Criticized for priorities, overstepping authority
OCEAN CITY — Much of public comment at Thursday evening’s three-hour Ocean City Board of Education meeting was criticism aimed at a few board members, accusing them of stepping outside their authority, including trying to bully the school’s Parent Teacher Association and pushing a national group’s anti-LGBTQ+ political agenda.
‘There is no reason why representatives of either organization should ever attempt to infiltrate,
overthrow or otherwise subvert the work of the other body.’
–Outgoing PTA President Jocelyn Palaganas
Jocelyn Palaganas, who is about to retire from leading the Ocean City PTA and spending 10 years volunteering with the organization, said she was upset that school board member Catherine Panico interfered during the recent annual PTA meeting and election.
“A board member serving their first term in office chose to join our organization seemingly for the express purpose to intimidate or bully the officers into changing the bylaws of the PTA in order to suit their agenda,” she said.
“This person attended their first PTA meeting and was argumentative and disrespectful to the officers carrying out the election as the bylaws dictate. They concluded by saying, ‘This isn’t over’ in a menacing tone,” Palaganas said.
As the leader of an organization that has funded about $400,000 in scholarships, grants and activities, Palaganas believes it was wrong for a board member to push for a certain candidate.
“I feel I must report this egregious behavior because it is in clear violation of the Board of Education’s own rules of conduct,” she said. “How we can expect our children to learn how to behave in our community when our elected leaders do not demonstrate the appropriate respect and courtesy that we are all due?”
Palaganas noted that being on the Board of Education did not convey the right to bully others into changing the rules to suit their agenda. She added it is not appropriate by the board’s code of conduct for a member to use their position to “further their political aspirations.”
The school board is supposed to be a non-partisan organization and should be working with the PTA to further students’ education and experiences.
“There is no reason why representatives of either organization should ever attempt to infiltrate, overthrow or otherwise subvert the work of the other body,” she said.
Parent Ray Pagan said he was concerned seeing “a semi-fascist comment made at the school board.” He said he didn’t know the board had a “radical faction, but I guess this is where we’re at in 2023.” He urged the board not to limit the scope about what students are taught about anyone in the “pride community.”
He described himself as an account manager who works for the largest tech company in its field and pitches software products to the top managers of national and international companies. Pagan told of how he was in a Zoom meeting with a chief technology officer, a man who was transitioning to become a woman. He said he was “thrown” because this was a “boss of bosses.” He said when local students go on to college and then go to to work for major companies, they may come into contact with people in the trans community.
“Please prepare our youth for when they leave the small bubble of Ocean City for the big tech jobs or the big jobs of our future,” Pagan said, “because that community is not going to hide anymore.”
He added that it was strange for him as a 50-year-man to see that, “but I had to recognize right away that they’re not going away so we cannot inhibit (our students’) education. So when you’re voting down pride displays, think of the education. Think of the future. Our kids are leaving Ocean City for tech jobs or bigger jobs, they’re not going to slicing pizza on the boardwalk. So, please, keep that in mind.”
Exchange student Mario Lucas Lara said he was grateful to study this past year at Ocean City High School, join so many clubs and the Ocean City Drama Guild, and that he had a great experience with all of his teachers.
He encouraged the board to allow more exchange students “because it is a real exchange of experiences. This high school really needs diversity,” he said.
He added that he witnessed discrimination at the school because of origin and xenophobia. He believes that bringing in people with other experiences, with other cultures and nationalities, would help bring about that change.
Parent Lisa Mansfield said the state school board association web site states the role of the school board member is to see that the district is run well, “not to run the schools.”
She said members have no legal authority except when sitting with other board members in a legally constituted meeting and cannot make decisions or speak for the board unless authorized.
Mansfield added that board members cannot promise members of the public they will do something other than pass their concerns along the chain of command, in this case, to the board president.
Board members’ decisions, Mansfield said, must be based on what is good for all students.
“The lack of regard some of you have had for what your role is, interfering where you don’t belong, has got to stop. It is becoming detrimental to the district,” she said.
Upper Township resident Jenna Smith, a parent of four and a teacher for nearly two decades, cautioned the board about giving in to yet another “moral panic.”
“I found I couldn’t stand by anymore and let a small minority of very loud parents use social media and scare tactics to stir up yet another moral panic without saying something,” Smith said.
“The moral panic crowd has been around for a long time. They are, in many ways, as American as apple pie. From the mass murder of women in Salem, to the violent protests they led against a 6-year-old Ruby Bridges outside her school, to the Satanic Panic and Tipper Gore’s war against the first amendment, to their outcries of child abuse over wearing masks to protect our most vulnerable from a global pandemic, to their meltdowns claiming teachers are groomers and pedophiles for bringing acceptance and visibility into our classrooms, the moral panic crowd has managed to make rough situations substantially more terrible,” she said.
The latest obsession is learning loss, Smith asserted, a concept that is “silly” to most professional educators “considering humanity isn’t handed a certified letter from the universe stating what all humans should be able to do at a certain age, learning standards are completely arbitrary … .”
She added the “whole idea of ‘falling behind’ is illogical. If everyone is behind, then who can be ahead?” She said the concept of learning as pass-fail is outdated, assembly-line thinking and that how students are doing educationally varies depending on how data is collected.
“Test scores always have been and always will be a faulty method of data collection. End of story,” she said.
However, she noted students were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic according to the experts — classroom teachers — who have seen “an increase in apathy, anxiety, depression, frustration, a lack of focus and a lack of empathy. They will share stories of overburdened and disengaged parents who lash out during phone calls home, not because they don’t see it too, but because they are so ashamed and overwhelmed by what’s happening that they don’t know what else to say.”
Smith told the board life after the pandemic is different and there is work to be done “but please don’t let the distractions of this next moral panic waste our time by ‘fixing’ things that aren’t broken when there are serious social and emotional needs that need to be addressed.”
Christine Stanford of Upper Township said Moms for Liberty, which endorsed Panico, Robin Shaffer and Liz Nicoletti in the fall school board election, has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center “due to the fact they are an anti-student inclusion organization.”
She said the organization is trying to privatize education, villainize teachers and school officials, advance conspiracy propaganda and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ+ community.
Stanford said the group has ties to the Proud Boys, 3 Percenters and Q-Anon, and that some members have made atrocious statements that school librarians should be gunned down, that those who support LGBTQ+ rights are pedophiles and groomers and that books about Martin Luther King Jr. and Ruby Bridges should be banned.
“I find it extremely problematic that these extremists have made it onto local school boards, especially here in Ocean City,” Stanford said.
She said when there are whispers about board members questioning Pride Month displays in the school libraries or about pulling books, those are right out of the Moms for Liberty playbook.
Panico, Shaffer respond to critics
Panico said it was hard to listen to all the comments directed to her and her colleagues and that she believes all the board members want what is best for the students.
She said she did object to the PTA election process and that she was “alarmed by it” and asserted that some bylaws were not being followed or were being “cherry-picked.”
Panico said she also is alarmed by other things that are taking place and that a lot of things “are done behind closed doors” and there needs to be more balance.
“I’m sitting here at this table with privileged information but I’m in the dark about a lot of these things,” she said.
Panico pointed out one woman who spoke briefly during public comment who asked to see the books that are being used to teach students in the lower grades in the health and physical education curriculum, saying parents should have access to all materials being used in the classroom and that they have the right to communicate and work with families. Transparency, she said, makes for a better situation in the classroom.
“I’m a little blown away by the suggestion that parents having rights is a four-letter word,” Shaffer said. “It is so easy to label these days, to label a group … without any real basis. All it is is creating more division.”
He said he sees that division on the board, but lauded members Disston Vanderslice and Cecelia Gallelli-Keyes for speaking about working together.
“Anybody who wants to lash out at me and call me names from the podium up there, that’s fine, but when it comes from the vice president of our school board, that’s not OK, Mr. Clark,” Shaffer said.
He said Joseph Clark didn’t show him respect with his comments earlier in the meeting when discussing the interim superintendent.
Board member Fran Newman, a representative from Upper Township, lamented the direction things have taken at school board meetings.
Having served for more than 20 years, she said, “This is the most sideways the board has gone. … It is disheartening to me. We are in it for the kids.”
Newman chalked up the problem to moving the school board elections from the spring to November in the hopes of getting better voter participation.
“I’ll stand by this forever … when they moved board elections to November, it became political.”
She said having to put budgets before voters in low-turnout elections in the spring caused problems, when even a zero-increase budget was voted down in Upper Township, but she would still prefer the elections were changed back.
“It did turn political and that is wrong. That’s not what a board should be. I’d rather go back to April and take chances with budgets again,” she said.
Newman noted how student school board representative Lauren Knopp interjected herself when board members were squabbling earlier in the meeting.
“To be reprimanded by a student rep that we were being bad was very good. We needed somebody to rein us back in,” she said. “For a student to do that is sad. That we have strayed that far and gone sideways. This is not where board needs to be.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff