Brevard School Board chair reveals ‘fraudulent’ third-party involvement in planned student walkouts
BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Brevard County School Board Chair Matt Susin revealed Wednesday that an investigation into planned student walkouts has uncovered that outside organizations, not students, are behind the social media campaign using fraudulent school logos to stir unrest.
Speaking on Florida’s Voice Radio with host Drew Steele, Susin said the district has shifted its investigation toward “outside organizations” after interviewing students and teachers originally thought to be involved.
“We interviewed the students that were a part of it, and none of them had agreed that this was something that they had done,” Susin said. “What they did was they used our school logos to make our community look like we were a part of it.”
Susin said the district is now looking into potential fraud charges against these third parties for misappropriating school district intellectual property to promote “bad behavior” and distractions from classroom instruction.
The investigation has also expanded to include law enforcement after Susin received a threatening, profanity-laced voicemail on Tuesday.
“We’ve actually been able to reverse and investigate that number, and we found that it came from an IP address up in Long Beach, Georgia,” Susin said. He noted that while the caller used a local 407 area code, the source appears to be part of the broader pattern of “outside organizations” targeting the district.
The proposed walkouts were reportedly intended to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, activity. In a letter sent to families earlier this week, the district warned that any student leaving campus or disrupting learning would face disciplinary consequences ranging from in-school suspension to five days of out-of-school suspension.
“We protect the First Amendment […] But not while they’re in our schools, not on our campuses,” Susin said, adding that parents are free to take their children to protests on their own time.
Susin called on the Florida Legislature to create new laws specifically protecting schools from organizations that “hijack” school logos for political agendas.
Despite the distractions, Susin highlighted that Brevard Public Schools recently reached its highest graduation rates ever.
“We will not allow people to create a distraction that takes away from that excellence,” he said.
