COUNTRY CLUB HILLS, Ill. (AP) – A suburban school board has suspended the district’s superintendent for taking videotaped interviews with new teachers, splicing in his own gag questions and spoofing the faculty members as killers, strippers and drug users.

The board voted 5-2 on Oct. 3 to suspend Bremen High School District 228 Superintendent Rich Mitchell indefinitely with pay, the Chicago Tribune reported on its Web site.

Mitchell has said the video, which for a time was posted on the district’s Web site, was meant to be a joke and has contended the resulting furor is part of an effort to push him from his job because he’s gay.

Mitchell attended the Oct. 3 meeting but did not address the board, said his lawyer, Jim Madigan. Madigan said board members also notified Mitchell they intend to take steps to fire him.

“He’s saddened he won’t be able to continue his job, and he’s hopeful someone will hold this board accountable,” Madigan said. “We’re sorry the board has continued on this path of discrimination and not putting the students’ interests first.”

School board president Evelyn Gleason has said the video was offensive, and that her main objection was that Mitchell posted it on the Internet.

Several Mitchell supporters attended the Oct. 3 board meeting, some wearing T-shirts that read “Gleason resign now” on the front and “We love our superintendent” on the back.

“It hasn’t been about our kids, it’s been about Evelyn Gleason trying to get rid of Dr. Mitchell,” said Kathy Novak, a parent of a student at Bremen High School.

Another parent, who has children attending Oak Forest High School, disagreed.

“The superintendent needs to be held to a higher standard,” Janet Olson said. “If my children did such a thing, putting a video on a Web site talking about killing, the police would have been involved by now and certainly suspended.”

At one point in the video, Mitchell is shown asking “How do you like to unwind?” The tape cuts to a teacher who replies: “I enjoy a lot of leisure activities.”

“Such as?” Mitchell asks.

“Killing,” says the teacher.

Mitchell first aired the video for an Aug. 24 back-to-school staff seminar. About 500 faculty and staff members from the district’s four high schools in the Chicago suburbs of Tinley Park, Midlothian, Country Club Hills and Oak Forest were there for a discussion about how to inject humor and laughter in the workplace.

Afterward, Mitchell, who has been superintendent since 2004, posted the video and outtakes on the district’s Web site for people who were not able to attend the seminar. All the clips were pulled from the Web site by Sept. 28.

Madigan said a burned DVD of the video found its way to the media soon after Mitchell, who is openly gay, told the board he intended to file a sexual discrimination claim under the Illinois Human Rights Act. Mitchell has had a lawsuit pending against the board regarding the length of his contract.

Raymond Hauser, an attorney for the school district, denied that Mitchell’s being gay had anything to do with the matter.

“I think suddenly they are playing the gay card,” Hauser said just before the school board’s vote. “It’s like saying, ‘Because I’m gay, you can’t discipline me and I can do whatever I want.’ I didn’t know that an alternative lifestyle was an excuse for poor professional judgment.”