The sister of candidate for a local school board is warning residents not to vote for him, saying he is racist, dishonest and has an agenda against public education.
Val Gogoleski is the sister of Glenn Gogoleski, a candidate for a seat on the Hartland Consolidated Schools Board of Education. She is a retired special education teacher who lives in Oregon, and says she and her brother haven’t been on speaking terms since the 1990s.
When asked what drove them apart, Val Gogoleski declined to go into specifics, but said she found his “morals and values repugnant,” and that based on her experience with him as a sibling, she believes he is “not an honest person.”
Val Gogoleski says when she heard her brother was running for school board, she felt compelled to speak up.
“I was horrified because I know how my brother feels about teachers and public education,” she said. “He doesn’t like either. He has told me that.”
She recalled an argument in 1993 when her brother discussed his feelings about public schools.
“He felt that not all kids deserved an education,” she said. “Because I taught special ed, I don’t know if that was a personal insult or just a general thing.”
She said her experience with her brother has been one in which he has indulged racist and extremist views.
“Oh, I know how he feels about racial issues,” she said. “I grew up in the most racist family. We were raised to be racist. The family was openly racist. I mean, we were indoctrinated as children. The n-word was commonly used in our home.”
When asked if she thought he had changed, she was direct in her response.
“Oh, nothing has changed,” she said. “Nothing has changed.”
She also noted his Facebook page was previously filled with what she described as white supremacist memes and other extremist rhetoric that is now gone.
“Oh, he has scrubbed everything,” she said. “He’s on the Hartland Clean Slate page, and he’s basically taken the writing from his page and put it on there, or he seems to be the writer. I mean, I can tell because I’m a teacher and I know a person’s writing style.“
The page, which contains numerous anti-LGBTQ+ talking points, touts the candidacies of Glenn Gogoleski, Michelle Blondeel, Greg Keller and Bob Merwin.
It also includes a number of accusations that the Hartland district is “indoctrinating”’ students.
Among them are familiar allegations being made against school boards across the country including that kids are being taught critical race theory and that accommodating LGBTQ+ students with pronouns and bathroom usage is akin to indoctrination.
“It’s all conjecture and scary scenarios,” she said. “But he doesn’t offer any proof, any supporting documentation, any kind of reference point or link. What my brother has done is parrot these points and write them in such a way that if you were reading it and didn’t know better, you would think this is all happening in Hartland, which it is likely not.”
Val Gogolski, who has contributed money against the Clean Slate campaign, says she realizes she lives in a different state and doesn’t have any direct connection, but thinks it’s important to let voters know what her brother’s true agenda is, which she says is most definitely not education.
“His end game is politics, not kids. Right-wing politics,” she said. “You know, destroy the public schools, harass the teachers.”
And then she was asked what voters can expect if her brother is elected to the school board.
“They can expect upheaval,” she responded.
Glenn Gogoleski was offered an opportunity to respond to his sister’s allegations, and sent the following statement;
“During an election cycle, every candidate must be prepared for challenges from detractors involving spin, innuendo, and sometimes outright falsehoods and lies. Politics is a full-contact sport in the figurative sense. But when allegations are made by a thirty-year estranged family member, slander and defamation rise to a new level. The allegations made by my biological sister Valerie are beyond vicious, and the claims of my “racist” family are easy to make, especially when the accused are deceased. So brave. If my parents were alive today and wished to take legal action, I would foot the bill.
It is true that my father was a carbon copy of Archie Bunker. He grew up in an era when racial jokes and stereotypes were common. But he was an equal opportunity offender, and there wasn’t an ethnicity he didn’t have a joke for – including his own. His memorized list of Polish jokes was unending and only received eye rolls from his family. Don Rickles he was not. To compare and hold a WWII vet to today’s “always offended” standards is intellectually cheap and dishonest. My mother was a para-professional reading instructor in the Detroit Public Schools for over 20 years and helped many disadvantaged minority elementary students learn to read and write. Some even nicknamed her “mommy”. I’m not sure how Val can think this left time for Klan rallies and cross-burnings.
Val suffers from an affliction of permanent victimhood from my father who was an alcoholic, and to this day, blames him for her poor life choices. She continued to borrow money from my parents well into adulthood and up to the days of my mother’s diagnosis of dementia, but could not make the time to come to my mother’s funeral. Unfortunately for Val, my mom left a file folder of correspondence and accounting documents she kept on her. She has alienated not just her nuclear family but her extended as well. The only offense to her is that I have conservative morals and values, which to my Portland-residing sister are “repugnant” as she stated.
As for a supposed conversation that took place over thirty years ago, regarding a statement I made about public education (?), that’s a level of mental illness I cannot address.
Now, regarding those memes I have on my personal FB page, here is what they are all about. The OK symbol was posted when hearing the ADL made the claim it was racist, for no other reason than to say “racist”. Every left-leaning group needs a cause no matter how infantile and imbecilic it might be. It actually was started on 4chan as a joke to showcase the silliness of what the left will embrace, and boy howdy was it proven over and over again. The left tried really hard to promote this, but it didn’t take off like it was supposed to. Whoopsie! The other OK sign with the tyranny ring was posted when a story emerged that a West Point cadet was going to be penalized or dismissed for showing an OK sign in a picture. https://thefederalist.com/…/ok-hand-sign-isnt-hate-symbol/
As for the Buffalo man pic, I had to post that when the leftist media called January 6 an “insurrection”. This low-grade riot, which couldn’t hold a candle to the average “mostly peaceful” BLM riots as seen in major cities EVERYWHERE, was apparently led by that dude wearing a buffalo hat and carrying a spear. Oh, how far we have lost our way from 1776 when people knew how to throw a real insurrection. We really need to up our game and get the mojo back. Personally, I think the guy gets points for style, but I am more of a post-apocalyptic look kind of guy. Nothing screams “fun-for-summer” like a camo pattern in bold colors like orange or aqua.
And lastly, the off-my-lawn pic is of Mark McCloskey, the St Louis citizen who brandished a firearm on HIS personal property when a local BLM protest broke down the gate to his community and started chanting threats of burning houses. He rightfully was going to defend his property from these thugs, and I think he demonstrated excellent trigger discipline.
So there you have it. The full story. Sorry to deflate anyone’s bubble of defamation, but oh well. I have no doubt the Val’s and other radical leftists of Livingston County and the world will try again.”
EDITOR’S NOTE:
The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) definition Mr. Gogoleski refers to can be found here.
Further context is also available here.
