Rotten Core of Public Education on Full Display With Illegal Alien Superintendent

By now, most regular consumers of national news will recognize the name Ian Andre Roberts, the erstwhile Superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools, who was arrested late last month by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. But the more one digs into his case, the more one finds that it is indicative of so many festering problems with American public education.

Roberts was in the United States illegally, having ignored a deportation order issued by an immigration judge in May of 2024. He was apprehended after fleeing from ICE agents and Iowa State police, abandoning his car in a wooded area, and hiding nearby. Authorities discovered a loaded handgun and a large amount of cash in his car. Roberts already had a criminal record involving firearms.

It has since been reported by the Des Moines Register that, in addition to misrepresenting his immigration status, Roberts falsely claimed to hold a doctoral degree from Morgan State University in Maryland. It has also come to light that the Millcreek Township School District in Erie County, Pennsylvania, where Roberts was employed as the Superintendent prior to his arrival in Des Moines, settled three lawsuits pursuant to personnel complaints during his two-year tenure. Selena Zito writes in the Washington Examiner that the settlements exceeded $330,000, including one that was resolved just days before Roberts left for Des Moines.

This whole mess has provoked outrage – but not from the school board members to whom Roberts lied about his immigration status and credentials, or state officials angry that he bilked the taxpayers out of $300,000 annually. Instead, according to a report from KCCI, protests were organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation in support of Roberts.

Inevitably, the demonstrators denounced ICE and all its supposedly dark doings. Concerningly, the anti-immigration enforcement voices openly supporting an illegal alien fraudster included “educators.” The Des Moines Register reports this example: “Angie McKinley, a 27-year-old Des Moines Public School teacher who lives in West Des Moines, called his arrest ‘disgusting’ and ‘heartbreaking.’”

McKinley is no outlier. CBS News interviewed a number of educators in Baltimore, where Roberts was a school principal until 2010. They all portrayed him as the victim in this situation. Veteran teacher Consquilla Carey suggested that his arrest was due to his race: “I don’t know a lot about immigration or ICE, but what I do know is that minorities are being targeted.” Rysheem McGirt, another Baltimore associate, wrote the following on Facebook: “His legacy as a mentor, father figure, and leader is something I will carry with me forever… I stand with Dr. Roberts, and I pray for his strength, protection, and a swift resolution to this injustice.” (Again, Roberts most assuredly does not have a PhD.)

You will note that none of these people object to the fact that Roberts is in the U.S. illegally or that he has repeatedly misrepresented his credentials. This brings us to the real problem at the root of this debacle – the capture of public education by teachers’ unions run by far-left ideologues.

Roughly 70 percent of the nation’s schoolteachers belong to unions, most prominently the National Education Association (NEA), which boasts about 3.2 million members, or the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which has 1.8 million members. They effectively control our public education system – including the school boards.

During the past 20 years, these unions have used their enormous financial resources (i.e., membership dues) to take over local school boards, whose members ostensibly run our public education system for the benefit of students, parents, and the community.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, most voters ignored local school board elections. The teachers’ unions exploited this apathy to pack these all-important bodies with activists who could be counted on to put the agenda of the unions before any other consideration. How did they accomplish this? Michael Hartney, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, succinctly sums it up:

“The important takeaway is that teachers’ unions dominate local school board elections for two principal reasons. One, their power is partly because they can use their superior resources to mobilize their supporters in low-turnout elections. Two, an equally important and overlooked aspect of their electioneering success is the ability to translate the public’s latent trust for teachers into support for union-preferred school board candidates.”

By the time “remote learning” was revealed during the pandemic, public schools had been promoting leftist dogma, pseudoscience, revisionist history, and transgender ideology; the teachers’ unions already controlled the school boards. Consequently, when parents began appearing at school board meetings to express their unhappiness with what their children were being taught, they were treated as presumptuous interlopers with no right to question ideologically tendentious curricula. As one father discovered in Virginia, parents were even discouraged from protesting policies that clearly endanger student safety.

What does all this have to do with “Doctor” Ian Andre Roberts and his immigration status? Consider the title of a recent newsletter published by the nation’s largest teachers’ union: “NEA Rises Against State and Federal Criminalization of Immigrants.” Here is the “key takeaway” as elucidated below the title: “NEA is taking a firm stand to protect immigrant students and educators, using its power and resources to ensure public schools remain safe and inclusive for all.”

Note that the union pledges to protect immigrant educators. The NEA admits that at least 15,000 of its members are “aspiring Americans” who teach in public schools.

Are Americans expected to believe that the union-controlled school boards that hired Ian Andre Roberts to be the Superintendent of two school districts had no idea that his immigration status and lack of credentials were disqualifying? According to a report from KCCI, the background check carried out by JG Consulting flagged Roberts’ mythical doctorate from Morgan State University in Maryland as “not completed.” The Board members who initially hired him in 2023 had that information. In other words, they knew he had falsified his resume and hired him anyway. School board president Jackie Norris inevitably played the victim card:

“I want to be clear. In a world of misinformation and disinformation, speculation becomes narrative, and blame is rampant, the Des Moines School Board is also a victim of deception by Dr. Roberts, one on a growing list that includes our students and teachers, our parents and community, our elected officials, and Iowa’s Board of Educational Examiners, and others. We are committed to the community we serve and will find ways to improve our entire process as we move forward.”

Norris was not the school board president who presided over this debacle, but she clearly has no intention of coming clean about what really happened here. The final decision to hire Roberts was made in secret, which suggests it was driven by the board’s DEI agenda.

All of which leads us to this question: How many unqualified grifters like Ian Roberts are teaching our children, sitting in principals’ offices, or running entire school districts? The results these “educators” are producing suggest the number is ominously high.

As I grow long in the tooth, I’m increasingly grateful that my grandchildren are enrolled in private school.

David Catron is a Senior Editor at the American Spectator. His writing has also appeared in PJ Media, the American Thinker, the Providence Journal, the Catholic Exchange and a variety of other publications.