No Bullies on the Board: An Op-Ed by Gail Buckland
By Gail Buckland
Two of the candidates for Warwick Valley School Board, Adrienne Tveter and Angel Maysonet, are or have been members of Moms for Liberty. The Moms for Liberty Orange County chapter has endorsed and held fundraisers for them.
It is important for voters to know what Moms for Liberty stands for because it is difficult to know what these two candidates believe or want to accomplish. Maysonet, during his years as a New York City patrol cop, had five substantiated allegations against him, including excessive physical force, discourtesy, and offensive racial language. He has proposed having teachers wear bodycams and has laced his podcasts with coarse language (“The young generation being such fucking twats.”) Tveter speaks about “parental rights” which can translate into aggressive interference with curriculum and banning books in schools. Neither Maysonet nor Tveter have any professional training related to K-12 education.
Moms for Liberty seems to want to radically reinvent public school education, and not for the good of children or the good of America. They want to monitor what is taught in schools. They have advocated banning books. Last year they were focused on opposing critical race theory, which is NOT taught in any K-12 classrooms; opposing race education in general; and opposing specifically teaching a more comprehensive understanding of the history of African Americans in this country.
This year Moms for Liberty obsess about sex (and gay and transgender rights). What world do they live in? Children are more computer competent than their parents. If they want to find something out, they can just click, or follow that old fashion formula of asking an older sibling or friend. And this may come as news to Moms for Liberty, but they can’t change a person’s sexual orientation.
The Warwick Valley schools are a success by all standards – academic and in arts, sports, vocational training and much more. There are courses at the high school with 99 available college credits.
The Board of Education, of which three current members are running for re-election, Dory Masefield, Robert Howe and John Garcia, has been exceptional in reaching out for community input. A 2016 survey of more than 2000 parents, teachers, administrators and others came up with educational goals that teachers and administrators in Warwick are meeting. Moms for Liberty speak of traditional values – they can’t pretend the 2016 survey is “out of date.”
It appears that Moms for Liberty want to break public education so they can create it in an image they believe will “protect” their children. The best protection children can have is an education that prepares them for the challenges, complexity, diversity and wonders of the real world. Trying to control children’s inquiring minds is real child abuse. To institute a Big Brother scenario – whether teachers are forced to wear body cams or are afraid to engage in honest, open discussion answering children’s questions is exactly what public school education is NOT.
How did Tveter and Maysonet get their endorsements from Moms for Liberty, a group that was instrumental in removing the excellent superintendent of the Florida (New York) schools? It has come to my attention that they would have had to fill out a questionnaire which asked them, among other questions:
Do you support the teaching or training of critical race theory? YES OR NO
Do you believe parents should have a voice in curating public school libraries? YES OR NO
Do you support teaching minors that they can change their gender? YES OR NO
Have you been endorsed by the teacher’s union. YES OR NO
Unless Tveter and Maysonet are embarrassed about their answers, let the voters know what they believe. In my reviewing of their online messaging, they do not seem like people who would come to the Board of Education with open minds and willing to reach compromise. Anger, as displayed on their Moms for Liberty Facebook pages, seems to dominate and propel their desire to get on the school board and break what is good in public school education – creating safe space for all children to grow into kind, free-thinking, educated individuals.
Moms for Liberty is not a grass roots movement but a highly orchestrated right-wing organization funded by outside money. It has been linked, not only here in Orange County, with actions resulting in the removal of Superintendent Larry Leaven, but across the country with threatened violence against school board members in the name of “parental rights.” Beware of that phrase. It is code for Moms for Liberty intervention in schools, an intervention that we would live to regret if they get a foothold on the Warwick Valley school board.
Vote for the incumbents Dory Masefield, Robert Howe, and John Garcia on May 16 (or before, by absentee ballot), who have proven that, without rage, bullying and intimidation, they know the meaning of excellence in education and how through sound decision making, not demagoguery, they can do what is best for all school children. This is an election that counts; please make sure to cast your ballot.
Gail Buckland was a consultant on the History Channel series, The Story of US, and curator of Visions of Liberty, celebrating the Centennial of the Statue of Liberty. For 12 years she collaborated on the New York Times Best Seller, The American Century, by Harold Evans. This book, a political history of the second century of the American
Constitution, examined the constant challenges to our democracy and
how we, as a country, prevailed. She taught at Cooper Union for 40 years and is a member of the Tri-State Lookout Editorial Advisory Board.
Community focused news can only succeed with community support. Please consider the various subscription levels.