Candidates for Collier County School Board speak at a forum at the Destiny Church in Naples, Fla. on May 21. (Photo: Author)
Aug. 10, 2022
In Southwest Florida school board elections are supposed to be non-partisan—but that doesn’t mean they aren’t divisive.
That has never been truer than this year. School board elections in Southwest Florida and around the country have become battlefields even if the candidates don’t have party affiliations after their names.
Two world views, two philosophies, two complete universes are in conflict. One is the product of a secular, scientific Enlightenment and the other is based on religion, dogma and doctrine.
What’s really at stake in these school board elections is which worldview will mold the next generation of Florida’s youth. Will they go into the future equipped with the intellectual skills and knowledge to succeed in a complex, diverse, technological world? Or will they be shaped by an emotionally comforting but academically deficient cocoon from which they never emerge?
It’s against this backdrop that Southwest Florida voters should carefully choose which candidates will guide the region’s education.
In both counties early in-person voting begins Saturday, Aug. 13 (the last day to request a mail-in ballot) and runs until Saturday, Aug. 20. Primary Election Day is Tuesday, Aug. 23. Mail-in ballots are already arriving. If candidates receive over 50 percent of the vote in the primary they will be elected without having to run again in the general election.
Collier County
In Collier County the choice is absolutely clear: all incumbents should be returned to office.
That means electing Jory Westberry in District 1, Jen Mitchell in District 3 and Roy Terry in District 5.
Jory Westberry (Photo: CCPS)
Jen Mitchell (Photo: Author)
Roy Terry (Photo: CCPS)
This is not even a contest: these three educators have experience, credentials and a proven commitment to the education and the well-being of Collier County’s students. Their past efforts earned the Collier County School District an “A” rating from the Florida Department of Education for the fifth year in a row.
None of the challengers have anything close to their qualifications to sit on the school board.
No challenger has shown an interest in or familiarity with the nuts and bolts of school system management, budgeting and decisionmaking, which is really what keeps a school district functioning.
There’s no point in belaboring this. If Collier County students are going to be competently educated, Westberry, Mitchell and Terry need to be re-elected.
Lee County
There are similar stakes in Lee County’s school board race, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has reached down to support and fund his own favored candidates.
The candidates endorsed by the Lee County Democratic Party merit the support of Lee County voters.
They are:
District 1: Kathy Fanny
District 4: Debbie Jordan
District 5: Gwynetta Gittens
District 6: Tia Collin
On a disturbing note
One particular campaign incident merits special attention.
In the Collier County School Board race for the 5th District, candidate Tim Moshier’s campaign manager, Katiepaige Richards, posted an overtly anti-Semitic 7-second video on social media.
Katiepaige Richards, campaign manager for Tim Moshier, in her social media video.
With the text “j€w$ remixing the part where they’re not using p0rn0gr@phÿ as mind control” over the image, Richards mimes being a disc jockey scratching records while dancing. Her careful use of symbols in the text to avoid alerting community standards algorithms indicates that this was a very deliberate production and not something done casually.
Her reference is to a new anti-Semitic canard among the extreme right that, as Richards put it in a different tweet: “…Zionists use pornography as mind control for the population… for white people specifically… no one has yet to prove me wrong.” And in another post she stated that she’s “not a fan of zionists, degeneracy, vaccines or globalists.”
When asked about his campaign manager’s video at the opening of a new Republican Party headquarters, candidate Moshier told Naples Daily News reporter Rachel Heimann Mercader that “I don’t have a problem with it.”
Moshier has no educational credentials whatsoever. Before this he was just unqualified for a school board seat; his answer and indifference to bigotry make clear he’s unfit for any public office at all.
It’s just one more indication of the stakes and sensibilities in this year’s school board races—in Southwest Florida and across the country.
Liberty lives in light
©2022 by David Silverberg