There are four seats up for election on the Hamilton Southeastern School Board November 6th, and there are many people not on the ballot choosing to get involved. Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness has chosen to endorse candidates in all four district contests. Several members of the Fishers City Council are endorsing candidates and working for those being endorsed.
But the most controversial intervention was by a sitting school board member not up for re-election, Amanda Shera, and she is issuing apologies for a Facebook post that she deleted several hours after posting it.
This past week, Shera, an at-large board member from Delaware Township with 2 years left on her current term, wrote and posted a Facebook message that included several attacks on the Hamilton Southeastern Education Association and a candidate endorsed by the local teacher’s union, Michelle Fullhart. Shera also had strong comments on school policies toward transgender students.
Just a few hours after sharing that post on Facebook, Amanda Shera deleted it.
LarryInFishers had a lengthy telephone conversation with Amanda Shera Saturday morning. She was emotional in saying she regrets posting the Facebook message. When I asked her whether she stands by the comments she made in the Facebook message, she said she does not stand by those comments.
According to Shera, she would have deleted the Facebook post sooner, but wasn’t sure how to do that technically. She had to contact a more tech-savvy friend to explain how to make the deletion.
But even though the post was live for only a few hours, many people took screenshots of the Facebook message and it has been making the rounds on social media around the Hamilton Southeastern School District.
One thing Amanda Shera made clear in her conversation with LarryInFishers is that she realizes the post was “inappropriate.” Shera added she has apologized to all the school board candidates she was able to contact, including Michelle Fullhart.
In addition, Shera said she wants to publicly apologize to the Hamilton Southeastern Education Association, which was the main target of her post that was deleted.
Shera said she was emotional and upset about some private messages that had been sent to her, as well as a post on her Facebook page she did not make herself, which led to her posting on Facebook while in that emotional state.
As to her comment about treatment of transgender students in the schools, Shera said she has reached out to parents of transgender students in the HSE school district to better understand their point of view on school policies.
Perhaps there is a lesson here for all of us. Do not post on any social media platform when you are upset or emotional. Amanda Shera learned that lesson the hard way. We all should learn from this.
As for he said to my kids a million times….. If you post, text, tweet, Snapchat or enter something on a connection computer including a phone, then assume it is public even if in a private conversation. Additionally, I’m constantly telling people (many adults that have asked for help removing items) that once something is posted to the web, assume it will never go away even if deleted. There are archive sites that copy pages constantly. Many are outside the US and don’t care about copyright, IP, or other legal aspects.
There have been a lot of posts and electronic messages from or related to this year’s school board election that were quickly deleted that still got passed around in the back channels of Fishers. Of course it is important to vet such messages when you see them as some might not be real.
This is why social media policies are important, and why people making such policies really need to understand how the internet works. It is also why the 45 day posting of the videos of board meetings is simplly stupid. All the 45 day policy does is make the current board members (with the exception of Fullhart who spoke against it) look niave and against transparency. The videos will continue to exist….
It could get interesting for HSE schools depending on how this election turns out….almost as interesting as the next contract negotiations with the teachers association “assuming” the read the deleted post referenced above….
In short…..social media is not your friend.
Please excuse all my typos in the previous comment. Long comments shouldn’t be written from a phone…