Ten days after Chairman Jay Kramer was unable to publicly explain the Republican Executive Committee’s vote to censure School Board Chairman Brian Barefoot, a member of the partisan organization took it upon herself last week to do so.
Jennifer Pippin’s email blast to school district officials and her anti-mask allies prompted Barefoot to respond, which sparked a two-day verbal exchange that included a local emergency-room doctor and found its way to social media.
“Elected officials are NOT above the laws and executive orders!” Pippin wrote in her initial email, stating that Barefoot was censured because he defied “Republican Governor” Ron DeSantis’ executive order and “Republican Representative” Eric Grall’s parental-rights law when he voted to temporarily require Pre-K to eighth-grade students to wear masks in school.
“We will hold them accountable!” she added. “Parental rights don’t stop with a virus, or ever!”
Rather than rachet up the rhetoric, Barefoot responded thoughtfully and stayed on message, but he didn’t back down.
“Your personal attacks on me and my integrity show that you are unwilling to concede the possibility of different interpretations of the law and executive and emergency orders,” Barefoot wrote, citing a Leon County circuit judge’s initial ruling prohibiting DeSantis from barring mask mandates in schools.
“If you would concede there are many who disagree with your positions, you might have more credibility as an advocate for your point of view.”
His final email of the weekend was similar to his first, in which he defended his vote by writing that the mandate did not violate the parental-rights law or the governor’s order – an opinion shared by School Board Attorney Suzanne D’Agresta, whose counsel he sought on two different occasions.
Barefoot, one of the county’s most-respected Republicans, also attacked the REC’s censure, which he stated violated the organization’s own bylaws earlier this month by conducting a vote that wasn’t on the meeting’s agenda, with guests present and without a show of hands.
He described the vote as “nothing more than grandstanding” and said the action only damaged the REC’s reputation.
“Politics has no place in the education of our children, and I say that as a lifelong Republican,” Barefoot wrote, adding that the censure is meaningless because he’s not an REC member.
Pippin, though, doesn’t plan to go away any time soon – even after Barefoot forwarded to her an email he received from Glen Tremml, an emergency-room doctor at Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital.
“Bullying in schools is a problem,” Tremml wrote to Barefoot. “Now they are trying to bully you.”
In his email, Treml stated that “17 people died in one weekend” two weeks ago, and he cited cases of children suffering from COVID infections, including some that spread to family members.
He endorsed vaccinations and wearing masks.
“I personally cared for scores of very sick COVID-19 people in the ER at arms length for nine months prior to vaccine availability,” Tremml wrote. “I never got sick. I wore a mask.”
