Additional NSBA Board Member Emails

Over the past several weeks, additional emails from NSBA board members were received from a variety of public records requests. Highlights are attached and excerpted below.

September 28, 2021: Viola Garcia’s colleagues in Aldine ISD congratulated her on her appointment to the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), which has oversight over the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); this is one day before the National School Board Association’s infamous letter was mailed to President Biden.

September 30, 2021: NSBA board member Charlie Wilson bragged to his colleagues in Worthington, Ohio that the letter was sent to President Biden at his behest.

October 1, 2021: In an email thread, several NSBA board members condemned the letter; a Georgia-based member stated “one of the last things I need is the Federal Government telling me how to run my school, to which a Florida-based board member responded that “Moms for Liberty will have a field day” with this situation.

October 2, 2021: In response to Viola Garcia’s internal email explaining the need for the Biden letter, the head of the Florida School Board Association asserted that “if they were truly concerned with safety, it would not have been accompanied by a press release and media interviews. They made it about NSBA, not safety.”

October 5, 2021: The head of the Alabama Association of School Boards said of the NSBA letter “Clearly, this was orchestrated and the letter was contrived for political theater.”

October 6, 2021: Rick Lewis, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ohio School Board Association, lamented in an email to the OSBA Board of Trustees that the NSBA controversy was being used as a leverage point in the debate over school choice.

This concern was echoed by an NSBA board member that same day in a message sent to the full NSBA board.

October 10, 2021: 3 NSBA board members speculated that Chip Slaven may have had ulterior motives in sending the letter to the White House.

October 13, 2021: A Wyoming-based NSBA board member shared an article about Panorama Education with her district superintendent, saying “let’s make sure we don’t use this company,” to which the superintendent responded “We pay for the Panorama SEL and Climate Surveys and data dashboard. WDE [Wyoming Department of Education] uses Panorama for one of the Alternative School Accountability Metrics (which SIS has to do).”