Coronado Union School District holding emergency meeting over tortilla incident

CORONADO, Calif. (KGTV) - The agenda for an emergency board meeting of the Coronado Unified School District shows trustees may take decisive action against students and staff involved in Saturday night's tortilla tossing incident at a basketball game.

The agenda says the board will hear public comment on Tuesday afternoon, get a full report on the incident, and then go into a closed session.

In that session, the agenda says they'll discuss three items:

• Public employee discipline
• Student Discipline Matters
• Public Employee Performance Evaluation: Superintendent

The meeting will start at 5 p.m., and anyone interested in commenting can attend the meeting in person, leave a voicemail at (619) 522-8900 ext. 1025, or send a written comment (less than 250 words) at this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdMTfDV2uNrfxD23XJA8LcqIrLTAprUVjzbWijLVg7CrSKdDA/viewform.

Meanwhile, Coronado High School dismissed all students and staff from the school at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, so they could be off campus by the time a rally began at 12 p.m.

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The noon rally featured speakers from the Chicano Federation, Gente Unida, La Raza, and several other Latino/Hispanic advocacy groups. They called for strict punishments against everyone involved in the incident.

"We want to make it very clear to Coronado High School that this type of a behavior is not acceptable in Coronado or anywhere in San Diego," Enrique Morones, the executive director of Gente Unida, said prior to the rally,

Morones said the apologies and statements denouncing racism that have come out since the incident are nice, but their words won't mean anything without strong action to back them up.

"If they get a slap on the wrist, they could do it again," Morones added. "Words mean nothing. It's actions that we're looking for. So, we want some people to be fired. We want the basketball team to be sanctioned. We want CIF to get involved. We want there to be a forfeit."

Morones also said they're in contact with law enforcement and the FBI to see if the incident qualifies as a hate crime.

"We've got to put an end to this," Morones said. "The tortilla curtain has come down, we're going to be very loud, and we're going to be demanding."