FSUSD official in trouble over Confederate uniform photo
Tim Goree, the district's spokesman and a member of District Superintendent Kris Corey's staff, said any disciplinary action remains 'up in the air' for now
A prominent Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District official has found himself in hot water over a Facebook photo posted seven years ago showing him dressed in a Confederate uniform and making subsequent comments to friends that apparently have been deemed racially insensitive.
Tim Goree, executive director of administrative services and community engagement and a spokesman for Solano County’s largest school district, said on Friday that any pending discipline “is still up in the air” and declined to comment on that specific question.
Superintendent Kris Corey told The Reporter that she was unable to comment on “personnel issues” when asked if Goree, who has worked several years as district spokesman, would be fired or face some sort of administrative discipline as a result of the social media posts.
Goree said the photo has been taken down from his Facebook account, but it has apparently been widely circulated among some in the Fairfield community and elsewhere.
According to Goree, the issue of the photo — a blackand-white image, a memento which included his family members and taken in 2013 in the town of Gettysburg, Pa., where they vacationed to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s turning-point battle — surfaced at the district’s Sept. 10 governing board meeting.
A member of the NAACP brought the social media postings to the trustees’ attention and said “some major things about the situation,” noted Goree, adding, “That’s a major part of this.”
The Goree controversy comes as America faces turmoil and confronts racial reckoning in the wake of numerous deaths of several unarmed black men at the hands of police, including George Floyd and Jacob Blake, with the Black Lives Matter movement raising awareness about racial inequalities in policing, the removal of Confederate statues in American cities, the ongoing rise of violent white supremacist groups, the retelling of Black American history told in the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project, among other things, prompting Americans to re-examine the broad legacies of slavery, race and the Civil War that still torment the nation.
In response to online comments surrounding the photo and his subsequent comments, Goree on Wednesday posted a “Dear Staff” online apology to district employees but also encouraged anyone “who has questions about this situation to contact me directly.”
He recounted the trip to Gettysburg and indicated that he had “answered questions (online) that friends had about the experience and said some things in ways that are hurtful to people who have been marginalized and discriminated against. While I didn’t intend to harm others, I recognize that is the result of my actions, and for that I’m very sorry.”
“I want everyone to know that I support racial equity 100%,” Goree added. “I’m distraught over the knowledge that some will look at these posts from seven years ago and believe that I don’t support racial equity.”
No surprise, given the topsy-turvy and sometime vindictive nature of social media, another photo linked to Goree’s Civil War uniform image depicts a Confederate battle flag with the word “Trump” written on it. Goree said that photo was “photoshopped” on Twitter and was posted by an unknown person with the memento photo.
“That photo was never posted by me, it was added by the anonymous person who started sharing it in the first place,” he explained in his apology letter.
Asked if he supported President Trump, who some believe has inflamed race relations in America, Goree said, “I’d rather not comment on that.”
Goree told The Reporter that his trip to Gettysburg was a vacation and that the photo was taken in a studio in the southern Pennsylvania town, where the store manager gave him a choice to wear a Confederate or Union uniform, depending on his family’s history in the United States. Goree’s family hails from Texas, one of the Confederate states.
“That’s how we chose,” he explained, adding that his wife and three daughters also posed for the photo.
Goree conceded that people seeing the original Facebook photo and the comments in Facebook conversations “without context, can be disturbing to people.”
Toward the end of the interview, Goree alluded to his receiving, shortly after being hired by the district, “mitigation of bias training” as a condition of employment.