Once Again, Insider NJ’s Fred Snowflack Flacks for NJEA-Funded Mendacious Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman and NJPEC.

Insider NJ‘s Fred Snowflack continues to flack for Mendacious Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman and his NJ Public Education Coalition’s (NJPEC).  Once again, Snowflack’s piece reads like a NJPEC press release, and once again he studiously avoids the fact that Gottesman and NJPEC are funded by the NJEA. We ask for the fourth time; why the bias, Mr. Snowflack?

The actual substance of Snowflack’s recent column appears benign on the surface.  He merely discusses (advertises?) a new NJPEC campaign with a new focus on ensuring that the state’s civics curriculum is being taught in New Jersey school districts.  Snowflack describes NJPEC as a “grassroots” group whose focus had been fighting against “right-wing extremism.”  He mentions that NJPEC’s previous campaign asked school districts how many children had been opted out of “health and physical education courses,” which is exactly how NJPEC described the state’s controversial sex ed curriculum.  He dutifully quotes a NJPEC press release claiming that less than 3% of parents opted their kids out.  Snowflack finishes by saying: “One hopes this is not a controversial premise …” and that everyone “should concur that learning the American system and voting are valuable traits for all students.”  Gottesman and NJPEC are all good and bipartisan and promoting civic virtue.  Once again, a Snowflack column reads like a NJPEC press release.

But here are the facts that Snowflack so studiously avoids:

1. As Sunlight has incontrovertibly proved, NJPEC is a NJEA-funded front, funded via dark-money Super PAC Education Truth Project.  It is not a “grassroots” organization but an “astroturf” operation where NJEA money has been used to fight the culture wars in many New Jersey school districts, including recruiting, training, and supporting progressive/NJEA-friendly school board candidates both in 2023 and 2024.  NJPEC’s opponents are parents and school boards who resist Gottesman’s and the NJEA’s progressive education policies, so the NJEA prefers to obscure its role.
2. Gottesman is a progressive zealot and a bully (here and here). He urged Gov. Murphy to crack down on school boards that were defying Murphy’s controversial sex ed guidelines (Snowflack’s “health and physical education courses”), offering to sue the districts and pointing out that defending against such legal action would cost these districts money. Murphy’s attorney general subsequently filed lawsuits against four school districts over their parental notification policies.
3. The NJPEC open-records campaign Snowflack mentions must be seen in light of these attempts at legal intimidation. The campaign inundated 387 school boards with onerous open-records requests, which included ten wide-ranging demands, only one of which was the number of kids who were opted out of sex ed.  Any fair examination of these requests would recognize the enormous administrative burden they imposed and the thinly veiled attempt at intimidating school boards and parents.  Combined, these efforts were basically lawfare against selected school boards and parents — that is, those that dare to challenge Gottesman’s progressive view of education.
4. Gottesman is a proven liar. He claimed on NJEdReport that NJPEC was not funded by the NJEA.  That was a lie.  He earned his moniker “Hundreds of Millions” because he told the Star-Ledger that outside conservative groups were funneling “hundreds of millions” of dollars to parents groups in New Jersey. That was also a lie.  And NJPEC’s claim that less than 3% of parents opted their kids out statewide was deeply deceptive. It was based on a sample of only 25% of New Jersey’s school districts, which were not identified and could have been cherry-picked. This sample was not a sufficient basis for NJPEC’s statewide claim.  Yet Snowflack again accepts Gottesman’s words and NJPEC’s numbers without question.

This is the fourth time Snowflack has flacked for Gottesman and NJPEC (once, twice, thrice).  As can be seen, Sunlight has publicly pointed out Snowflack’s evident bias and provided factual rebuttals to his flacking, but Snowflack continues undeterred.  We’re beginning to wonder whether this is just political bias or if there is something else at work here.  Perhaps a future role writing press releases for the NJEA?

But we’ll ask again: why the bias, Mr. Snowflack? You’re supposedly a journalist: can’t you tell it straight?