With three open seats for school board, the School District of Indian River County (SDIRC) has a golden opportunity to set the mark for innovation in Indian River County.

But why were seven of the nine candidates for school board shut out of a recent event by a mysterious email; denied an opportunity to introduce themselves, and more importantly, denying voters the opportunity to see and hear them?

One asks, why does there has to be such “nasty politics” in a community of 111,720 voters?

There are nine candidates for school board.

District One:

Mara Schiff / Eugene Wolff

District Two:

Devon Michelle Dupuis / Merchon Green / Jacqueline Rosario / Ruben Bermudez, Jr.

 District Three:

Terri L. Barenborg / Randy Heimler / Stacey Lynn Klim

Seven of the nine candidates were duped.

Here is an email we received from candidate Stacey Klim on the evening of August 3, 2018:

“Below you will find a forwarded email.  Two candidates were left out of this email – Barenborg and Rosario.  The email appears to be from the CWA Union (support staff like electricians, bus drivers, cooks, secretaries).

It was in reference to a meeting tonight [ August 3, 2018] where [Teri] Barenborg, [Jacqueline “Jackie”] Rosario and Laura Zorc were scheduled to speak.  It was informing all the other candidates that the meeting was canceled.   But guess what?  It wasn’t.

Someone claiming to be from the CWA sent this email to make sure the other candidates didn’t show up.  Fishy right?  Merchon [Green] and Eugene [Wolff] never checked their email so they both showed up.  I was swimming in the pool with my kids and baking potatoes thinking the meeting was canceled when I got a call from a union leader informing me it wasn’t.  So I quickly got ready and went to the meeting.  For some reason, someone didn’t want us at that meeting. Just thought I would share with you both.  Still can’t figure out the reasoning behind it.”

———- Forwarded message ———

Then here is a Facebook post from candidate Mara Schiff:

“I am absolutely appalled by the lack of decency that is emerging in this school board race as we get to the final weeks. As the current school board comes under fire, the superintendent throws his financial officer under the bus for budget discrepancies, and everyone scrambles to get or make endorsements, it is becoming both nasty and unethical.

I was planning to attend a meeting of the local CWA (Communications Workers of America Union) tonight [August 3, 2018]. I have had this on my calendar for weeks and was excited that I was finally available to make their meeting. I was not invited to speak, nor was I planning to. I just wanted to meet the members of this important union. I heard this afternoon that another candidate in another race was invited to speak tonight. I was interested to hear her remarks. (UPDATE/CORRECTION: The invited speakers were school board candidates from D2 and D4, and a school board member, however all candidates present were then invited to speak briefly and introduce themselves. I missed this opportunity.)

At 4:32 pm today I received the following email message:

“The General Membership Meeting for tonight (8/2/18) is cancelled because the air conditioner broke down (91F) and SeaCoast does not have the parts.
We have rescheduled for next General Membership Meeting Thursday August 9 at 6:30 pm.
Thank you.
Jenny Reams
Custodial Area Vice-presidentCWA Local 3180

“I have just learned, at 6:05 pm that this email was NOT SENT BY THE CWA and was a complete scam. The meeting was indeed happening as scheduled. 7 other candidates and I were targeted to NOT ATTEND THIS MEETING.

Fortunately, at least one other candidate learned in time that this email was a scam and some others did not get the email before the meeting so also attended…This kind of dirty politicking makes me ill. You know why decent people don’t get into politics, local or otherwise? Because of this kind of ridiculousness.

I am absolutely disgusted that someone would try and keep candidates out of a public meeting because they fear competition and honest dialogue. And you know who suffers most for this? Our kids.

To every student and parent in Indian River County, I am sorry that this is how your schools may be run by people pretending to operate in your best interests.”

Something is up.  The mystery of who sent the email in question.  We are tracing the IP address to see who really sent it.

One public official referred to this as “extremely nasty politics”.

UPDATE:

Whomever sent that email was pretty sophisticated to find a site in Switzerland from which “No personal information is required to create your secure email account. By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account. Your privacy comes first.”

https://protonmail.com

It’s amazing someone here would go to such length to interfere in a CWA Union meeting and the School District of Indian River County school board race.

Dead end at this point.