Onaway school board members hurl accusations
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ONAWAY -- Tempers reached a boiling point at Onaway Area Schools on Tuesday as members of the district's Board of Education and residents engaged in several intense shouting matches during a school board meeting.
Hostilities first began when school board member Annette Porter confronted board President James Rieger about a call he made to a local credit union employee about a rumor that Rieger heard was supposedly circulating there.
According to Porter, the rumor was that Rieger, along with other members of the board, had hired the Ku Klux Klan to "take out Annette Porter," and that the district's secretary to the superintendent, Abby Dandy, was afraid to come to work.
Porter questioned why Rieger called the credit union about the rumor first and why he didn't bring the rumor to the attention of either herself or Onaway Superintendent Mindy Horn.
"Why wouldn't you contact the board member that this threat was about?" Porter asked Rieger. "Why wouldn't you contact Miss Horn if someone even thought for one second that Miss Dandy was fearful of her position?"
Porter believed that, because of the mentioning of the KKK, the rumor was a direct threat to her children, some of whom are biracial. Porter believed that, by not telling either herself or Horn, Rieger was allowing the rumor to spread.
"So someone calls him and says, 'Hey, there is a rumor going around that you and another board member contacted the KKK to take out Annette Porter' … Don't you think he should have squashed the rumor if untrue??" Porter said in an email to The News. "He surely continued the rumor by calling the Credit Union and Not me."
Porter said the incident was the second case in which she perceived Rieger to be involving her children in board affairs.
"This is twice now sir, you'll involve my children," Porter told Rieger at Tuesday's meeting. "The first was when you were negatively speaking about me in front of my daughter at her workplace and now referencing the KKK. You can sit here and you can try and say it has nothing to do with my children, sir, but the KKK wouldn't be an issue if not for my biracial children."
In response to Porter's accusations, Rieger claimed that the rumor he heard was that an individual from Alpena contacted the KKK to take out Porter, not a member of the board. He also stated that he contacted the credit union employee because he believed he would get a straight answer out of her regarding the rumors, since the two of them have known each other for years. Rieger defended not informing Porter on the grounds that he believed the matter was settled since the credit union employee assured him that there was no such rumor circulating at the credit union.
"She said there was no such rumor going on," Rieger said. "And I took her at her word because I trusted (her). And I didn't bring it to anybody else's attention because it didn't need to be brought to anybody else's, plain and simple. Nobody needed to know about it because it was just another B.S. rumor going around like every damn week."
A little bit later, board member John Palmer confirmed that he had also heard the KKK rumor and also didn't mention it to Porter because he believed the claim was ridiculous.
"I'm just gonna set some things straight," said Palmer. "I, too, heard the KKK rumor, because I also was named in that stupid, stupid accusation. You never heard nothing from me, neither, Annette. You know why? Because none of it was true and I'm the kind of guy that just lets things die. Let it die. It's total bullcrap, so let it die."
Palmer then went on to list several other rumors and controversies levied at board members, including criticizing an Onaway resident for accusing him of making another Onaway resident, LaNisha Boughner, cry in the parking lot after a previous meeting.
"LaNisha may have been crying out in the parking lot, but it was not because of anything I did or said," said Palmer. "I never spoke one word to LaNisha Boughner out in that parking lot. Not one word."
That comment led to a brief verbal altercation between Palmer and Boughner, who was present at the meeting.
Boughner confronted Palmer again during public speaking time, criticizing Palmer for his treatment of other community members and saying she cried because she had to restrain herself from hitting him.
"How many people have you confronted that have been up here and spoke and then got confronted, whether it's out in the parking lot, whether it's in a restaurant, whether it's at a bar," said Boughner. "I stopped myself from hitting you and the reason why I started crying is because I got pulled back so I didn't end up in jail."
At some point during the meeting, the Presque Isle County Sheriff's Office was called about fighting taking place during the board meeting and, at the end of the meeting, two deputies arrived at that school.