With less than a week to go until Election Day, a school board race in Shaler Area School District has grown acrimonious, touching on national themes of race and the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI or similar) programs at educational institutions.
An anonymous Shaler Area resident initially contacted Pittsburgh City Paper with concerns about a flyer they had received from an organization called Citizens for Quality Education Shaler Area in support of Amy Goldberg and Ken Vybiral’s candidacies. Goldberg, who won the Democratic primary in May, recently reached across the aisle to Republican Vybiral to form a “hometown team” against progressive Democrat Daeja Baker.
City Paper couldn’t immediately confirm which individuals were behind Citizens for Quality Education Shaler Area. However, the organization’s address at a residential property in Glenshaw showed up on Google in connection with Facebook posts by Shaler Area Republicans mourning the death of Charlie Kirk and supporting conservative county council candidate Chris Lochner.
The flyer for Goldberg and Vybiral’s combined candidacy appeared to take a shot at the platform of Baker, a queer Black woman, in a section entitled “An education for all”: “When you say your [sic] only going to represent the marginalized, you only end up marginalizing the people who you consider not to be marginalized,” it reads. The Shaler Area resident who alerted CP to the flyer described it as racist and said it had secured their support for Baker.
Goldberg, Vybiral, and Shaler Area Republicans did not respond to multiple emails from CP by presstime, and a phone call to a number linked via an event flyer to Vybiral went unanswered.
Baker, who first became aware of the campaign mailer and its contents via CP’s reporting, described it as a “dog whistle” and said the race had gotten “messy,” but she added that the flyer “wasn’t as terrible as it could[’ve been].”
Asked how she’d address the flyer’s claims about marginalized people, Baker said, “Working to represent marginalized people doesn’t mean that we’re working to underrepresent anybody else … Whenever we give a voice to the people’s needs who are being left behind, we give a voice to everyone.”
Daeja Baker Credit: Courtesy of Daeja Baker
Baker said Shaler Area’s challenges, including special education needs and the effects of the opioid crisis, cut across racial lines, but added that she would work to support transgender students, as well as push back on book bans in school libraries and proposals to arm teachers. She noted her endorsement from the Pennsylvania State Education Association, a prominent teachers’ union, and framed the discussion around her candidacy as a good sign.
“These people really are afraid that someone who’s not white, middle-class, and middle- to elderly aged is going to be on the school board,” she told CP, adding that she’s the youngest candidate and the only Millvale resident on the ballot.
“We talk a lot about representation, and there has never been a person of color or an out queer person on the Shaler Area school board,” Baker said. “I think that the kids deserve to see people like them.”
RELATED