Anti-Obama Facebook association has WRHS principal facing questions

The Winnisquam Regional High School principal's membership in an anti-Barack Obama Facebook group is being called "unconscionable" by a teacher who challenged the district's decision not to show the president's back-to-school speech in September.

Principal Ronna Cadarette's public Facebook profile, which identified her as an administrator in the district, listed her as a member of one group.

The group's title, which references public figures who died in 2009, is "Dear Lord, This Year You Took My Favorite Actor, Patrick Swazie [sic]. You Took My Favorite Actress Farah [sic] Fawcett. You Took My Favorite Singer, Michael Jackson. I Just Wanted to Let You Know, My Favorite President is Barack Obama. Amen."

The image next to the group's name shows a picture of President Obama with a hammer and sickle and reads "Vote for Obama . . . Because Socialism Worked So Well for the USSR."

Cadarette, who has since taken down her public Facebook page, said she viewed the group as "a joke." As of yesterday afternoon, the group had 1,178,300 members.

"I find that funny; I don't find that offensive," she said. "It's a joke — off-color, possibly — but a joke."

Cadarette said that she is a registered independent who votes for "whichever candidate I feel is best for our country."

"I do not wish our president dead in any way," she said.

Last month, high school English teacher Neal Byles went before the state Board of Education to argue that the district had infringed on his academic freedom and due process rights by barring him from showing Obama's speech live to his students. State education Commissioner Virginia Barry said she instructed superintendents to base their decision on whether to show the speech on "their community interest."

Board Chairman John Lyons, a Portsmouth attorney who served on John McCain's presidential campaign, told Byles, a registered Democrat, that his complaint was a "political case." The board voted unanimously to dismiss Byles's complaint, and Byles admitted the decision was "probably right on most of the legal points."

Now Byles is questioning the political motives of Cadarette, who carried out Superintendent Tammy Davis's decision to not show the speech live but allow teachers to download it and give students the option of watching it later with "appropriate documentation."

"This site shows that Dr. Cadarette has a clearly partisan agenda regarding President Obama, which makes her part in the censorship of him in our district highly suspect," Byles said.

Winnisquam Regional School Board Chairman Mike Gagne said the decision was made by Davis, and therefore only she could have exercised any political bias. Lyons declined to comment on whether Byles's latest allegations would have affected his unsuccessful appeal to the state.

"I have no comment because it's entirely possible that this case may come back to us again and because I need to sit on [the board] and hear the issues," Lyons said.

Cadarette said her Facebook page has "zero association with me professionally." In February 2008, the Winnisquam Regional School Board adopted a policy regarding "off-duty Internet/email use" that gives examples of "problematic conduct" by school district employees.

Four out of the five examples involve school employees interacting with students online. The fifth example defines problematic conduct as "having a website that . . . contains links to immoral websites."

Byles said he felt the group linked to on Cadarette's Facebook page is "unquestionably immoral."

"For one, it is wishing for the death of a human being and that's inherently immoral," he said. Byles also pointed to racially charged discussion and name-calling within the group, which he described as "inflammatory."

But Gagne, who was on the district school board when the Internet use policy was adopted, said he didn't think Cadarette's membership in the group violated the intent of the policy.

"The policy is intended to prevent immoral conduct, really, with students," he said. Byles said he found Gagne's interpretation of the policy "incredibly interesting, because that's not what it says."

Gagne also said he felt that some employees "are trying to bring the district down because they're unhappy."

"At times there are underlying issues that are causing people to create unrest in the district," he said. "I think we're in a new day at Winnisquam and there's a high degree of accountability . . . and some people are upset about that."

Byles said he thinks "administrators are not being held accountable to the same standard that the teachers are."

"If there really is a high level of accountability and it applies to administrators and teachers, then why is [Gagne] dismissing this instead of investigating it?" he asked.

Gagne said Davis, not the school board, would determine whether Cadarette should be disciplined under the policy. Davis could not be reached for comment.

"I don't think wishing death on anybody is good but I don't know the intent of the [group]," Gagne said. "Facebook is one of those crazy places."

Cadarette said she chose to take down her Facebook page after her association with the group began to garner attention.

"Because of this experience and the unintended consequences of something that was a joke, I will now not exercise my First Amendment rights and I will have no Facebook page," she said.