OCEAN CITY — Two slates of candidates competing for three seats on the Ocean City Board of Education are a study in contrasts, perhaps most markedly in the place of politics in school board elections.
Kevin Barnes, the current school board president, is seeking a new term along with newcomers Jennifer Cawley-Black and Jennifer Dwyer, under the slogan “Empower All Students.”
On Friday, Barnes said he was reluctant to run as a slate this year. When he ran in 2022, he ran alone, but this time he decided to run as part of a team.
“My aversion to it is it almost makes it sound political. School boards really shouldn’t be political,” Barnes said.
But it sounds like national and statewide politics will play a part in the Ocean City election regardless.
The two other board members up for reelection this year, Elizabeth Nicoletti and Catherine Panico, are running with Robin Shaffer under the slogan “Transparency & Common Sense.” In 2022, the three ran together, with Shaffer winning the single year remaining on one term. He fell short in his reelection bid in 2023, when he sought a full term.
In an interview, also Friday, Shaffer tied the team to the Republican nominee for governor, Jack Ciattarelli.
“I count Jack as a friend. I’m really impressed by his education platform,” Shaffer said.
Ocean City Board of Education meetings continue to host speakers for and against a state policy on transgender students.
Shaffer said he was reluctant to run again, describing the school board as “unwieldy” and distrustful of conservative opinions. He spoke with Nicoletti and Panico and decided to seek a new term.
“We came to the same conclusion. Let’s get the band back together,” Shaffer said.
In 2022, the slate made waves with an endorsement from the national group Moms for Liberty, which has challenged curricula that mentions LGBTQ+ rights, what the group perceives as critical race theory and other topics.
The group describes itself as a parental rights organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes it as far right and antigovernment.
Shaffer expects Moms for Liberty’s support this year as well, and says the slate will also likely have the endorsement of Turning Point USA, the conservative organization whose leader and founder Charlie Kirk was fatally shot this month in Utah.
The school election is held as part of the general election but is legally nonpartisan, which means political parties are banned from explicitly supporting school board candidates or spending money in the race.
Candidates also typically avoid partisan politics both during the campaign and at the board table. Shaffer, not so much.
“If anyone out there doesn’t want to vote for Jack, then I’d say don’t bother to vote for us,” Shaffer said. “Getting Jack across the finish will help get the radical garbage out of the classrooms.”
Ocean City’s Board of Education shuts down the latest move to repeal policy related to transgender students.
That included what Shaffer described as teaching young students to fear climate change and “the 37 flavors of gender.”
The ticket’s previous campaign raised enough concern among some members of the community in 2022 that they organized marches on the Boardwalk and around the school, and a “We Belong” effort to support gay and transgender students in the schools came together after that election.
Barnes struck a far different tone, describing his running mates’ involvement in the schools and school activities and lauding both Ocean City and the school district.
“We live in a great little community here. It’s a great little bubble,” he said. “We would love to see the school district and the community continue to flourish.”
He spoke highly of the city’s schools but added there is always room for improvement.
The three candidates share an outlook, Barnes said.
“We’re really all on the same page,” he said. “Number one is recognizing our role. Our role is not to run the school but just to see that they’re well run.
“We want to empower the administration and the teachers. We’re an oversight board that should see that teachers and administrators have the resources available to do their jobs.”
Several members of the public, and two school board members, called for a repeal of a policy related to transgender students and said parents have a right to know.
Shaffer, on the other hand, described the school board as a rubber stamp for a radical state agenda.
All three candidates on Shaffer’s slate have been criticized by other board members for bringing politics into board meetings.
“Some of the other members accuse us of getting into the culture wars,” Shaffer said. But he accused the rest of the board of leaning to the left and allowing radical ideas into the classroom.
Registered Republicans far outnumber registered Democrats in Ocean City, and the city has reliably supported Republican presidential candidates at least going back to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and likely before.
The city government is also officially nonpartisan.
Still, Shaffer asserted that 75% the board is “very much left of center.”
School board meetings and school elections have become a key battleground for the culture wars, including in Ocean City, where advocates for protecting LGBTQ+ students clash with critics of the state’s health curriculum as it relates to gender, which opponents say cuts out parents and introduces children to concepts they are not prepared to handle.
The issues came up again at the August school board meeting, with one resident challenging the board on a policy approved years ago and another criticizing the presence of a book on the AP summer reading list for high school.
While there is no proposal for school-day Bible study in front of the Ocean City school board, opponents of the possibility have spoken against the idea over the course of several board meetings.
That book, “Amateur, a True Story About What Makes a Man” by Thomas Page McBee, is a memoir about a transgender man training for a boxing match and exploring masculinity and violence.
Shaffer raised other issues, including falling student enrollment and rising budgets. He said local taxpayers should be seeing a reduction, not tax increases, and called for cuts to programs and to the school administration, to potentially include layoffs.
Contact Bill Barlow:
609-272-7290
bbarlow@pressofac.com
X @jerseynews_bill
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