Organizers of a rally to remove retired developer Carl Paladino from the Buffalo school board claim they’ll have hundreds of parents, students, teachers and community members at a rally on Niagara square Thursday. They want State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia to use state authority to remove Paladino from the board after publication of his remarks last week in the alternative weekly “ArtVoice.”
Paladino answered a questionnaire about what he’d like to see in 2017 by writing that President Obama should die of mad cow disease and the first lady take up with a gorilla in Zimbabwe. That triggered a statewide firestorm over the man who co-chaired Donald Trump’s New York campaign and ran on the Republican line for Governor.
Paladino has issued an apology, saying he didn’t mean for his words to be seen by the public at large and also that he never intended to hurt the minority community…who he’s tried to help out of the cycle of poverty in the inner cities. He says to those people, he apologizes.
But Paladino continues to say President Obama failed as president and calls him a “traitor to American values.” And he says he won’t step down from the Buffalo School Board.
Organizers of the demonstration against him say Paladino’s words violated the Buffalo schools code of conduct and the New York Dignity For All Students Act.