DeMaio Jumps Into ‘Racist’ East County School Board Recall
Talk show host and failed politician Carl DeMaio has thrown his support behind a movement to recall La Mesa-Spring Valley School Board Vice President Chardá Bell-Fontenot.
This move comes as right wing news outlets nationwide have taken a small school district school board meeting and made it into a cause celebre for their concept of victimhood.
Bell-Fontenot had the nerve to suggest hastily reopening schools in the district before teachers were vaccinated could harm minority students and there was a racist aspect to the move.
Three out of five students in the district are socioeconomically disadvantaged; half of its students are Hispanic or Latino, while a little more than a quarter are White and about 9 percent are African-American.
Bell-Fontenot wasn’t shooting from the hip when she made her statements. Parents of minority children nationwide have grave reservations about school reopening plans.
From the New York Times:
Even as more districts reopen their buildings and President Biden joins the chorus of those saying schools can safely resume in-person education, hundreds of thousands of Black parents say they are not ready to send their children back. That reflects both the disproportionately harsh consequences the virus has visited on nonwhite Americans and the profound lack of trust that Black families have in school districts, a longstanding phenomenon exacerbated by the pandemic.
It also points to a major dilemma: School closures have hit the mental health and academic achievement of nonwhite children the hardest, but many of the families that education leaders have said need in-person education the most are most wary of returning.
To nobody’s surprise, a bunch of White Citizens have taken this comment personally. As in “some of my best friends are coloreds…”
In case you haven’t noticed, the commonalities of most of the people presenting themselves as “reopen the schools” advocates are their pale skin and obvious privilege.
I’m certainly not surprised about a faction of those White Citizens engaging in the time-honored techniques of harassment and intimidation aimed at the school board member.
Meanwhile, Bell-Fontenot has gone into hiding after receiving death threats. She has filed a claim alleging that someone at the district leaked some of her confidential information.
DeMaio is already soliciting donations for his Reform California group in support of the recall. Surprise! Surprise!
https://twitter.com/KenStoneMedia/status/1367632647502004226?s=20
From the Union-Tribune:
“School board member Bell-Fontenot not only voted to continue to inflict harm on our children by keeping La Mesa-Spring Valley schools closed, but her use of false, reckless and racially divisive smears to attack parents and other community members that support school reopening has created a hostile work environment in the district,” DeMaio said.
Smears, huh? Coming from Carl DeMaio, that’s really rich.
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