On Tuesday, July 16, an already tense school board meeting in Newburgh, NY, was pushed over the edge when the school board president, Christine Bello, was caught on a hot mic calling a concerned parent an “asshole.”
A lapse of decorum, to be sure, but this slipup was merely the culmination of a conflict within the Newburgh School District, stretching back nearly a decade and involving allegations of conspiracy, catfishing, and racism. And the hurled obscenity in question was in response to a mother in the district revealing it all to the public.
Newburgh Board of Education President Christine Bello ignited a scandal when she was caught on a hot mic insulting a concerned parent
Image credits: newburghschools
Image credits: change.org
In the livestream of the board meeting, Melanie Collins approaches the podium, acknowledges the board, and reveals a poster filled with screenshots of a Facebook profile: a young woman named “Daniel Baez” wearing revealing outfits—common for social media but strange for the profile to be friends with multiple members of the school board, including President Bello herself. More shockingly, she reveals the account, which claims to be a “guerilla journalist,” has posted “every document, meeting, personal information, superintendent’s home address.”
Collins asserts that the account is a “fake persona.” In fact, she and her fiancé, Aisha Mills, discovered that the photos on the account actually belonged to a sex worker whose name is not Daniel Baez and who is not from Newburgh.
Concerned parents, Melanie Collins and Aisha Mills, discovered a Facebook profile they claim had stolen photos from a sex worker who had nothing to do with Newburgh, and the profile was befriended by several members of the school board
Image credits: Newburgh Schools
Image credits: Newburgh Schools
Bored Panda tried to contact both Christine Bello and Daniel Baez, but neither answered. We did, however, speak with Aisha Mills after finding out she’d created a Change.org petition to remove Christine Bello from the board over her outburst. She revealed how she and Collins scoured the allegedly fake Daniel Baez Facebook page after discovering it was “saying horrible, hateful stuff” about Ray Harvey, president of the local NAACP chapter, and Dr. Jackielyn Campbell, the district’s new superintendent and the first Black woman in the role.
Since the board meeting, whoever runs the Daniel Baez page has removed and replaced all the photos of the young sex worker, but evidence of racist commentary is still visible. In an inflammatory post, they refer to Aisha Mills as “mulatto.”
“Anytime somebody calls me a mulatto, I know I’m in a fight with some older white guy, generally, or white, white woman,” she said.
Yet the question remained just who was behind the fake account and why.
The allegedly fake profile had been harassing the current school district administration, including its first Black female superintendent, and it had been using racially charged language
Image credits: Daniel Baez
At first, they believed the who was a “disgraced” former teacher named Richard Desiderio. According to Mills, Desiderio had recently been teaching in the district at her child’s school. That was his final post before the administration “officially removed him” for “touching students inappropriately, though not sexually.”
We reached out to Desiderio for comment, but he did not respond. Still, records of investigations and proceedings involving him and the Newburgh school district go back to 2015. He was finally terminated in 2023, which he claims was retaliation for him being a whistleblower. His reasoning for this was that he informed the state that the district was allowing student-athletes to compete despite missing attendance qualifications.
Collins and Mills believe the account is related to “disgraced” former teacher Richard Desiderio, who was fired for “touching students inappropriately, though not sexually”
Image credits: Mid Hudson News
Aisha Mills doubts that was really the case. “This is typical employment law. Let me cover myself so you can’t fire me. I’m gonna say I’m a whistleblower kinda thing. I know it.”
And while Mills didn’t want to make accusations about the exact reasons Desiderio was fired, she did reveal she and her fiancé had found his Instagram page. “[It] is the most creepy thing I’ve ever seen in my life. He has hundreds of pictures of children. I don’t know whose children these are. But, clearly, I mean, I can’t imagine that he has parental consent to have been posting all these children all over his page.” Some of those photos were even at the school their children attend.
His Instagram account appeared racially charged as well. His profile read: “Getting white money, but I’m still black.”
But we can’t help but think there must be something more than a fired teacher trying to get his job back, especially if it involves a conspiracy with the school board.
The parents assert that the fake account is part of a conspiracy to drive out the current administration and ultimately get Desiderio his job back
Image credits: letscoco
Image credits: Richard Desi
Mills and Collins thought just the same thing. Their digging uncovered a more believable motive: $45 million. It turns out that Desiderio’s initial whistleblower complaint was done in cooperation with a man named Darren Stridiron.
Stridiron was previously on the school board himself and sued the district for discrimination because he claimed his son should have been valedictorian. Stridiron was even elected board president in 2023 before being ousted. He was removed after the district administration filed a complaint with the New York Department of Education, alleging that he was protecting Richard Desiderio with his school board powers.
We also reached out to Darren Stridiron, but he didn’t respond. A look at his Facebook page shows he has been quite antagonistic with the school district. Specifically, he has been advocating for a forensic audit of the district despite the fact that, according to Mills, all state audits have come back clean.
The parents have also come to believe the fake account and Richard Desiderio are conspiring with Darren Stridiron, who sued the district for $45 million while he was on the school board before being ousted
Image credits: Darren Stridiron
In reality, Aisha Mills and Melanie Collins believe Stridiron is conspiring with Desiderio to stock the school board and remove the current administration. This is a big problem for these parents because they’re quite fond of the superintendent, Dr. Campbell. “She’s kind of been a really great get,” Mills said. “They did a national search with a firm.”
It’s important to Mills that her daughters see the first Black woman superintendent in the district succeed not be pushed out by what she views as racist interests.
“Representation matters to how our young people see the possibility of themselves,” she told me. “So, I will never back away from that. In talking about race and in talking about diversity and talking about representation, it should be front and center as a badge of honor and pridefulness for us. And to watch [Desiderio, Stridiron, and Bello] have the opposite effect is really damaging, and it just can’t go on.”
Collins and Mills believe the conspiracy is damaging to the school district and its children, and they have vowed to fight back despite resistance and retaliation
Image credits: Melanie Collins
Christine Bello allowed Richard Desiderio to speak at the board meeting, something Aisha Mills claimed should not be allowed because he does not even live in the district, much less have children in it—incidentally, neither does Christine Bello.
For the moment, Daniel Baez, whoever he or she may actually be, got one step closer to their goal. But that won’t stop Aisha Mills and Melanie Collins from fighting back. “This is not going to stop,” Mills said. “She thinks we’re coming for her now.”
Indeed, Christine Bello’s outburst at the board meeting seems to have only been the public ignition of what’s sure to be a larger conflict. Mills confided that after the meeting, Collins received a “harassing text message” that was claimed to have come from board member Victoria Bousche. The only problem? Collins was standing right next to Bousche at the time.
It seems someone has graduated from fake Facebook profiles to fake phone numbers.
The Newburgh Enlarged City School District declined to comment on this matter.
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