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Loudoun Schools’ Public Relations Honcho Linked To Anonymous Social Media Attacks On Journalist, Parents: “Little D–k” “White People”
The Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) official hired to foster “transparency” and “family outreach” following its sordid scandals appears to be tied to a social media account that degraded and attacked parents and journalists, mocking the district’s sex-starved “middle-aged soccer mom[s]” and “white people,” and saying a journalist had a “little d–k.”
When Aaron Spence was named superintendent after the criminal indictment of his predecessor, Spence turned heads by bringing with him a lavishly-paid communications officer from his last job: Thirty-six-year-old Natalie Allen was given an annual salary of $251,000, plus special benefits, to serve as Chief Communications Officer of Loudoun schools.
Allen’s office has often ignored questions from reporters, including for this article. However, around the time that Allen was brought in to manage LCPS’ reputation, assure parents that it was not partisan, and provide information to the public, an X account with the handle @kecknj began profanely attacking journalists, conservatives, and others who discussed negative information about LCPS.
The X account did not have a name displayed at the time, but a 2019 news article reveals that it used to have the name Nicholas Keckeisen — who appears to be Allen’s husband. That news article showed the account attacking a school board member in Missouri, where Allen worked around that time, accusing the board member of “white fragility.”
LCPS pays their Chief Communications Officer, Natalie Allen, a salary of 250k to “drive positive news coverage of LCPS and build meaningful relationship with families”.
Why is her husband, kecknj, attacking local news reporters and parents? Is he ensuring her job security? pic.twitter.com/JlSGzHaWkr
— LoudounCountyMoms (@LoudounMoms) March 27, 2024
The account (which Allen’s official X account follows) was imbued with partisan animus and mirrored the issues fixated on by Allen’s office, revealing contempt for normal taxpayers of America’s wealthiest county. The account called conservative parents “lying sacks of s—” and concerned moms a “little sewing group” of “middle-aged soccer mom[s]” who were angry because their pool boys would not have sex with them. “We’re trying to get those white people to stop being a—holes,” it said, adding that the state’s Republican governor supports rape.
The poster claimed to see a conservative parent “slipping schtick minock’s little d— down his throat behind the Arby’s last week” — using a disparaging nickname for the WJLA journalist Nick Minock, who was targeted by Allen’s office last week — and said the school board views concerned parents as “fools to be kept off of Fox news with your childish antics.”
Allen, immediately after being hired, steered $27,000 to a nonprofit that had previously given her an award — the nonprofit went on to write a report that was used as justification for shocking steps to silence critics of Spence, demonize watchdogs, and turn the school system into “misinformation” police, a Daily Wire review shows. That includes a move to ban elected school board members —Spence’s bosses — from communicating with their own constituents, in favor of all information coming through Allen’s office.
The “communications audit” purchased from the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) is cited as the basis for LCPS asking the federal government this month to punish a local news station for its Emmy-winning coverage of LCPS, with Allen’s subordinate writing to the Federal Communications Commission that an ABC affiliate’s coverage “will continue unabated without some kind of external action.”
The FCC complaint even argued that the station should not be allowed to use the tagline “Crisis in the Classroom” for its editorial products on education because the “communications audit” said people would prefer “good news” stories.
NSPRA gave Allen an award in 2020, as well as honored her in 2016, a year in which she worked for Baltimore County Public Schools superintendent Dallas Dance, who was sentenced to prison for perjury in 2018.
Its audit was also cited as justification for a broader attack by Allen’s office on the media, including a new website called “Correcting Misinformation and Disinformation” that faults the media for harming “the school division’s efforts to rebuild trust.” The website says Allen’s office will “notify students, families, staff and the community when misinformation or disinformation is occurring.”
The audit proposed to “Eliminate the release of board member-specific newsletters. Currently, some board members send newsletters to their district constituents and some do not… Stakeholders are simply receiving too much information from too many sources. Eliminating these newsletters would be responsive to that stakeholder feedback, and instead relying on school board information produced and distributed by the Department of Communications and Community Engagement would help ensure messages are accurate.”
That would amount to a near-coup, as the superintendent works for school board members, rather than the other way around. This month, a Republican school board member was also hauled into a secret meeting where she faced the threat of discipline after she said she voted against giving Spence a $20,000 bonus, while a policy was proposed prohibiting school board aides from criticizing the district even privately, after an aide said her daughter did not like being forced to share a locker room with a boy.
A review of NSPRA audits conducted for other school systems suggests that the primary value of the document to Allen was precisely to justify such moves while hiding behind a third party. NSPRA has sold custom audits to more than a dozen school systems, but they included identical assessments and language, despite those districts being wildly different.
For example, NSPRA claimed that at individual “focus groups” at Pauling County schools in Georgia, Ascension Public Schools in Louisiana, and Lee’s Summit in Missouri, participants at each made the exact same remarks. Those remarks, it said, led it to recommend that each district “Develop and execute a plan to combat misinformation and disinformation.”
The FCC complaint against ABC affiliate WJLA shows that Allen’s office is fixated on its reporter Nick Minock and his stories on Spence, particularly Spence’s coverup of the fact that nine students from one high school overdosed on fentanyl. (Spence falsely claimed that privacy laws prevented him from even saying the name of the school, drawing bipartisan rebuke.)
The X account was also used to monitor and attack parents who unearthed facts about the school system — parents like Erin Smith, who was the first to notice the account’s link to Allen as well as the copy-and-paste content in the NSPRA’s “audits.” When one such parent commented that Minock’s reporting on the overdose coverup had led Virginia lawmakers to pass a bipartisan law forcing districts to disclose overdoses, the account wrote, “Don’t thank that f—ing shill. He’s hired help pushing forward the ultranationalist agenda. Vile human being.”
The NSPRA audit has large copy and paste paragraphs from other school district audits, many with half the student body size but with exact same recommendations.
The audit that sparked this new account IS the misinformation.
https://t.co/xxKzhkySbs https://t.co/PTw0k1plIA
— LoudounCountyMoms (@LoudounMoms) June 21, 2024
The National School Public Relations Association, despite being geared at communicating with the media, did not return a request for comment on the duplicated language in its $27,000 “disinformation” PDFs; whether Loudoun’s attempts to get the federal government to punish a TV station were in line with the practices suggested by its audit; whether it was appropriate to recommend that a superintendent tell school board members not to email their constituents; and whether the social media posts were in line with its recommended practices.
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