To the editor:
Some candidates run to help others. Other candidates want their name emblazoned on yard signs and a microphone in front of their face — a chance to froth and foment.
If you value hard work, intelligence, transparency and decency, please pick Lee Goldstein and Neil Phillips for the Board of Education. They advocate for students, parents, taxpayers, and educators, and they do it professionally week after week. They know what makes a top-notch school system because they’ve actually created one. Along with write-in candidate Jill Dillon, they’re the adults in the race.
In their sad-trombone debate performance, Republicans Camilo Riano and Jamie Fitzgerald saw problems everywhere but couldn’t be bothered to suggest solutions. The awkward chats on their Facebook page are a series of sweeping abstractions by candidates who look like hostages in front of a dying log fire. Riano’s statements on the ultra-right-wing Connecticut Centinal site aren’t exactly inspiring, either. Here’s just one, from August 2022: “If the FBI can call me a domestic terrorist if I speak at my town’s Board of Education meetings, and can raid the home of a former president of the United States for political reasons, I am not in a democracy anymore. I am living in a totalitarian, tyrannical system.”
How local Republicans can even think about inflicting these woefully inadequate candidates on an award-winning school system is a mystery. They’d be sand in the cogs of progress — which is the point, I guess. Their worldview is based entirely on their own children, not anyone else’s. What a failure of vision and duty and sympathy.
I urge voters to choose sense over nonsense, inspiration over conspiracy, local knowledge over national puppetry, and compassionate details over ignorant generalities. Westport deserves to go forward, not backward.
Tom Prince
Westport
Tom, thank you for this excellent analysis. Anyone in attendance at the candidate forum and anyone reading materials from Lee and Neil know how seriously they take the work of the Board of Education. The misleading and packaged statements from the Republican candidates seem to emanate from a place that is not Westport and their recent campaign efforts seek to divide our town along lines that have little to do with our excellent school district and the effort it takes to keep it running smoothly.
I’d encourage all Westporters to make a plan to vote next Tuesday or get an absentee ballot. Lee Goldstein and Neil Phillips need your support to keep our excellent schools on the right path. Write in for Jill Dillon and we can further cement our ability to support our educators, our students and our outstanding quality of life.
Sincerely,
Peter Propp
Westport
Support in the form of a monopoly in which no other opinions will ever be entertained and explanations will no longer need to be given. “We know best what your children need”. Just smoke some more weed an relax.
Best. Letter. Ever.
This is the best Letter to the Editor I have EVER read and I read them all, every single day. I have even written a few myself.
Kudos (and thank you) to Mr. Prince, for so succinctly, eloquently and calmly capturing the current BOE election landscape.
Calm? One could almost see the contemptuous spittle flying out of his mouth. How dare anyone bring up the FBI treatment of parents around the country who voice their opposition to these policies at the schools their children attend. Mr. Riano was not making this up. This is happening as leftists try to shut down any debate and have total control of the school boards, just like they want here in Westport.
First Mr. Prince if yard signs indicate a deficiency in the candidates why do Goldstein and Phillips also have yard signs? Next how are “progress and going forward” measured by you? Apparently by divisive, anti-American, homosexual promoting DEI and SEL policies. You also state that the Republicans offer no solutions. They have repeatedly offered a very simple solution… follow the highly successful template of the past (prior to DEI and SEL) and stop advocating for progressive, socialist idealogies that many parents object to.
Finally, as to your contemptuous analysis of the debate referring to “sad trombones” (?) I was particularly unimpressed with Ms. Goldstein’s condescending attitude toward the Republican candidates, especially the line about how difficult it must be for them to take on her and Phillips. She obviously shares your very high opinion of herself. Several like minded members of the audience snickered and made faces (not a pretty picture) like middle school mean girls in a discussion that ironically included addressing the problem of bullying.
Parents and anyone else who cares about the kind of people who will be running the world in the near future vote for Jamie Fitzgerald and Camilo Riano.
It is ironic that Mr Riano and Ms Fitzgerald would have a FAR better chance of success in the election if they weren’t being cut out at the knees by the unhinged rantings of of Ms Wylie.
I’m sure the feckless Ms Goldstein and Mr Phillips are grateful for this nonsense.
I’m sure they are also grateful for your drivel in support of them. And not supporting DEI and SEL is unhinged? I suppose sticking to academics in schools is unhinged as well. I have noticed that no one has actually explained as to how explicit sexual content, divisive racial theories and negative depictions of our country ( all of which are promoted in DEI) are beneficial to children. No one has answered that yet.
Well said Tom – might also be my favorite letter yet – including my own.
I also really appreciated Candice Savins Opinion piece on 06880 on Oct 4th about this departure in responsibility on the part of the RTC. I find it odd we have heard nothing from the RTC – nothing to support their candidates or their selection of those candidates. IF I were a reasonable Republican in town, and I know there are many, I would be furious at the selection I was given.
“Homosexual promoting DEI and SEL policies” ?
I’m not any lifestyle is being promoted. But do you have an issue here? Do the candidates?
Okay Joe Biden, I have absolutely no idea what that meant.