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A member of the Batavia City Schools board in New York voted against approving a senior class trip to Boston because the itinerary included a stop at the Salem Witch Museum.
As “a pastor in the room,” Dan Schmidt explained, “we're going to send our kids to a witch museum? To me, like, that is awful.” He later voted against the trip as a whole because he didn’t want kids going to “what I would consider a Satanic witch museum.”
He was the only vote against the trip. But the discussion surrounding it was appalling to watch.
Student representatives (wearing adorable lobster hats that were given to them right before they spoke) presented a draft itinerary to members of the school board on Monday, and it looked like an incredible way for new graduates to spend a few more days together before going their separate ways. The itinerary, as it stands, includes the Duck Tour, a dinner cruise, and a stop at the Salem Witch Museum, which chronicles the infamous trials from the 1600s.
I’ve been there. It’s fascinating. It’s an educational experience, not an attempt to indoctrinate anyone into witchcraft. My kids loved it, too.
But Schmidt heard the word “witch” and couldn’t get over it.
Even when one parent (the one sitting with her back to the camera) tried to explain how visiting the Witch Museum would be incredible for her own daughter, Schmidt just dismissed her and kept ranting. (I’ve adjusted the noise levels in the clip below.)
Not to be the Debbie Downer in the room, but the Salem Witch Museum. Just wondering if there was an alternative option for that.
Just thinking, like, I’m a pastor in the room…
…
… So, like, if my boys, like, if this was, if the Salem Witch Museum, as a Christian, was part of the trip, we would just, he probably wouldn’t go, you know?
[To woman attending meeting and raising her hand] Hold on one second.
So I’m just wondering if there’s an alternative option. Like, why would we want to exclude somebody that would feel like this is kind of going against what… what they… their core values in their life, you know?
…
Could we just wipe that option right off the slate? You know, like, why would, why would, why would we want to—I mean, witches—
[Someone in attendance: We usually just listen to the voice of the kids, and that’s one of the things that the kids brought up.]
Right. But. Just think, just thinking about the voice of the kids, how about the people that don’t maybe have a voice, right?… And thinking about the Christians in the room that are saying, “There’s no way I’m going to a witch museum!” You know?…
[Someone in attendance: It’s also going to teach them what was happening at that time. It’s not just going to bring it in. It’s going to say what they were for and how it was working.]
That’s not the point. The point is, is it’s, like, like, we’re… we’re encouraging our kids to go to a witch museum. To me, that is awful.
…
Let me finish.
[Someone in attendance: So I’m the only one in the room not allowed to talk?]
You can talk, but let me finish.
So just thinking about, like, people in the—like, I’m thinking, like, let’s say you— there’s three of you [student presenters]. You guys are great friends. You two are going to the witch museum… and you’re my daughter, you’re gonna want to go too, you know, and then feel excluded. Like, why would we want that? You know, we’re talking about a senior class of people that are, like, this is something to celebrate, this is something to be excited about, and we’re going to send our kids to a witch museum. To me, like, that is awful.
[Board member: All in favor?]
[Most board members: Aye.]
[Board member: Any opposed?]
I want to be opposed based on the option to go to what I would consider a Satanic witch museum.
There’s so much ignorance in what he said. For starters, the Salem Witch Museum isn’t Satanic. (Though, ironically, The Satanic Temple’s headquarters are only about a 10-minute walk away.) It’s a museum that highlights what can happen when overzealous men look for outcasts to blame for everything that goes wrong, leading to mass hysteria, false accusations, and needless violence. In other words, it couldn’t be more relevant to the times in which we currently live.
The idea that visiting the Witch Museum goes against someone’s “core values”? What would they be opposing? Getting an education?
At no point did anyone flat-out ask Schmidt to explain what he thought the Salem Witch Museum was. I wish they did. It would have been glorious to watch an overly confident Christian white dude speak at length on a topic he knows nothing about. For what it’s worth, the museum itself says its mission is to “be the voice of the innocent victims of witch hunts from 1692 to the present day.”
In any case, Schmidt demanded an alternative option—which was a possibility since this was just a draft itinerary—but even after being told that would be considered, he still argued that students might be coerced to attend the museum anyway because their friends would go.
Adults who spoke on behalf of the students pointed out that students specifically requested a stop at the Witch Museum and that it wasn’t controversial like Schmidt was making it out to be. But that didn’t stop him from trying to ruin everyone’s fun.
Thankfully he was outnumbered and the trip is still a go. Details and costs will be figured out in the near future. As is typical with these kinds of class trips, there’s a lot of fundraising involved.
When Joanne Beck of The Batavian, a local newspaper, spoke with Schmidt afterwards, she told him the museum was all about the “persecution of the innocent, including Christians.” Wasn’t there value in learning about that?
His response was telling:
I can't really say that I know the history of it.
No shit.
But he kept talking. These are seriously the next words out of his mouth:
But for me as a pastor, to hear that our students are going to a witch museum, I mean, think of all the options in Boston. There's a lot of other options that are a lot less controversial…
He doesn’t know anything about the history of witch hunts or the Salem Witch Trials, but he assumes they’re controversial, so he wants everyone to avoid it. Because he’s too immature to expand his mind, he assumes seniors graduating from the school district he helps lead are equally immature.
The reporter asked him if he was satisfied knowing there would at least be alternatives offered to students. He said he wasn’t—and then implied Christians should protest this:
I'm not satisfied. I just don't think that it's the healthiest choice for our students, and I hope the church rises up and has a problem with it. Anybody that is truly serving God, not just saying they're—anybody could say they're a Christian—but my hope is that the parents that truly do have a problem with this, whether they're of seniors or not, that any parent in the school district has an issue with this, I hope they make it known in some way, shape, or form, in the healthiest way…
… I don't think this is a win for our students.
He added that he had to speak up about this because silence would upset the Baby Jesus:
I'm gonna stand before God someday, and I feel like to not share my voice in that moment—I get that everybody's faith is, people have a different perspective on Christianity—but for me, I think Jesus would frown on this.
That’s deeply ironic since one could argue Jesus was also the victim of a witch hunt since, as the story goes, he was killed as a sacrificial lamb to prevent broader problems.
Also, why is Schmidt making school board decisions based on his religious beliefs rather than what’s best for students?
Schmidt was elected to the school board in 2025 and serves as lead pastor at the Batavia Assembly of God Church. When he was running for school board, he said one thing he’s learned from leading a church is that “no one [person] is wiser than everyone in the room.” At this week’s meeting, however, he chose to ignore everyone in the room in order to push his own ignorant Christian agenda.
Deanna King is the mother of a student in that district, and she posted about Schmidt’s comments earlier this week—along with a brief lesson on the Salem Witch Trials. (Definitely worth watching!)
Salem, she explained, was a reminder of what can happen when “fear becomes more powerful than facts.”
She also asked her followers to help with fundraising so that as many students as possible are able to come on this trip. It costs between $779 and $879, though the final price will depend on how many students can go. But as of yesterday, she said, she’s already “raised enough for 34 kids to get into the museum.”
Lucien Greaves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, told me last night that the Witch Museum was “a lovely establishment” before making his own offer to the students at Batavia High:
I would like to personally invite students to visit The Satanic Temple which is open to the public, [and] holds an art gallery, library, and permanent exhibit pieces dedicated to educating the public about our many battles to advance pluralism and true religious liberty.
We at the Temple believe in the value of free inquiry and an education uncensored by incurious, superstitious dogmatists who are incapable of separating their pastoral roles from their duties to the school boards they corrupt with aggressive incompetence.
Ball’s in your court, kids. If you want to make Schmidt really mad, you know what to add to your itinerary.
Why are the most ignorant ones always the loudest ones?
𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑎 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑢𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑐𝑎𝑛 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑧𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑙𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑔𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔, 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑠 ℎ𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑎, 𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒.
There's the problem. If students don't get to 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 what overzealous men can do to them, they won't 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘦 when overzealous men are doing it.