A disgraced former school board member is purged from memory, in classic Soviet-Union-style.
A statement put out yesterday by the Mounds View public school board,
Today we’ve received notice that Jonathan Weinhagen has resigned from the School Board of Mounds View Public Schools effective immediately. The Board will discuss next steps to fill the remainder of the vacated term, which expires on January 3, 2028. Updates to the community will follow.
Weinhagen, you will recall, was indicted this week in federal court on five counts of bank and wire fraud, unrelated to his tenure on the school board. He had served for over 11 years on the board, had held the position of chair, and had been re-elected with the backing of the local teachers union. Weinhagen, aged 42, was accused of embezzling more than $200,000 from his former employer, the Minneapolis-area Chamber of Commerce, where he served as president for eight years.
In his younger years, Weinhagen had won 40 Under 40 honors for his work with the St. Paul Chamber.
Here’s the image accompanying the Mounds View Board’s statement yesterday,
Here is the group photo of the school board as it appeared on the official website the previous night.
As you can see, Weinhagen was seated at left in the original. But now, like a disgraced Soviet-era Commissar, he has vanished from the official record, airbrushed (photoshopped) from history.
I wasn’t the only one to notice. MPR News reported yesterday,
Former Minneapolis Chamber CEO quits Mounds View School Board after federal indictment
MPR reprints both photos and notes,
The release includes a photo of the board with Weinhagen mostly cropped out and the district’s logo over his knee.
Why go to such effort? Why not just omit the group photo altogether until a new sitting can be arranged?
Stalin would have been proud. Let’s hope that Weinhagen didn’t meet the same fate as Commissar Nikolai Yezhov.
I first posted this story on Power Line. One of the commenters on the site posted this parody,
That’s Weinhagen seated to the right. Joseph Stalin can be seen standing to his immediate left. Comrade Yezhov is no longer shown.
Dasvidaniya!
