Norwin board deadlocked on allowing anti-socialism program

A faction of the Norwin School Board failed this week to gain approval to allow a speaker from Venezuela to present an anti-socialism program to high school students.

The board was deadlocked 4-4 on whether to allow Daniel DiMartino, a founder of the nonprofit Dissident Project and native Venezuelan, to speak to the students.

Board members Christine Baverso, Alex Detschelt, Shawna Ilagan and Robert Wayman voted to allow the program, while Darlene Ciocca, William Essay, Raymond Kocak and Patrick Lynn opposed it. Joanna Jordan, who could have broken the tie vote, was absent from the meeting.

Superintendent Jeff Taylor said the organization has not been vetted by the administration, as required by board policy. Based on his research, Taylor said the Dissident Project has not presented a program at any public school in Pennsylvania.

Ilagan said there is nothing controversial about the program and that DiMartino is scheduled to speak at Gateway High School in Monroeville.

“Our own kids don’t understand what they have in America,” Ilagan said.

DiMartino, who came to the U.S. in 2016 to attend college, said in a podcast with the Fox News Podcast Network last year that his non-profit organization is nonpartisan and presents information about life in a socialist country. DiMartino said that America is under threat by socialism and “cultural Marxism is in our schools.”

DiMartino, who said the presentations are free to the schools, could not be reached for comment.

Wayman said the program is a matter of free speech that is being silenced.

Ciocca said that some parents may not want the discussion in the school.

Casey Given, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Young Voices, which operates the Dissident Project as one of its programs, could not be reached for comment.

The faction that voted for the presentation had complained last year that broadcasting CNN 10, a 10-minute news and entertainment program for students, was presenting only one side of issues. The board last year prohibited the airing of those broadcasts, unless under special circumstances.

Several residents who spoke on the presentation had varying opinions on the Dissident Project.

Joanne Garing characterized it as a “public relations firm that uses propaganda to sell something.”

Garing pointed out there have been several right-wing authoritarian regimes, including Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain and right-wing regimes in Chile and Hungary.

Linda Funk said she believed that students should learn about tyrannical leaders and having someone to share their real-life experiences with the students is “an amazing way to educate.”

Kristen Bezick said that students would learn about the “atrocities of socialism” from the program, which would counteract what she said was a new trend that “socialism is good.”