CLEVELAND – Richmond Heights school board president Bobby Jordan doesn’t mince words.

“If you see me getting out of my car with a baseball bat, don’t worry about your kids, I’m going after teachers,” Jordan said during a September farewell concert for outgoing choir teacher Anita Caswell.

“Teachers need to teach … All kids can learn … If you don’t want to be here, leave,” he said, according to Cleveland.com.

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Jordan told the media he didn’t literally mean he would take after teachers with a Louisville Slugger, and issued an apology email to the district’s teachers. But the fiery speech is drawing howls from the local teachers union, which now calling for his resignation, the news site reports.

“Mr. Jordan’s comments on Saturday, Sept. 27, 2014, prompted (Richmond Heights Education Association) to pass a vote of no confidence,” union president Lori Gecina said in a statement. “RHEA is looking forward to working with the current administration and a Board of Education that does not include Mr. Jordan.”

Union spokeswoman Andrea Manes told Cleveland.com the district’s teachers were “shocked, appalled and afraid” because of Jordan’s comments.

“What kind of model is a school board president threatening someone with physical harm?”

“Bobby needs to be removed,” she said.

Jordan declined to address the union’s no confidence maneuver because “it’s not about me, it’s about education,” he said. Jordan told Cleveland.com he doesn’t plan on resigning.

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“I apologize. I’m sorry they feel threatened. That was not my intent. When I speak, I speak with passion, and my passion is education,” Jordan said.

Jordan’s colleagues on the board seem to be supporting their president.

“I know Bobby, and he didn’t mean anything by it,” board member Carl Vinci said. “I don’t think it was meant as a threat, but that’s how it was taken.”

Jordan told the media he targeted teachers because of low state test scores released shortly before his September speech, which showed the district met only seven of 24 standards on the state’s school report cards for the second consecutive year.

The board president’s comments also seem to be the least of the district’s problems.

“Earlier this year, its former superintendent Robert Moore — Richmond Heights’ eighth leader in 13 years — was sentenced to prison for extorting a daycare operator. Months later, the state placed the district on ‘fiscal caution’ status, because it was nearly $900,000 in debt,” Cleveland.com reports.

Manes told Cleveland.com that Jordan has made other offending comments toward teachers this year, including a graduation speech in May in which he said “it’s not the kids who are the problem, it’s the adults.”

“It’s a change in attitude from a collaborative to an us-versus-them viewpoint,” Manes said.

One thing that apparently hasn’t changed in the suburban Cleveland district, however, is the union’s penchant for avoiding accountability for students’ poor performance.

“Bottom line is it’s always been the teachers, the secretaries, the custodians, the bus drivers who have endured and been here day after day, where there has been a revolving door (among leadership),”  Manes said.

That fact, combined with the district’s dismal student test scores, should be a clear sign that Jordan’s underlying point – that teachers need to step it up – is not only valid, but critical to improving student learning.