Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas has called on a local school board member to explain a since deleted social media post denigrating “80 percent” of African-Americans.
Appearing to record a video from his car, Robert Alvero, a Republican Clay County School Board member, sparked outrage with a post in which he said:
“I have had 80 percent more negative experience with the African American community in this country than I have with white people. That being said, that doesn’t mean I haven’t had good experiences with African American people. I have met a lot of great African American people, and I’m still friends with them because they are good, decent people. But that’s 20 percent of people that I’ve met that are African Americans. The other 80 percent, they’ve been nasty, they’ve been rude, they’ve been problematic, always trying to fight, always disrespecting. Why would I want to be around people like that? No. So I understand where Nick Fuentes is coming from. Also, where Nick Fuentes says everybody has a little bit of racism in them, I agree.”
The comments quickly drew the ire of Tallahassee’s education chief.
In a scathing letter to Alvero, Kamoutsas criticized the school board member’s remarks, writing, “It is unclear to me how an individual entrusted with the oversight of educating 39,000 students in Clay County could speak this way. This is even more concerning considering almost 7000 (17.8%) of Clay County’s students are African- American, and the district is filled with many hardworking African-American teachers, school leaders, bus drivers, cafeteria staff and other employees.”
Kamoutsas sternly ordered Alvero to appear before the State Board of Education at their meeting on January 21 to “explain the conduct.”
“I can only pray that the children of Clay County have been protected from your discriminatory content,” Kamoutsas concluded in the missive.
With calls for his resignation mounting, Alvero has since deleted the post and has not publicly responded.
Of Cuban descent, Alvero, who has said in prior interviews that he fled his native land, was elected in November 2024, beating his opponent 54-46 with 61,000 votes.
Clay County Republican Chair Rhonda Jett demanded Alvero’s immediate resignation.
“The remarks that were made do not reflect what our community exemplifies,” she wrote in a statement.
Clay School Board Chair Erin Skipper echoed that call to step down, and said the matter will be addressed at the panel’s next meeting on January 8.
