” policy—a policy he noted nearly 70 other state districts have refused to adopt due to its obvious pitfalls.
According to Larson’s testimony, Superintendent Diana Reaume utilized this policy on the witness stand to defend veteran coach Brian Weekes.
Larson revealed to the stunned room that a video was introduced into evidence at the trial showing Mr. Weekes touching a female athlete in the weight room—first stretching her leg, and then kneeling on his knees at her left side with both hands on the small of her back, massaging her.
“Track shorts are typically well above mid-thigh or loose, blousy, and made from a light material,” Larson stated. “Elevate the leg of a supine female athlete...the blousy shorts obey gravity, slide to the crotch, reveal the outer form of the gluteus maximus, and expose intimate under apparel. Viola, a peep show.”
Despite the severe boundary violations captured on camera, Larson testified that Superintendent Reaume defended the touching on the stand, claiming it was acceptable “as long as it is for educational purposes.”
“In spite of over 200 hours of professional training, I cannot identify any legitimate or educational purpose,” Larson told the board, noting that official training identifies massage strictly as the province of a certified athletic trainer, not a coach. “Just assert it’s educational and hey presto, it’s A-okay.”
The Missing Security Tape
When Larson’s three minutes expired, Board Chair Bill Rohde attempted to cut him off, only for another community member to immediately yield her time so Larson could finish.
Later in the comment period, Pam Gale—a QVSD track coach of 30 seasons—took the microphone to detail her own run-ins with the administration over Brian Weekes.
Gale stated that in the Spring of 2018, she explicitly reported Weekes’s inappropriate behavior toward middle school girls to then-Athletic Director Kyle Weakley. By the Spring of 2019, she reported that Weekes was massaging 7th and 8th-grade female athletes to the point where she could not “see his hand underneath their shorts.”
But the most damning allegation of the night centered on a specific incident in April 2019. Pam stated that she and her assistant coach found Mr. Weekes alone in a dark weight room with a high school track athlete, massaging the girl’s legs.
Following the incident, Pam stated she explicitly asked Weakley to pull the security tape from the weight room.
“The tape was never produced,” she stated.
Pam Gale’s testimony is directly corroborated by the district’s own internal documents. As previously reported by The Olympic Herald, an internal email sent by Superintendent Diana Reaume on April 25, 2019, proves the administration was fully aware of this exact incident.
Reaume emailed the district’s risk management pool stating that coaches had reported Weekes was in the dark weight room massaging a female athlete’s shoulders.
Crucially, Reaume explicitly stated in the email: “We are going to pull video tapes at various locations to see if we have any of these captured.” Yet, according to Pam Gale, that tape was never produced.
This apparent cover-up strikes at the core of QVSD’s administrative philosophy: the district consistently prioritizes liability mitigation over actual student safety.
This aligns perfectly with Kyle Weakley’s own sworn deposition testimony, where he admitted advising Weekes to avoid “stretching” female athletes—not to protect the physical boundaries of the students, but for Weekes’s “own protection, so that false accusations couldn’t be made against them.”
The Double Standard of Silence
The glaring hypocrisy of the district’s moderation was on full display Tuesday night, spearheaded by Board Chair Bill Rohde.
Just moments before Pam Gale exposed the missing security tapes, her husband Rick Gale—a former QVSD school board member of 10 years—took the podium.
He sought to question the district’s leadership, specifically challenging the promotion of Kyle Weakley to Assistant Superintendent.
Before Gale could finish his thought, the bureaucratic shield was deployed. Board Chair Rohde abruptly interrupted him, repeatedly ordering him to stop and stating flatly: “You can’t talk about personnel here.”
But Rohde’s swift and aggressive censorship may be rooted in something far deeper than parliamentary procedure.
As recently uncovered by The Olympic Herald, Rohde and Weekes share deeply intertwined institutional loyalties. Both men belong to the local Forks Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Even more concerning, Weekes served as the Bishop of that ward—meaning the very educator the school board is tasked with holding publicly accountable has historically held direct, immense spiritual authority over the Board Chair himself.
This staggering ecclesiastical conflict of interest casts a dark shadow over Rohde’s aggressive attempts to silence critics. When the district’s failures are challenged at the podium, does the Board Chair act to protect the students of Clallam County, or does he act to protect his Bishop?
Immediately following his wife’s devastating testimony, Rick Gale stood back up, pointing directly at Rohde to challenge the board’s blatant double standard.
“I’d like to ask Bill, what is the difference?” Gale demanded. “You shut me down, but you didn’t shut my wife down. What’s the difference?”
Rohde’s tepid response—that he perceived Rick’s comments as “criticizing” while Pam was simply “giving information”—laid bare the erratic and defensive nature of a district in crisis.
For decades, the Quillayute Valley School District has managed the liability, shuffled the problems out the back door, and kept the community in the dark. But as Tuesday night proved, the community is no longer playing by the district’s rules.
“Evil persists when good people do nothing,” Pam Gale concluded before leaving the podium.