A student-led club at Fort Walton Beach High School invited immigration advocate Grace Resendez McCaffery to speak about immigration issues.
School board candidates Cynthia West and Jerry Buckman criticized the talk, while JD Peacock defended student clubs as spaces for open discussion.
The debate has become the first major political flashpoint in the District 1 Okaloosa County School Board race ahead of the August 18 election.
Candidates for School Board District One took to social media to discuss the latest event they could make into an election issue: Whether or not a Fort Walton Beach High School Club should have been allowed to host Grace Resendez McCaffery, and what the Okaloosa School District’s leadership knew about it and when.
The social media posts serve as the first inflection point of the three-way race to replace Dr. Lamar White as the school board member representing the Fort Walton Beach and Shalimar areas on the Okaloosa County School Board. Two candidates represented themselves as people who want to come in and change things when they sit in the driver’s seat on day one. The other, a more measured approach. The Election takes place during the party primaries on August 18.
We spoke to the district, the three candidates vying for the position, as well as McCaffrey, about what happened, whether or not the discussion was legal, and what it means for the future of the school board race.
Screenshots of a social media post McCaffrey made were shared on the Facebook pages of the Cynthia West and Jerry Buckman campaigns at the beginning of February. In their posts, Buckman and West condemned the talk. “At first glance, this issue DOES NOT meet the AMERICA FIRST EDUCATION INTENT”, wrote candidate Buckman. “If this is indeed true, I am not comfortable with this individual speaking to our students at Fort Walton Beach High School. Situations like this are exactly why parents respond by withdrawing their children from the public school system,” West noted on her page.
The school district, in a response to a request for information, said, “Grace Resendez McCaffery participated as a guest speaker at an after-school, non-curricular, student-led club meeting at Fort Walton Beach High School. Guest speakers for student-led clubs are reviewed and approved by the school principal. Students initiated the invitation to the speaker, and attendance at the meeting was voluntary. For student-led clubs, approval authority rests at the school level. Faculty sponsors work with school administration to ensure activities align with district guidelines and established procedures.”
We reached out to Grace McCaffrey about the posts on the pair of candidates’ pages. McCaffrey is the owner of a Spanish-language weekly newspaper that covers the area from Mobile to Pensacola along the Gulf Coast. She also advocates for immigration reform and runs a non-profit.
She says the Okaloosa School District Minority Council, a student-led organization, invited her to come and speak about the effects of the ICE operations taking place throughout the country on immigrants.
“There was concern on one side for their friends, for their classmates or neighbors that they know may be dealing with immigration issues. On the other hand, there were questions about, ‘why don’t they get their immigration status fixed?”
McCaffrey says she told the students about the dangers of treating immigrant communities the way the United States has because it “puts people, and in this case, particularly children, in a dangerous position where you have people that want to retaliate.”
After hearing about this situation, we reached out to all three candidates about the post by McCaffrey and to get more information about the posts they made afterward. All three granted us an interview to discuss what happened and what their thoughts were on the talk to the after-school group.
Cynthia West is now in the race for School Board District 1 after spending a couple of months in the District 3 race. She pointed out that the student organization’s logo is a raised fist. “It’s a political symbol that’s used for, you know, leftist ideology, immigration policy, right? So that’s their political symbol.”
West says that the students, though, are not the ones who need to be looked at. Instead, she says, the Florida Education Association and the union of teachers in Florida are to blame. “You’ve got the Florida Education Association that just came out… and said that it is a student’s right to protest. And they are required to protest. So my concern is, do we have a situation where kids in the classroom are being, you know, passively indoctrinated, but then steered towards after-school activities to get them to engage in behavior like protesting?”
West says she would work to enact a blanket policy to require speakers to be approved by after-school groups before they can present to students.
She also added that she worries about government overreach for students and parents. “It’s hard, because you really do want to be cautious of trying to infringe on the ideas that kids may be exposed to in after-school activities,” she explained, “like a faith-based activity that they want to go to, or if there’s something cultural, because you’ve got your DEI laws passed in the state.”
Jerry Buckman, who ran the closest to unseating an incumbent four years ago when he challenged Dr. Lamar White and fell about 1,700 votes short in what turned out to be a six-point race. Buckman says his platform will be an “America First Education mindset”. Buckman outlined a five-step plan for me while we were on the phone to discuss this issue of McCaffrey’s talk at Fort Walton Beach High School.
Retired Okaloosa County Clerk JD Peacock announced that he would enter the race for the Okaloosa County School Board in January. Peacock said that student activities like this are pretty normal and don’t need to be blown out of proportion – especially because the club does not have the stamp of approval from the school, the district, or the superintendent. “It appears simply to be an approved club at the school that invited this lady to come speak to them,” Peacock explained.
America is the marketplace of ideas, and that’s not a bad thing, according to Peacock. “Now, whether I agree with [McCaffrey] – that’s a whole different conversation. There are lots of things that I’m sure people don’t agree with me on and that I don’t agree with them on.”
He noted that clubs like these give students leadership, development, and educational opportunities – so they play a valuable part in forming the whole person. “I’m a big believer in the students having a place to plug themselves in. These clubs are a part of that, Peacock explained, “Now there probably are people in the community that don’t agree adamantly, don’t agree with what this lady may have been presenting. I don’t know exactly what she presented. I’ve seen some of her Facebook posts that I certainly don’t agree with. But having the ability for these students to learn different points of view, that’s sort of part of education. I think the role of the administrators, the superintendent, and the school board is to ensure that policies, procedures, and guidelines from the Department of Education are carried out. Activities in these clubs do what they do, and I have yet to see where this activity violated a norm.”
“My concerns about their disapproval of my presentation [are] that they will not be willing to speak on the best interests of all the students in the school district, which includes minorities and immigrant children,” McCaffrey said, “Acting otherwise is reckless. When you are trying to create some type of noise or hype of some sort against a group of people, and not understand what they’re about. I think that’s pretty reckless and dangerous, and that’s why it’s upsetting.”
Okaloosa County’s next school board meeting takes place on March 9.
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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