School Board member Gene Posca is pushing hard to bring a new McCarthyism to our community, where he claims “radical Marxist” teachers are undermining God-and-country patriotism by not participating in the Pledge of Allegiance – and, by example, encouraging their students to do the same.
He offers no evidence to support this charge, of course, other than to say he has received a “number of public complaints” over the past year. But he doesn’t tell us from whom, specifically, or their affiliations, or how many.
He does tell us where, however, directing his unsubstantiated allegations at Sebastian River High School, which, it turns out, has quietly been in his crosshairs since last year’s graduation ceremony.
Just last month, Posca, speaking from the dais during a board meeting, openly accused a “majority of teachers” of not standing when the national anthem was played at the school’s annual rite of passage.
He also criticized Sebastian River’s leadership, which he said has allowed teachers to publicly disrespect our constitution, military and nation – to the point where they could not be trusted to be alone with students.
Then, at the board’s Superintendent’s Workshop last week, Posca not only doubled down on his rant, insisting he saw what he contends he saw at the graduation, but said he now wants to know how many of Sebastian River’s teachers and staffers do not properly salute the flag at the start of each school day.
And not only in the classroom: He wants to identify and expose teachers who shirk their patriotic duty while out in the hallways, lobbies and courtyard when the pledge is recited – yes, even when there’s no flag is in sight.
Indeed, Posca is so passionate in his delusional quest to root out his ideological enemies, real or imagined, that he wants the board to spend thousands of our tax dollars to do it.
At the workshop, in fact, Posca requested that the board hire an outside analyst to investigate the matter by monitoring classrooms and reviewing video footage from security cameras strategically placed on school grounds.
Such a study, he said, would allow the board to determine the percentage of teachers and staffers who don’t participate in reciting the pledge each day.
“We need to take a look,” Posca said, later adding, “It shows if there’s a big culture problem there.”
There isn’t.
Both School Board Chair Teri Barenborg and Vice Chair Peggy Jones said they visited the Sebastian River campus without notice shortly after Posca’s initial complaint and saw nothing to validate his claims.
In addition, Superintendent David Moore, who described himself as “pretty darn patriotic,” said he and his staff spend more time visiting schools than any other team in Florida, and he would know if there was a pledge problem on any campus.
“My understanding of what’s taking place in the school is pretty solid,” Moore said, adding that he doesn’t need to bring in an outside firm to conduct a study to tell him what he already knows.
“No one can say, ‘It’s not being done,’” he continued. “No one can say, ‘It’s being done 100-percent of the time. … On some days, you’re going to see someone walking across the courtyard, and I don’t know that I’m going to be able to validate if that was happening when the pledge was going on or not.”
But Moore, who at last month’s board meeting staunchly defended Sebastian River’s administration, assured members last week that the district’s position on patriotism is “reflective of this county’s values.”
Posca wasn’t satisfied.
He still wants a study, which he said could focus on three months of security-camera footage that could be reviewed over the summer, so the board could discuss the findings at the start of the next school year.
But what about the classrooms?
Isn’t this supposed to be about making sure students are standing with their hands over their hearts and reciting the pledge?
Or is the purpose simply to target and demean teachers, more than 60 percent of whom belong to a union that Posca has venomously and repeatedly attacked?
Does he even know our teachers? Does he understand the challenges they must overcome each day? Does he appreciate their all-in contribution to the success of our district, which recently earned an “A” rating from the Florida Department of Education and ranks No. 3 in the state with a 96-percent graduation rate?
There’s no justification for Posca’s witch hunt at Sebastian River, but there might be an explanation, albeit nonsensical.
Posca believes the students who participated in the recent protests on college campuses across America – an action he called “liberal communists really making the bridge into terrorism” – were not converted by radical left-wing professors.
“It started in our grade schools,” he said.
Our grade schools?
Here?
“I don’t know if you can find a more important issue, really, to the survival and longevity of the United States of America and the success of our children,” Posca said, referring to protecting children from “people who are ultimately trying to turn them away from their parents, turn them away from God and from their country” to recruit them for some Marxist rebellion.
And this is happening at Sebastian River?
It was mere coincidence – or so we’re supposed to believe – that a former military officer spoke at last month’s board meeting, where he claimed he tried to enroll his 16-year-old son at Sebastian River for the next academic year, only to be told by school officials no accommodations could be made for the boy’s late arrival.
The father explained that his wife is a 30-year Air Force veteran who is retiring on Aug. 23, which prevents his son from starting school until early September. As a result, the boy would miss at least the first 10 days of classes, prompting his removal from some of the courses he would have chosen.
He criticized the board for not providing the flexibility to accommodate military families.
The complaint seemed to catch board members and Moore by surprise, but Assistant Superintendent Eric Seymour immediately approached the father, and the two men left the chamber to discuss the situation.
Once outside, Seymour learned that the father was given bad information.
“He didn’t actually talk to anyone at the school,” Seymour said. “I don’t know where he got the information, but there was no way it came from anyone who knows the law in Florida.
“I informed him that no kid would be turned away, and then provided him with the information he needed to resolve the matter,” he added. “I also told him how to get in touch with me if he encountered any problems.”
What the father conveniently didn’t mention at the podium was that he’s a self-described “conservative activist and commentator” on social media, where his hard-right writings are entirely compatible with Posca’s ideology.
That, too, could be a coincidence.
Still, it was curious that the father referred to “Indian River High,” when he obviously meant Sebastian River High. Also, Seymour said the father has not responded to his follow-up efforts to contact him.
The father’s trip to the podium did, however, hand Posca another opportunity to lash out at the school’s administration, which he essentially accused of discrimination.
“I think if they weren’t a military family, they would have tried harder to help them, but they didn’t try at all,” Posca said, adding, “They chose to ignore that military family. They chose to disrespect that military family.”
No, “they” didn’t.
“No way that would happen,” Seymour said of Posca’s allegations, which were as ridiculous as they were offensive.
But, by design or not, they fit Posca’s narrative and world view, which he used to launch a frontal assault on the board’s two more-moderate members, Jones and Barenborg, both of whom questioned his claims about Sebastian River and the need for any outside study.
Posca, becoming more unhinged as the workshop progressed, somehow connected the turmoil on college campuses – and the fate of the nation – to students not saying the pledge and a seemingly concocted allegation that a military family was treated shabbily.
He said Jones’ refusal to support his push for the pledge probe makes her “either part of the problem or not super sharp,” adding that she ignores the public’s concerns and doesn’t take her job seriously.
He then accused her of protecting “liberal Marxists” and standing with teachers, rather than protecting children.
It was at that point it became obvious: Posca was now the attack dog for the local Moms For Liberty group, which is hoping to unseat Jones in this summer’s election, when control of the school board will be decided.
Anyone who knows Jones, perhaps the most prepared and devoted board member in the county’s history, knows how much she cares about children and how seriously committed she is to her work.
Posca’s inane comment was the equivalent of Tim Tebow criticizing how Tom Brady throws a football.
His move, however, was wholly backed by the board’s two other Moms-endorsed members, Jackie Rosario and Kevin McDonald, both of whom embarrassed themselves with their hypocrisy.
“We need to stop using our dais as a political weapon,” Rosario said – somehow maintaining a straight face – while McDonald spoke about how board members should “maintain decorum and civility.”
Neither asked Posca to back off.
Not that he would have.
He’s still worked up about Sebastian River, at the start of this school year, issuing parking decals that prompted a small number of parents to complain the tie-dye colors too closely resembled the LGBTQ community’s rainbow-colored pride flag.
The principal caved, and the school spent more than $1,000 to replace the decals with school-colored stickers that were, in Posca’s words, “something respectable.”
So don’t expect Posca to let go of this trumped-up and shameless pledge issue, regardless of how his shenanigans damage the perception of our school district and community.
Posca believes there are radical Marxists teaching at Sebastian River – perhaps in our elementary and middle schools, too – and he’s not going to rest until he exposes them.
This is our red scare.