TWF 360: Chaos In The School District

Hello, friends, 

I’ve been bemused by some of the things I’ve been hearing coming out of Freeport for a while now, I’ve kept my thoughts to myself for the most part for reasons I’ll explain in a sentence or two, but I think it’s finally time I give them some written form.

So let’s get the obvious disclaimers out of the way:

Disclaimer Time.

• 1:  I no longer live or work in Freeport.  I’ve said this in at least half of the latest articles, but, yeah.  Consider my opinion to be that of a former resident’s, as someone who isn’t impacted personally by what happens.

• 2:  I am a former Freeport High School Teaching Assistant from 2010-2015.  That means I actually know some of the people involved in this drama.  I was also the assistant coach for the boys’ swim team for two years.

• 3:  Other than a couple very brief dialogues, I am working off of what I have read from many Freeport Residents and other people concerned with the situation, as well as other publications from other media outlets (particularly the Long Island Herald).  That means I have NOT, as a matter of principle on this one, reached out to talk to those deeply involved.  That, in turn, means that I am almost exclusively referring only to things which are public, wide-spread information, with the caveat that such information is sometimes incorrect and imprecise.

• 4:  I’ll try not to curse too much, but given how insane this all is, I might.  (I did)

So What The Heck Is Going On With Freeport Public Schools?

The long and short is that there seems to be no one thing going wrong, but rather a constellation of weird stuff that sounds like it shouldn’t be happening.

The overarching theme is that there is a conflict between the school board and, so it would seem, everyone-the-hell-else.  School board is fighting its own Superintendent, school board is fighting concerned residents, school board is fighting teachers, and all of this is most definitely having an impact on student wellbeing.

Let’s take these things on mostly in that order, because why not?

Freeport School Board Versus Superintendents And Structures

As reported on by the Long Island Herald wayyy back in April of 2025, Freeport placed its rather new Superintendent, Fia Davis, on administrative reassignment.  Basically, that means she’s on paid suspension - she collects a paycheck, but she isn’t doing any work.  What the Herald notes, and what I want to stress here, is that this was a 3-0 School Board vote with 2 of the members not even fucking present.

There goes my swearing promise.

For now, we can postulate as to why the school board felt such an important vote had to happen without the whole board present until the cows come home.  The bottom line is that two members didn’t even get to voice their opinions about it on the record, and that’s an enormously bad sign because either the situation was so immediate that the Board couldn’t wait, or the Board’s majority chose not to wait and deliberately shut the other two members out from even getting to speak about it.

The Herald further reported on May 1st that the administrative reassignment was apparently not meant to suggest wrongdoing had taken place, just that it was “neutral.”  It simultaneously reported that Assistant Superintendent for personnel and projects, Benjamin Roberts, was leaving the district.

Dr. Alice Kane (Who I’m kind of sure I’ve worked with in the past, but at a very far distance; no hostility, she was pretty cool, we just did very different things at the school - but I miiiight be mixing her up with someone else?) was appointed interim Superintendent.

Since this all went down, it’s my understanding that the school board has been radically reshaping its superintendent structure.

On November 21st, the Herald reported that the school board is re-organizing its administrative structure entirely.  Five assistant superintendent roles were replaced with four executive director ones.  What does that mean?

I have no idea.  When it comes to education, I’ve always believed that it isn’t so much, “what does the administrative organization chart look like” as it is, “how does this organization work to benefit its students.”

I’m hearing - again, from a distance - that it’s not.

Special Needs Services In Question?

For example, I’ve read numerous crowdsourced reports that students who are entitled, through their Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), to speech therapy services have not been getting them. For months, apparently.  I’ve read that other students with disabilities have similarly not gotten their educational needs met.

I don’t know the exact details as to what is and isn’t being provided, but it’s my understanding that with all of these changes to the Superintendent structure (and other issues I’ll get to later), the necessary resource acquisition, management, and distribution for a school system to function appropriately is simply not happening.

As always, students with special needs are getting left in the dust.

Now, three brisk paragraphs about me and my background with education, specifically with students with disabilities, so you get where I’m coming from and why this is so frustrating.  First and foremost, I was one:  Among other things, I have a fine motor skill impairment.  I had a 504 Plan (similar to an IEP) that included my right to have access to a computer when taking tests.  I couldn’t hand-write, but as you might imagine from reading this, I can type quite a bit.

My job as a Teaching Assistant at Freeport was - primarily - to work as a one-to-one assistant to students with special needs.  Does a student have a disability that requires a little outside help?  That’s me!  I’m the outside help!  That could take the form of academic support such as reading for someone with dyslexia, or it could take the form of providing external regulation to a student with emotional balance issues.  That’s what I did.

I eventually moved on to teach Social Studies and ELA for New York City, where I had more than one Inclusion class that I’d work with a co-teacher on.  That means I have first-hand experience as both the teacher in the front of a room full of students with special needs, and the teaching assistant in the back with a kid who needs extra help.

In other words, I know my shit.

And those services are required by law.

Let’s move on to the way the board has handled community concern about this.

How The Freeport School Board Has Handled Public Meetings

Let’s go back to one of our Herald articles.  In it, Board Member Shuron Jackson claims he was given notice of an unusually-timed 5:00 meeting at…2:44 PM.  2 hours and 16 minutes is not, to my understanding, a fair amount of notice of a meeting.  In fact, I dare say Google’s “AI Overview” (which, I mean, it’s AI so it could very well be wrong) suggests that you need 72 hours notice for a meeting by law.

I’ll leave it to lawyers to settle that question.

That said:  This is where I largely break with almost serving as a curational journalist towards the Long Island Herald and just…Go with what I’ve been reading on Facebook.  See, I might not live there anymore, but I still have a lot of friends and semi-friends who live in the Village.

And they are pissed.

For starters:  Apparently the Board hasn’t been letting people ask questions about the numerous problems that they have with what’s going on.  Or, if they are, they’re hiding behind things being under investigation.  Which, I mean, I get it - if you can’t talk about an ongoing personnel matter, you can’t, right?  But then you also can’t get mad that people are hearing rumors and getting angry about it.  Because you aren’t telling them what’s really going on.

We will circle back to this when we get to our final section (Remember, this is only our second of three major topics) about teachers.

So, people are mad that their questions aren’t being answered, sure - but they’re also mad that they apparently, so they claim, aren’t being allowed to ask them in the first place.  Some of that has been deflected on to issues like, “This meeting never had public comment to begin with.”  Which…Okay, I mean, I remember back in 2010 when The Weekly Freeporter first launched and how people didn’t grasp that not every Village Board meeting would have Public Comment.

But, again, if you never allow for comments and, on the rare occasion you do, never answer questions, people are gonna be pissed.  That’s just the nature of the beast called governance.

Let me pull from yet another Herald article by Mohammed Rafiq:

“They are not actually meetings of the public” is a hell of a quote when you’re an elected representative of the public.

Well, at least they acknowledge that they’re not acting like “most school boards.”

Freeport School Board Versus Freeport Teachers

One of the earliest complaints I heard about the way the school board was behaving was how it treated Football coach Jimmy Jones.  I know Jones as a solid man who has my respect.  Hell, I’ll extend that to the whole Jones family - I’ve sat with students in Meredith Jones’ Health class.  He took over after Russ Cellan’s departure.

Jones was removed as head coach this year.

Allegedly, someone threw something at Jones (Which by the way is assault).  Jones had a reaction to this, and the nature of that reaction seems to be the source of the conflict, here.

Like…Here’s Eddie “Truck” Gordon, someone I’ve known distantly for a long time, speaking on the topic.  Gordon is a few years older than me, so we didn’t spend much time at FHS together, but we’ve brushed shoulders here and there over the years.  And, yeah, he’s a resident who helped lead a lot of people into going to board meetings.

Where their questions weren’t answered.

Hmmmmmm.

I wanna move on to another, somehow-even-worse situation:  Pat Langan is the president of the Freeport Teachers Association.  I knew Pat as both a student and as a TA.  She was always kind, always chill, knew her students and her material down cold.  She’s great.  She is heavily quoted in this Herald article here talking about the conditions she’d been working in, lately.

It’s my understanding that Pat was just recently reassigned from her decades-long position at Freeport High School to Dodd Middle School.  This certainly looks like on-the-job retaliation for her speaking out.  I can’t put it any more plainly.  She is the union president and she’s singled out for a transfer?  What?  Freeport can’t hire new teachers, they have to transfer people around mid-fucking-school-year?

See, confession time:  I’ve had the displeasure of taking up a new schedule in the middle of the school year.  In fact, I’ve had that displeasure twice - And I was only successful the first time.  The first time I had a lot of administrative and colleague support, and was able to pull off a good school year.  The second time, I didn’t have nearly the same support, and I couldn’t pull it off.  It led to me eventually having to resign mid-year because I just didn’t have the strength to do it.  That’s how demanding it is.

If any of the kids I disappointed in 2017 read this:  I’m sorry.   I truly failed you.

Simply put:  Taking up a class in the middle of the year is extremely difficult.  Doing it because you are re-assigned mid-year is insane.  And having to do so because you are targeted by the school board?

When the simplest and least painful solution for everyone involved is “Find a teacher, even a permanent substitute (as I was) to fill the gap and leave everything else alone?”

Speaking as a teacher with first-hand experience, let me be extremely plain:  There is no good educational reason for doing this.

This can only be punishment.

I’ve heard other horror stories, too.  I’ve heard that the schools have started using per-diem, placement-service-provided Teaching Assistants and even forced an old friend of mine through that path for some unclear reason.  I can’t speak to that because I don’t know all the details and that old friend has since passed on.

Her name was Judi Kupi, and she ran a computer lab at the high school for decades.  I went to her lab when I had tests to take as a kid.  She was my union boss when I was a TA.  She dedicated her life to Freeport and its students in ways most people simply can’t imagine.

And, if I have my facts right, at the very end of her career they took her computer lab from her.

Yeah.  I think we’re almost done here.

So What Can Be Done About It?

It’s my understanding that within the last week, efforts were being made to organize a protest.  It’s fitting:  One of The Weekly Freeporter’s first articles back in 2010 was about a protest against the school budget.

How the world turns, eh?

I would encourage parents and residents alike to check out mostly-Facebook for information about when and where any actions might be, and to take part if they are at all capable.  It may take a bit to figure out who is leading what and which group will best fit you, but spend a few minutes researching.  It might be a good idea to keep an ear to the ground for any Freeport Teachers Association actions that might or might not take place, and to support them.

I would also encourage attendance at school board meetings.  Even if you don’t ask questions yourself, your presence demands respect, and you can bear witness to what takes place.

Lastly, and this should go without saying, but please be active in voting for the school board.  This isn’t to say, “Don’t vote for the budget.”  The budget is the resources that are supposed to go to the students.  Don’t take those away!

Instead, think of who you’re voting for on the school board.

Or, hell - If you’re curious, if you have some free time in the structure of your life, and especially if you have kids in the district you are afraid aren’t being properly taken care of, run for school board yourself.

Thank you for reading.

TWF 326 - A Dig Into Claims Of Increased School Violence.

Hello, friends!

Throughout the course of this years' contest for School Board, I've seen numerous parents, residents, and taxpayers express concern about the safety conditions at the Freeport School District degenerating. That's a weird sentence, but I don't know how else to really put it: There's this pervasive idea that the schools are unsafe as they're operated; or, at least significantly less safe than they were.

I mean, hey!  Didn't you hear about that one recent, really bad fight?  Isn't that something to be worried about?

This article has changed significantly in its second draft thanks to information from village insiders and also just the course of revisions.  Much of it (especially the data dive) will be in its original form, because that was the original point of the article - Background, data-dive, quick thoughts, done.

The more research I did, the more complicated the story got, and the more I had to say about it; so I hope you'll join me for a dive into data, statistics, numbers, and - ultimately - a broader perspective to take on some changes that need to take place to fix what looks like a very real, but intangible problem.

If you want a TL;DR version of this, just scroll down to the last few paragraphs, but suffice to say that the data does not tell a complete picture, the research is sometimes contradictory, and the pursuit of information has been hampered with farce.  I've broken the article down to chapters, with chapter 3 being my conclusions and, as I always endeavor to provide, recommendations on what to do, next.

On The Record About School Safety

Obviously, it goes without saying that student safety is paramount.  As an educator for about eight years, I've always put student safety first.  I've had to test that commitment to their safety bodily (took just a grazing blow, no biggie).

Chapter One:  Sourcing and data.

Getting A Background

I was looking for some exact quotes to pull from the candidates, because the first thing I know about journalism is that it's essential to get people at their word. So imagine my surprise when I ran into a little problem with trying to track down some relevant Facebook groups:

I found it weird that I couldn't see the Facebook group for Butler and Jackson's campaign, when I had been able to do so for my previous article on the election (TWF 324).  So, naturally, I asked if other people could still see it, and their answer was "very clearly, yes." I saw so, myself, on another person's Facebook account, that the group and its posts still existed.

So, that almost certainly meant I was blocked from their Facebook group for asking this very question.

Since it's now the day after this issue, it's only fair to note that it appears I have since been un-blocked, because the group is visible again, but only after public complaint.  I am not the only person who has experienced an inability to see their group; there's more than one person who has reported being being blocked from some groups or pages.

For what it's worth, I've been assured that I never was blocked, but I can't think of any explanation as to why others could see what I couldn't.

This feels like the early days of getting into stupid Facebook arguments as far back as 2010.  Ahh, the old days of Mayor Hardwick trying to influence the School Board.  (Mayor Kennedy has endorsed the Jackson/Butler ticket)  The reason I mention it is because, again, this is a dive into my research practices as much as it is an analysis of background, and when I find something - shall we say - interesting in the research, I always report it.

It's hard to come up with a background record when part of it is obscured, even temporarily.

Moving on:  I was looking for quotes.  Let's see what I find.

What's Readily Available

I do have a very brief, but useful bit of a statement-on-safety from each of the four candidates, courtesy of the Long Island Herald:

Most of this is in the mold of boiler-plate obligations that political leaders have to say.  I get it!  Maria Jordan-Awalom provides a broader context to the problem of a nation-wide rise in school violence, based on her experience with police councils.  This would lend some significant credence to the idea that, yes, there might be an ongoing spike!  We will circle back around to this later.

But the thing I noticed that was particularly unusual was Mr. Ben Jackson's (I almost wrote "Mr. Jackson," but there are two candidates with that last name running, so I have to check myself) interest in increasing the amount of contact between the schools and the police department.  It's couched in the Adopt-A-Cop program, which is certainly an interesting idea!

But, here, I have to think about my own experience in education.

I was an educator for about eight years, and five of them were spent in Freeport.  When I later worked for NYC DOE, we frequently had contact with school-based police officers.  The reception was definitely mixed; I'm sure I got a mostly-positive reception as I was a teacher (I even wore "work clothes!"), but I'm pretty sure the kids didn't share those feelings.  Many of them told me they felt like they were labeled "bad kids" and otherwise stigmatized by things like having police in the school and having metal detectors and whatnot.

In other words, I know it did significant mental harm to them.

Now, I know from first-hand experience that there are days Freeport High breaks out the metal detector wands.  Those days *suck,* by the way, but I get it.  They happen!  There's a known threat, or maybe it's just a random day once in a while to check things.  Totally understandable.

But I've also had to be the guy who doesn't just de-escalate students, but de-escalates cops who are thinking of detaining his students instead of just talking through a problem.  That was certainly an unpleasant day, and my fear is that adding police into the schools will create those type of problems when previously they didn't exist.

Could police be further integrated into the schools in an appropriate manner?  Maybe!  It's just very hard to say what will cross the fine line between, "We have a guest in the school today," and, "One more reminder I live my daily school life under surveillance by authorities who don't trust me to be free."  And I haven't seen a stated plan-of-action anywhere, so my gut says, "Not without a clear plan, no."

(I am obliged to note, based on this invocation, that the Freeport Police Benevolent Association has endorsed Mr. Ben Jackson, as well as his running mate Mr. Butler.)

So there's your background - and some of it's mine, when it comes to talking about schools.

Now, let's look at some data starting with 2020-2021

This is mostly stream-of-consciousness, and a look into my research procedure as much as it is into data.

Thanks to a lead from one Scott McInnes (I tip my hat), I've been able to find data on what the school has reported to the state. The website to do this can be found from the NYS Department of Education, whereby first you have to pick a year. Then you download one of two spreadsheets - The choices are “NYC” or “not NYC,” so that's a lot of data to parse.

Thankfully, (Editorial Note:  SOME OF) the spreadsheets are built with filters included.

I also have to note:  2020-2021 was the Pandemic's height. (Case numbers are climbing back up, by the way) Most kids weren't in school for most of the year.  Much of the in-class time involved hybrid learning.  I know - I was working in an elementary school for part of it.

Here's what you get when you look at Freeport for 2020-2021.  It's not 21-22, but that year (which appears to be the entire point of this question!) isn't over.  It'll require two separate images to put all the spreadsheet data out:

So, there you have the 2020-2021 data.  Anyway, what we've got here starts with one - to be clear, this is bad - incidence of physical assault.  I don't know how far a common fight has to get in order to be classified as "physical assault."  It took place at Atkinson, if that's any help.

Moving on in a similar vein:  The next thing that jumps out at me is that we've got a (very hard to parse) bit of data indicating that cyberbullying is a problem.  I don't think that's anything particularly new, but there's also less than ten incidents of it.  Now, yes, that needs to be worked on, but that's about one incident a month.

Then, on to the possession situation:  3 in Dodd, 3 in FHS.  Okay.  Kids shouldn't be doing drugs, should not selling them; we get that.  We'd like those numbers to be better, but, also, as much as kids shouldn't do something, I'm not stupid enough to pretend they don't.  At this point in my analysis, I can only note that number and get ready to look back to previous years for a trend.

There were also four incidents of weapons being brought to school.  Two of these incidents happened in Atkinson, by the way, which I only stress because I've TA'd in an elementary setting and...Just, how does an elementary kid try sneaking a weapon in without their parents finding out?  I guess it's pretty easy, it seems to happen all the time, but, wow.

Looking Back A Few Years Further.

Lemme just pull up the 2019-2020 data...

Yikes!  Okay, so what you're telling me is it ISN'T nearly as accessible as the previous document.  Now, then, here we are, Freeport, in between Roosevelt and Baldwin in this not-alphabetical list.

And here is the data!

I'm going to be honest:  TWF is a free publication, I don't charge for it, so I don't have money to pay a data analyst to break this down.  You've only got me, and your own eyes if you want to take your own look.  The highlighted column is for possession of weapons, so clearly that was more of a problem in 2019-2020 than 2020-2021.  Which only makes sense.

My eye also caught the number 6 and got concerned, but when I scrolled up it didn't even tell me what the column was, so...I'm at a loss, but 6 is bad.

Maybe 2018-2019 will be more parseable?

Good news:  It is.  This is how a spreadsheet should look for accessibility.

Bad news:  Just a first glance reveals some alarms.

And the second glance puts us into the double-digits:

I don't need to tell you that those numbers look worse.

They look worse.

How about 2017-2018?  Garbled mess again:

I wonder if the data scientists who compile these reports finish them up in alternating years?  Every other year the data makes sense and is well presented; every other year, it's virtually useless.

So we go between Roosevelt and Baldwin again...

Without much by way of context, these numbers seem to be less numerous than 18-19.  Of course, those are kind of random data points.

So What Does The Data Show?

First: Most obviously, the 2020-2021 data is less than helpful as a baseline because of the Pandemic closures and hybrid learning modalities.

Second:  Any numbers mean someone's had a really bad day, right?  Whether it's possession of narcotics or something far worse, every incident means something broke down along the way.  But what matters is how we react to it.

Third:  This data isn't the complete picture.

What do I mean?

Chapter Two:  Data can be incomplete, and is only ever part of the puzzle.

Two Rabbits.

Here's where we take the broader context into consideration.  I've got two rabbits and can only chase one at a time, but I'm about to cover both Jordan-Awalom's point about a nationwide increase in violence, and then I'm going to cover what's 'being said,' what I believe and know to be accurate about some stuff, and then finally offer a solution to at least one of the problems this data has raised.

First, to the idea of a nation-wide violence spike.  Well, in November 2021, the publication Education Week put out an article detailing that there had been an increase in school violence.  It gets a bit weirder; the same kind of thing was claimed in 2018 by USA Today (Interestingly, the 2018-2019 data looked particularly bad, earlier).  But, also, in late February 2022, NBC 6 in South Florida reported on yet another ongoing increase in violence.

Let's take this reporting for what it is:  The claim that school violence is increasing nationwide is grounded in evidence, but that evidence dates back to both before the Pandemic and after the Pandemic.  So does that mean violence is on a continually increasing scale?  Possibly!  Or, could it mean there are tiny spikes at various times?  Also possibly!

It's enough that we can't rule out that Freeport is simply seeing splash-over from a national trend.

But, let's now circle back to the claims, themselves.

What's really being said, and what does 'increase' even mean?

Well, first off, there's the general complaint, itself.  "Violence is on the rise!"  Well, I've seen those kind of claims before.  I've seen it here, and I've seen it in other schools.  It is a very easy political tool to use against incumbents, whether it's got a factual backing or not.  But some of the stories I've heard from parents have really had an impact upon me, and I also have no reason to immediately assume they are false.

What I have is knowledge that there is a substantial amount of trouble, both inside the schools and taking place outside of, but nearby.  Again, I have no reason to doubt what I've seen, regardless of where it came from.  Apropos of everything, yes, it is concerning.

What I haven't seen (yet, anyway?) is evidence that this is an actual increase in unacceptable behavior.  We know it's bad!  We're told by some it's worse than ever, and just as we lack data to prove it is, we also lack data to prove it isn't.  Certainly something needs to change, but what?

And does the problem have a Freeport-specific origin, or is it part of a nationwide trend that requires nationwide efforts to stop?

Let's make some suggestions!

Chapter Three:  Conclusions And Recommendations.

What New York State Can Do ASAP:

We need to change the way school violence numbers are reported.  Yearly simply doesn't cut it.  Schools are supposed to take some degree of guidance from parents, but parents can't provide that guidance if they don't have data on what's going on right now.

I remember during the Coronavirus pandemic (which is still ongoing; I'm talking about the earlier days), that schools were mandated to publish real-time statistics on how many kids and staff contracted CoVID.

There is no reason this cannot be done with school violence statistics, except perhaps for having to shift workloads around or hire a new staff member to take care of it.  This type of mandate must be coupled with funding to increase staff specifically for this purpose, but also for others so long as the data is compiled daily.

Ideally, this data would be published on the school's website, but it could be a state-maintained database that they link to.

That may require new laws to be passed.  Discuss with your relevant NYS Assemblyfolk/Senators.

What Freeport Can Probably (?) Do Right Now

What would be most helpful, right now, would be if Freeport could disclose what violence numbers they would be reporting to the state as of the year-to-date.  This would be imminently helpful to settling this arguable idea of a "spike in violence," as well as providing evidence for any rapid responses needed to counteract them.  There might be some state statute which prohibits this, there might not.  I'm not an education lawyer.

For all I know, it's as easy as publishing a spreadsheet file.

For all I know, it's legally prohibited!

And As For The Community...

Freeport simply has a hotly contested election on its hands.  The claims are huge, and the publicly-available data to check them is slim.  The possible solutions are many, but so is the possible blow-back.  It's a fine line to walk.  Your vote matters.  You should vote.

Your subjective experience may vary!  Maybe you've got family who goes to the school and has primary-source information that's got you thinking things are worse than ever.  Maybe you've got some old memories of a time when things were pretty bad at the schools, yourself.  (I'm lookin' back at you, 1990's, especially 97)  Maybe you have seen a video on the internet that's got you shaken.  Maybe you haven't experienced any problems, whatsoever.

It's up to you to vote based on what you believe.

As always, The Weekly Freeporter is not making any endorsements.  I'm just providing you with one internet stranger's (or maybe pal's?) exploration into an issue that hits home.  I hope it's been helpful.

Jesse Pohlman is a 'recovering teacher' and author born and raised in Freeport, New York.  Thank you for reading, I hope it made you think.

TWF 325: School Board Candidate Forum, May 3rd, 2022, at Dodd Middle School!

 Hello, friends!

A short and simple one, today, to celebrate 325 posts on TWF:  The four candidates for School Board will be part of a "Meet The Candidates" forum.  If you have any questions, they may be able to provide answers!  Feel free to ask whatever you'd like.

Thanks for reading!  Jesse Pohlman is a Sci-Fi/Fantasy author born and raised in Freeport, New York, currently living in another LI town, with a website available at this link!

TWF 324: Upcoming School Board Vote, Tuesday May 17th, 2022!

 Hello, friends!

It's been a bit, and there's not too much for me to say at this time, but I did want to put what tiny extra light I can on an upcoming Board Of Education and School Budget vote on May 17th, plus provide a short editorial about school board elections in general, nationwide, and not specific to Freeport.

There are, as far as I am aware, two "slates" of candidates that are being voted for.  As always, The Weekly Freeporter is a non-partisan endeavor and we will not be publishing any endorsements on the subject.  I will link to their respective Facebook pages so you may read more about their perspectives and qualifications.

First up is the tag-team of BoE incumbent Maria Jordan-Awalom, who is running for (what I believe to be) her second term, and first-time candidate Shuron Jackson, himself an educator.

Next up, we've got the team of Ben Jackson (no relation to Shuron, I'm sure), President of the Freeport Chamber of Commerce, and Jacques Butler, Vice-President of Freeport PAL.

Voter turnout in school board elections is typically low.  For example, it's hard to pin down exactly how many people voted in the 2019-2020 elections, since votes are permitted for any two candidates they choose, but the winning candidates had 659 and 714 votes, respectively.  Freeport is a Village with over 40,000 residents, but it took the collective votes of less than 1/40th of that to win the election.  The budget vote is rarely close, but I remember back when I was in elementary school that wasn't the case and the district went on an austerity budget that was impactful enough on my education that I remember it.

I highly encourage you to get out and vote in your School Board election, wherever you live.

Now for a brief editorial you may, or may not, want to read.

A Note On Creeping Fascism In School Board Elections

As I've stressed, school board elections are important.  Right now, they are a significant "culture war" battleground. While The Weekly Freeporter is non-partisan, it is very Anti-Fascist.  Let me stress up front that to my knowledge, none of the candidates running for election have tripped any of the red flags I'm about to point out, but I have seen some shameful Facebook comments that have helped inspire this commentary.

To that end, please be wary any time commentators (and especially candidates!) start talking about things like, for example, "We shouldn't be teaching students CRT" and "We shouldn't be teaching little kids about sexuality."

Those lines of "inquiry" are substantial red flags that the person in question is aligned with Fascist ideology, and they should immediately be challenged to explain what they are talking about, with evidence.  These are dog-whistles (more like megaphones) for racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other bigotries of-that-like

There is no chance that these are things which are being taught in the way Fascists portray.

If you would like more education on these topics, or just if you've got about an hour to kill (Maybe you have some commuting to do, and you could use something to listen to?), I would recommend starting with Some More News' take on the so-called "CRT issue."  Yes, it's halfway to being a comedy show, and halfway to being a tragedy as it covers real-life events quite accurately.