EDITORIAL: David Dyer and Brian Barefoot - Two Peas in a Pod

Susan Mehiel is the managing editor of the newsletter, Reclaiming Education… Reclaiming our Culture, the official publication of the IRC Education Alliance

Vero Beach resident and managing editor of the newsletter, Reclaiming Education… Reclaiming our Culture, Susan Mehiel

The views expressed in the editorial are the author’s alone. Article used with permission.

So, David Dyer’s main talking point is his big business background including management of large budgets and his board sitting on the Learning Alliance…and he doesn’t like campaigning…it’s a little thin.  And it sounds interestingly familiar… Dyer brings the same type of experience as Brian Barefoot…east coast Wall Street Money Guy with a little eastern elite college trustee thrown in.  Brian Barefoot interviewed potential replacements and found his preferred candidate in David Dyer, who agreed to hire Jeff Andros as his campaign manager, always a prerequisite.
 With that in mind, it’s interesting to consider a few things that happened during Barefoot’s tenure…the first was his full-throated support for hiring a Senior Level Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) Officer.  That position offered $120,000/year plus benefits, but he figured it was little to pay to negotiate an end to the Desegregation Order the District was trying to resolve…a Woke token?
 
Fast forward to now…and we see the district managed to operate just fine without the position and the DEI delirium, which took hold across the country, is over.  The racist nature of its foundation in pushing the White Supremacy lie, harming our black young people with the notion of Social Justice and experts found to be charlatans with phony doctoral work and lowered standards, have all been revealed.

 
What a waste of money that would have been – we would be out nearly half a million in taxpayer dollars for the person by now!  Recently, we found that while Barefoot was on the board, enrollment in the District dropped 800 students…at a time when the county population is increasing.  That translates into an income reduction for the District of tens of thousands of dollars each year.  
 
With the increased push for school choice, parents are finding alternative learning environments for their children.  In an effort to offer them another choice, the Superintendent plans to start a new Classical Magnet School.  Fortunately, Brian Barefoot isn’t there anymore; he admitted he knew nothing about curriculum and deferred to the ‘experts’ on the board.  That was back in 2021 when the district was ready to purchase a CRT laden, new English Language Arts curriculum from a national publisher.
 
As it turned out, the “experts” who brought us DEI and CRT included Board Members Dr.’s Mara Schiff and Peggy Jones with Barefoot’s support. The LBGTQ+ Procedures for Schools resembling those from Mara’s state lobbying group, Equality Florida, appeared in the District out of nowhere.  Fortunately, all of these Woke ideologies were driven from our schools by parents and community members who recognized they were bad for our students.
 
So, all of this talk about parent groups and community members making the school district issues “political” was a fallacy.  The progressives tried to quietly implement their politically driven social engineering programs.  As usual, they and the media have accused concerned parents and board members of being the political radicals to diminish their strength. But it hasn’t worked.

 Not only does Kevin McDonald have experience in corporate management, but he also has experience with managing a classical school.  He’ll take the time to do the homework and help find the best curriculum for students and not rely on the ‘experts’ from The System.  He recognizes the need to offer parents alternatives and the new magnet school enrollments may help defray the shortfall in the school tax revenues.
 
As for Barefoot, his handpicked replacement, David Dyer, is his ticket to maintain control and push their progressive, elitist philosophies. Money is no object for them, why should it be for the District?  They have no background in education, teaching methods, curriculum…they defer to the experts who have been in the closed “we know best for your kids” system of education for many years.
 
Like the curriculum he left to the “experts”, Barefoot left the library books to them, too.  Did he ever read one or more of the books?  Did he read the sexually explicit excerpts before he voted to keep them in the libraries?  Or was he just lazy and deferred to the experts, again?
 
How much time, research and effort does Dyer plan to put into the job?  Like Barefoot, does he plan to ‘phone in’ his board work while eating dinner?  Kevin McDonald is already hard at work as an active board participant.  He’s involved in planning for the new Classical school, listening to parent’s concerns and working to keep our district an A+!  The choice was clear for Governor DeSantis and it should be for all of us.  We need a common sense school board member who is prepared to do the work; we need Kevin McDonald!

One more note...Here is a video of the last board meeting.  I suggest you fast forward to 1:05 (1 hour, 5 mins.) to see a board member discuss the facts of an issue rather than politicize the issue that was brought up by someone during Public Comment.  They have pilloried Dr. Gene Posca but he still stands strong!  Watch HERE