Commentary, Part 2: Melanie Salins – a master of irony in accusations of a lack of truth in reporting

I concluded Part 1 of this rebuttal of Warren County School Board member Melanie Salins’ public posts questioning the truthfulness and political perspective of The Royal Examiner staff by suggesting the fact “that Publisher Mike McCool, a well-known conservative and Donald Trump supporter, and his more left-leaning editorial staff, including this one who doesn’t trust either major political party, can work together to report local news and offer individual opinions clearly labeled as such, is a strong indication our agenda is not a partisan one, but rather unity in a search for the TRUTH of local issues.”

Here I must begin by asking in contrast – is lying, either consciously or in the haphazard repeating of false information accumulated without bothering to verify its validity, a pattern with Ms. Salins, as opposed to what she dismissively terms local “leftist media”?

She begins her recent Letter to the Royal Examiner Editor reply to my VSBA membership OPINION piece with the oft-repeated lie, or perhaps we should say conservative media and Republican-circulated “alternate fact” that: “Less than a year ago the National School Board Association colluded with the Biden Administration and the FBI to deem upset parents ‘domestic terrorists’.” (See Footnote at end of this commentary regarding this contention citing the non-partisan online “FACTCHECK” website.)

Other questionable assertions made by Ms. Salins

As for Salins Letter to the Editor on our Opinion page titled “Keep control of our local schools in our local hands” in addition to that factually discredited opening, there are several other factually questionable assertions. One involves Salins claim that Warren County Public Schools is giving up its decision-making authority through membership in the VSBA.  Salins writes, “The Virginia State Constitution gives supervision of the public school system to the Board of Education and supervision of local schools to the elected school boards. Nowhere does our constitution instruct locally elected representatives to hand over their thought and authority to a for-profit lobbying group such as the VSBA.”

We wondered where it was written that the VSBA asks its memberships’ boards to stop thinking for themselves or relinquish their decision-making authority for their school systems?? Royal Examiner contacted Warren County School Board Chair Kristin Pence and Vice-Chair Ralph Rinaldi about Salins claim of lost authority. Our first response was from Rinaldi by phone, who said that was not accurate, that individual school boards maintain decision-making authority for their own systems regardless of membership in the Virginia School Board Association. School Board Chair Pence verified that by email, stating, “The VSBA does not have authority over our votes or decisions as a school board.”

So, it would appear this alarmist claim of lost authority from continued membership in VSBA is simply not true.

Salins also cites additional costs tied to VSBA membership beyond the base $9,521.19 fee up to what she cited as a total of $35,454.99 in 2021. And while this IS true according to Pence and Rinaldi, what Salins does not note is that those costs are incurred voluntarily, apparently including by her as she has publicly cited attendance at various VSBA meetings, to access various services provided by VSBA to its membership. Rinaldi cited fees associated with participation in Webinars offered, as well as what he termed “BoardDocs” which are programs utilized for individual school board meeting agendas. Such programs involve costs wherever they are acquired from, Rinaldi noted. Those costs would likely increase, perhaps steeply initially were attorneys involved in negotiations, the school board vice-chairman observed.

This was elaborated on by Pence, who wrote of annual costs, “BoardDocs without VSBA is $12,000 versus the $10,200 we pay now.” She also cited some specific current costs, including $9,021.19 for membership, $500 in legal services, $3,000 for policy services, and the above-cited $10,200 for the BoardDocs service at a favorable comparable cost. “To my knowledge, additional costs would be from trainings and conferences for Board members and/staff – superintendent, clerk, etc,” the board chair added of a final fiscal year annual balance.

Salins concludes in her Letter to the Royal Examiner Editor that the only way to “restore” local authority to the Warren County School Board is to withdraw from the Charlottesville-based VSBA. But how do you “restore” something you have never relinquished?

And in a related theme Salins asks Warren County taxpayers “who you want to represent your values inside our schools. The local citizens you elected and have the ability to contact, the power to influence, and the right to elect or not elect again? Or do you want to give up control to a large for-profit organization that you have no ability to influence?” (Is she talking about VSBA or the State Republican Committee?)

As noted above, Warren County Public Schools and its elected school board have relinquished no decision-making authority to the VSBA. And as for Salins added assertion that “VSBA does not represent the local culture and values of the small-town Warren County taxpayers” one can only ask “does she?”

Is it that late in the socio-political game in Warren County that facts mean nothing? Have the population demographics here in recent years shifted so much to extremist ideologues that the type of disinformation Salins accuses us of, but which she seems comfortable in forwarding from her own partisan political perspective in an “alternate fact” universe, will determine the future of Warren County Public Schools?

It would seem the very soul of the community is at stake in this debate.

* FOOTNOTE: I will defer to the “Factcheck” website analysis of the Salins-forwarded angry parent-domestic terrorist claim against the Biden Justice Department:

“U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said that he couldn’t even ‘imagine a circumstance’ where ‘parents complaining’ at a school board meeting would be ‘labeled as domestic terrorism.’ Yet, several Republicans have continued to falsely claim Garland called such parents terrorists.

“The nugget of truth behind the political spin is that a letter from the National School Boards Association to Garland last fall argued some violent threats against school officials ‘could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism’ that would warrant the intervention of federal law enforcement. In his response, Garland directed his agency to review strategies to address violent threats and harassment against school boards, but he didn’t use the NSBA’s ‘terrorism’ language, for which the group later apologized.

“In that letter, the NSBA said that while it had been working with state and local law enforcement officials, it believed federal involvement was warranted as well. The Sept. 29, 2021 NSBA letter stated in part: ‘As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes. As such, NSBA requests a joint expedited review by the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Homeland Security, along with the appropriate training, coordination, investigations, and enforcement mechanisms from the FBI …’

“To be clear, the Justice Department did not label parents ‘domestic terrorists.’ As we said, the use of the phrase originated with a Sept. 29, 2021, letter sent by the National School Boards Association, a federation of state associations that represent locally elected school board officials, to the White House seeking federal assistance to stop what it said was a growing number of threats and acts of violence against public school board members and other public school district officials — mainly over the issues of mask mandates and ‘propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula’.”

(Writer’s note: Online research indicates “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) is a 40-plus year-old “academic concept” surrounding the study of historical institutional racism evolving out of the slavery era as a means to better understand and address modern-day racial prejudice and stereotyping. It has become a hot-button political issue primarily among some Republicans and conservatives who oppose it being taught in k-12 public schools nationwide. That opposition seems to surround an assertion that the type of institutional racism CRT focuses on has not survived into modern America, so its teaching is unduly critical of American culture and unfairly targets for stereotyping America’s dominant white race. Talk about irony. There has been extensive political debate about CRT in Virginia public schools. It appears that while not an official part of the state k-12 curriculum, references to it as a tool for teachers dealing with racial issues in the classroom do exist.)