MORGAN COUNTY — Before Eric Bowlen was tapped to lead the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville, back when he was simply a principal, he and his fellow administrators had a special name for the start of the week: Social Media Monday.
“That was the day we worked to clean up a lot of the issues that happened over the weekend,” Bowlen said.
Someone makes a post scorching the district over the weekend, the administration does damage control on Monday. Rinse, repeat, just about every week of the year.
The phenomenon is happening all over the country, and Morgan County is no exception. Have an issue with your child’s school district? Trade in the pitchfork and torches for a keyboard and mouse, and go to town.
Because it’s the internet, anyone can “go to town” without even leaving the house, and the courage it takes to disparage someone to their face is not required — they can’t strike back through a screen.
“Just wondering how many community members have heard that Mooresville Schools is ran by a cult?” said a Mooresville Community Chat member — one of nearly 19,000 on the Facebook page — on June 5. “It’s an easy, I have heard that, or, I have not heard that. No need for any hateful comments. It’s just a question.”
Unsurprisingly, “just asking questions” on the internet often leads to “hateful comments.”
“No, just heard it about (Mooresville Christian Academy),” one person replied.
“Cults? No. Good Ole Boys Club/Politics? I’ve heard that,” another said.
Administrators have a hard enough time fielding such comments from ordinary members of the community, but it’s a different story entirely when those with large audiences take aim at local school districts.
Just last month, Fox 59 reporter Angela Ganote took to Facebook to say she had been investigating “testing irregularities” at Bell Intermediate Academy, saying she had been told by her “sources” that the principal was placed on administrative leave because she “tampered with the ILEARN test.”
This story ultimately went nowhere, and The Correspondent learned from school administrators that there was a totally innocent explanation for the “irregularities.”
But the damage was already done.
“My son goes to the school and I have not been notified of any of this, I didn’t get an (expletive) email,” one commenter said. “I have to find out on Facebook from the news.”
“I hate that my daughter is starting at Bell in the fall,” another commenter said.
“Martinsville always covers up for the school personnel, no matter how it could affect the lives of children,” said a third.
“If I had a dollar for how many times I’ve heard that I’m ‘covering something up,’ I could retire,” Bowlen said.
But why has Bowlen heard it so many times? Why have the other superintendents in Morgan County heard it so much? If school districts aren’t hiding anything, then why does the public think that they are?
The Correspondent spoke with the superintendents at Martinsville, Mooresville and Monrovia late last month about the rising problem of social media. Parents are using it to blast school districts, and kids are using it to bully each other.
We spoke about why this is happening, and what, if anything, they can do about it.
Building trust
Trent Provo, superintendent for the Monroe-Gregg School District, said administrators at his district have been “hands off” when dealing with social media posts in the past.
But, he said, that’s about to change.
“We’re going to have to be more active with parents,” Provo said. “Sometimes, there’s things we can’t talk about, and that makes people frustrated. But if we aren’t actively refuting rumors, people start to believe they must be true.”
Say, hypothetically, a teacher is put on administrative leave, and word gets out that said teacher is being investigated for inappropriate conduct toward a student. Legally, school districts have to be careful — they can’t mention anything specific about the student, due to privacy laws.
But they also have to watch what they say about the teacher — if an accusation turns out to be false, the harm already done by the allegation can be too much to bear.
So, school districts have a dilemma: They have legal and ethical obligations to withhold certain information, but they also want the trust of the parents in their community.
How can you trust someone who isn’t telling you what’s going on?
“If, as a parent, you’re frustrated, please call us,” Provo said. “It comes down to communication, and that goes both ways. Before you go to your keyboard, call us.”
Provo admitted building trust would be difficult; Bowlen perhaps went even further.
“How do you build trust with people who have a negative starting point?” Bowlen asked. “Some people seem to think we all wake up in the morning itching to go and hurt their kids at work.”
Each superintendent said their districts — usually due to limited staffing — rarely address controversies on social media, preferring to instead engage with embittered parents privately. This is certainly true of Mooresville Schools, which uses its Facebook page almost exclusively for highlighting positive stories about its students.
Back in May, other parts of social media were outraged at the district for allegations of sexual misconduct at North Madison Elementary. “Podcast 69 South,” a local, self-proclaimed true crime podcast with a growing influence, claimed in a now-deleted May 13 post that Mooresville’s school board was trying to cover this story up, even going so far as to publicly cancel a regular meeting and attempt to hold a secret meeting instead, to avoid the ire of angry parents.
Mooresville Superintendent Jake Allen told The Correspondent that the meeting in question was never at any point cancelled, nor was it held in secret. This reporter was present for said meeting, and covered what was discussed in the May 22 edition.
All of this — the allegations and the claims of a cover up — was publicly ignored by the district. The district did put out statements to parents at North Madison, but nothing was shared with the wider district.
“We can’t just be first,” Allen said. “We have to be correct. We do our absolute best to be transparent when we can, but we face limitations, whether they be legal, ethical or concern individual privacy.”
All about safety
By their own admission, school district officials withhold certain information from the public, which naturally causes frustration for parents with students in public schools.
And when the truth is hidden from public view — for reasons right or wrong — mis- and disinformation quickly take its place.
The Correspondent spoke with the husband-and-wife duo behind Podcast 69 South — known to their audience as Chop and Julie — earlier this month, asking them about why they do the reporting they do, and what journalistic ethics guide their coverage decisions.
Particular attention was given to the sensationalized nature of their Facebook posts — full of emojis, words in all capital letters, and occasionally disregarding the notion of “innocent until proven guilty” — and to some of their factual errors.
Another now-deleted post of theirs related to North Madison called on parents to vote out Mooresville School Board members, but got the names of those board members wrong.
“Sometimes we make mistakes,” Julie said. “We aren’t perfect. We always try to be honest when we can, though.”
Podcast 69 South is far from alone.
Porch Time, Martinsville’s popular Facebook group with nearly 23,000 members, frequently sees posts with incorrect information spread like wildfire, always doing a little damage before finally getting put out.
Posts accusing or implying that the MSD of Martinsville taught Critical Race Theory were rampant on Porch Time during the Biden years, culminating in Fox News airing a secretly-filmed clip of a Martinsville administrator appearing to discuss teaching CRT behind the backs of parents.
The district to this day denies having ever taught CRT in the classroom, and the administrator herself never mentions CRT in the viral clip, but that didn’t matter.
The public didn’t believe them.
“All parents should be outraged,” said one Porch Time member under a post sharing the district’s statement denying the veracity of the Fox News clip. “Even if you do believe in CRT/SEL you should be outraged, because if they will hide this and cover this up, what else is there?”
There’s more than a hundred comments just like it on this post alone, despite a total lack of evidence that CRT — a theory not introduced to students until college — was being taught in Martinsville schools.
Repeated efforts to reach representatives from Porch Time for comment were unsuccessful.
Whether it’s about school safety, what’s taught in the classroom, or teacher misconduct, there is increasingly a lack of trust in public school districts. Parents, in their attempts to hold schools accountable, sometimes uncover legitimate areas of concern.
Often they do not.
“Parents are freaking out,” Julie from Podcast 69 South said. “We just want to know that our kids are safe.”
How school districts will regain the trust of the community is an open question. Superintendent Bowlen offered a scriptural recommendation in the meantime: “Every prudent man dealeth with knowledge: But a fool layeth open his folly.”
Or, to put it in reporters’ terms — make sure to fact check everything.
