The most consequential of the local races that will be decided Tuesday – the contests that will have the most dramatic impact in shaping the future of our community – are for two School Board seats.
That’s not typically the case.
Usually, the campaign for sheriff gets top billing among local races in our presidential-election-year summer primaries, which is understandable, given that we’re choosing someone to occupy the most powerful office in the county.
We’ve also got three of the five County Commission seats up for grabs, which could produce a different majority on important and sometimes divisive issues.
None of those races, however, has the potential to alter the identity of our community, which can take tremendous pride in being the home of a school district that for two consecutive years has earned an “A” grade from the Florida Department of Education.
In this School Board election, we’ll find out what matters more to the voting adults who live here – continuing to improve the quality of our children’s education, or using our public schools as a political battlefield in trumped-up culture wars.
We’ll find out who we are.
And who we aren’t.
For those who’ve kept themselves informed on the goings-on of our School Board, especially since the governor handed the Moms For Liberty control of the dais in April, the choice couldn’t be more clear.
We can elect District 3 incumbent Peggy Jones and District 5 challenger David Dyer, both of whom are immensely qualified, care more about students than politics, and will make sure the board’s focus stays on education.
Or we can elect District 3 challenger Rob MacCallum and District 5 appointee Kevin McDonald, both of whom have been endorsed by the Moms and enthusiastically embrace the hard-right fringe group’s disruptive agenda, which has little to do with actual education.
To be sure, MacCallum and McDonald were among the Moms-backed candidates statewide to be endorsed by Governor Ron DeSantis, whose flawed vetting process spawned a Sheriff’s Office mess in neighboring St. Lucie County and leaves plenty to be desired.
Not that anyone should give the endorsements much weight, anyway: DeSantis wouldn’t know MacCallum from McDonald if he bumped into them at a book burning.
Instead, take a hard look at the candidates’ qualifications and accomplishments.
Jones has devoted nearly 50 years of her life to education – as a teacher, coach and administrator – and deserves a place on the Mount Rushmore of School Board members in our county.
To this day, she invests more of herself in the job than any board member in memory.
Her opponent?
Anyone who has watched MacCallum’s campaign videos knows what he would bring to the dais: He’s a local realtor who runs two businesses and has two young children in our public schools.
That’s pretty much it, which proves that DeSantis’ endorsement was purely political.
The District 5 race between Dyer and McDonald, both island residents, offers a similar disparity in qualifications, though not quite as glaring as in the District 3 contest.
Dyer enjoyed a wildly successful career serving as president and CEO of some of the world’s most-recognized apparel companies – among them were Tommy Hilfiger, Lands’ End and Chico’s FAS – before retiring in December 2015.
But he began his professional life as a teacher and strongly advocates for literacy, having served on a Florida Council of 100 education committee and, locally, as vice chairman of The Learning Alliance.
McDonald also had a successful corporate career, having worked as a business development manager for Ricoh Americas. And he, too, has a background in education: He spent seven years on the board as treasurer, president and chairman of the Geneva School of Manhattan, a classical Christian institution with an enrollment of 400 pre-kindergarten through grade-12 students.
He was appointed to the local School Board in April, when the governor ignored the will of county voters and refused to allow Brian Barefoot to rescind his mistaken resignation last winter.
Since taking his seat at the dais, however, McDonald has consistently voted with the board’s two Moms-owned members, twice-elected Jackie Rosario and first-termer Gene Posca, and joined them in their culture-war efforts.
More troubling, though, has been McDonald’s unwillingness to challenge or chastise Posca when he has launched nonsensical-but-venomous rants attacking teachers, administrators, other board members and even Vero Beach’s vice mayor.
Perhaps it’s because they have something in common: Both McDonald and Posca, who ran unopposed in 2022, were awarded their board seats without receiving a single vote from the community.
McDonald has been especially conspicuous in his silence, since he publicly professes to be a proponent of civility and courtesy.
Likewise, MacCallum, who claims to support teachers, has said nothing publicly to condemn Posca’s repeatedly expressed disdain for them. Nor has he criticized the inflammatory, blatantly partisan rhetoric the board member has spewed from the dais at recent meetings.
In essence, then, a vote for McCallum or McDonald is an endorsement of Posca’s delusional positions – he sees “radical Marxist teachers” everywhere, and wants the district to install surveillance cameras to catch them not saying the Pledge of Allegiance – and his pseudo-tough behavior.
It’s also an endorsement of Rosario’s hypocrisy: She’s always demanding the board strictly follow state law, but she celebrated the endorsement she received from DeSantis during her 2022 campaign, despite the Florida constitution’s mandate that school board elections be nonpartisan.
Worse, if either MacCallum or McDonald win, the culture-war distractions that Schools Superintendent David Moore was able to overcome the past four years will dominate the dais, much as they have the past few months.
Though Moore and his wife love Vero Beach, it’s unlikely a district leader who possesses his talents and abilities – not to mention his soaring stature – will want to endure such inanity for very long.
And should he depart, you can be sure a Moms-majority board will replace him with a superintendent that shares its values and priorities.
Remember: It was the Moms who concocted the school-library-book controversy, knowing the books in question weren’t being checked out by students but still demanding Moore’s staff waste countless hours reviewing them.
Were some books inappropriate?
Yes.
Should removing them from libraries have been anyone’s top educational priority, given that no one was reading them?
No.
But the Moms needed a cause, and their puppet on the dais, Rosario, made sure they got one.
Now the Moms are at it again, this time causing a stir about proposed changes to federal Title IX legislation that, if adopted, would allow biologically born boys to play on girls’ sports teams and use girls’ locker rooms.
In fact, the Moms and their candidates have dishonestly claimed that Jones supports the changes, even though she stated in no uncertain terms that she doesn’t.
They’re lying because attacking their opponents is their only chance – and because if the Moms lose control of the board, especially after the governor gifted them an undeserved majority, they will have been rejected by the community in which they were born.
The story will go national.
Thing is, this is just another cause concocted by the Moms to attract attention and play politics: Moore said there have been no transgender-related issues in the district, nor has any biologically born boy sought to participate in girls’ sports.
There is no controversy here, and they know it’s a non-factor.
But both MacCallum and McDonald, with help from the Moms on social media, have continued to shamelessly engage in slimy-but-feeble attempts to make boys-in-girls-sports a campaign issue.
You’ve seen no such tactics employed by Jones or Dyer – because they refuse to get into the gutter to win.
They shouldn’t need to.
Attention on the sheriff’s race has increased during the past week as two political action committees have sent out mailers that cast aspersions on all three candidates.
And the bogus write-in candidacy of Keith Ridings to close the Republican primary in the District 5 County Commission race made headlines last month.
They’re important elections, too, but neither of those races – not to nearly the same extent, anyway – will determine what kind of community we’re going to be.
This School Board election will.
Vote accordingly.
