A Virginia Beach school board member called for a boycott of several local restaurants that hosted members of a political action committee collecting signatures for a petition to recall her and five other board members.
Dottie Holtz, a member of the Virginia Beach school board, called on local citizens to boycott seven restaurants that were working with the local education political action committee Students First VA in a since-deleted Facebook post, a screenshot of which was reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
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Holtz is one of six Virginia Beach school board members Students First VA is seeking to recall using the same process that parent activists in Loudoun County, Virginia, are using: collecting signatures from residents that are then filed to a court, which will then rule on the petition. The political action committee was holding signing events at the restaurants to collect the signatures.
“Please boycott these restaurants,” Holtz said in her Facebook post, which included a graphic the committee had created advertising the signing events. “By sponsoring this event they are contributing to Studentsfirstva.com which is a political action committee bent on undermining public education by supporting vouchers and private schools.”
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, the president of Students First VA, Tim Mack, said the committee is pushing to recall Holtz and the other members because they “not only vote in ways that we think are not good for the students and their families, but they’re also some of the more aggressive members of the school board who have done things … [like] denigrate people who speak at meetings, they don’t listen, they don’t care.”
Holtz deleted her post after several of the restaurants relented in their support for the committee’s efforts and made a new post encouraging people to patronize the three restaurants that caved to her “boycotting, canceling, bullying,” Mack said.
The embattled school board member found a supporter in another elected official, state Delegate Kelly Convirs-Fowler, who likewise posted on Facebook in support of boycotting the restaurants, saying they were engaged in “politicizing of schools.”
“Many of these restaurants are heavily involved in the community and the schools,” Mack said. “They donated, you know, money, time, and other resources in support of not only the schools but some of the clubs and cheerleaders and athletic teams associated with the schools.”
Mack, an attorney and Virginia Beach resident who sent his own children through the city’s public schools, said the committee’s goal is to “make the school system even better, to change its direction in a way that truly does put students first and their education first.”
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Fowler and Holtz did not respond to requests for comment.
