When Lela Casey made the decision to speak at a school board meeting in Pennsylvania’s Bucks Central School District in September, she was still concerned about an incident at a similar assembly in March. The mother of three who grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania was sitting among 50 others when she saw a man lean forward in his chair, revealing a concealed firearm. He had used a pseudonym based on a Marvel vigilante character known as the Punisher to register and make a public comment.
For several minutes, the boy denounced the alleged content of “child pornography” in school libraries and praised the Republican majority on the school board for protecting a moot measure known as Policy 109. 2 that passed last year to purge books deemed inappropriate. “You take your colleagues out to dinner for meat,” he told the three outnumbered Democrats, “because they kept you from going to jail. “After concluding, Tabitha Dell’Angelo, one of the Democratic board members, asked, “Can we explain once and for all, if public commentators will have to give their real names?”
The day after that March meeting, Casey emailed all nine Central Bucks school board members and Superintendent Abe Lucabaugh about the “alarming” scenario he had witnessed. She says she never got a response. Instead, Casey claims his email was shared on social media, which later led to accusations of mendacity about what he saw and a stop-and-desist letter from the man’s attorney threatening legal action.
After a review, the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office did not file a complaint, but the school district posted disclaimers on social media and in buildings stating that it was illegal to carry a firearm on school grounds. Doylestown Township Police Chief Dean Logan wrote to a school district administrator that he would personally warn the man, who denied owning a firearm but was later barred from participating in extended school board meetings, that “any additional infractions will result in delinquency charges. “
Fast forward to September. Casey to address the board’s primary over the March incident. “I know we have fundamental differences, but they’re still public servants with a duty to protect that network as much as possible, adding other people they disagree with,” Casey said passionately. “You didn’t protect me. ” Since then, she’s been nervous. ” I don’t feel very safe right now,” Casey told me recently. Lucabaugh and board president Dana Hunter disputed Casey’s claims that they failed to act for safety reasons.
Toward the end of that same September meeting, a speaker who knew himself as a representative of CBSD Back on Track, an organization that supports Republican school board candidates, dismissed Casey’s speech as an “Oscar-winning speech,” before launching into an unintelligible speech. accusations against Dell. Angelo for allegedly communicating with advocates about “policy interpretation. “As he was returning to his seat, he allegedly threw papers in someone’s direction, prompting Dell’Angelo’s husband to get up and lift a folding chair off the floor. in a threatening manner. Security intervened and the board president adjourned the meeting. The following month, Hunter read a document on “Driving Expectations,” drafted with the police department: “Verbal outbursts, physical confrontations, and any other disturbing habits that arise. “Any conduct to the point of committing criminal acts shall not be tolerated. ‘
Tensions are at an all-time high in Central Bucks ahead of the Nov. 7 school board election. Ten applicants are vying for five seats, and two incumbents, a Republican and a Democrat, are vying for reelection. Central Bucks Forward, the Republican ticket, touts a calendar of “parental rights” and “academics on activism,” while the Democratic group CBSD Neighbors United, whose slogan is #SaveCBSD, opposes “book bans,” “anti-LGBTQA policies,” and “culture war politics. “They pledged to “take our district out of corporate control of far-right partisan politics. “
It’s been two years since a victorious race for Republican applicants related to “parental rights” giant Moms for Liberty, an election that resulted in a 6-3 Republican majority on the board. Democrats now see an opportunity — and feel the urgency — to retake the prized district in a purple county in a key presidential battleground state. The race for the Central Bucks, which generated more than $600,000 in fundraising, is one of the few board elections to watch this year, according to the nonpartisan online publication “Encyclopedia of American Politics” Ballotpedia.
“Central Buck is something else now,” says Bill Pezza, a professor of history and government at Bucks County Community College. This “appears to be out of sync with the overall voting moderation trends in the county for other races. “November, he adds, “will be an indicator of where we’re headed and whether there will be a backlash or an affirmation” of the prestige quo.
Over the past three years, contentious conflicts over race and gender, private attacks, calls for resignation and even adjustments over roles and chairs seem to occur regularly at Central Bucks school board meetings. This once-proud school district of 18,000 students sends about 90 percent of high-altitude school graduates to schools and colleges and is home to some of Pennsylvania’s most sensitive high-altitude schools. But now it’s a warning, in the state and beyond, about what can happen when you’re out of the open-door budget and extremist domestic politics seep into local school elections with effects that radically adjust a community’s social dynamics.
But how did the state’s fourth-largest school district, located in Philadelphia’s affluent and varied suburbs, with an average revenue source of $124,000, come to be, a vital battleground in the culture wars?It all started in early 2020 when, at the same time, during sleepy school board meetings across the country, the Covid-19 pandemic led to sharp disagreements about how and when to return to in-person school and whether or not young people deserve to wear masks.
“We’re surprised that [this is happening] in purple districts, especially in historically well-educated, conservative suburbs that have noticed a backlash against Donald Trump and have leaned more Democratically and less Republican since 2016,” Putnam says. of history at the University of Pittsburgh that oversees the operation of the schools. “These are places where other people have really, really honest and shared opinions. “
Leo Burchell, a senior senior, speaks at the Central Bucks School Board meeting.
At Central Bucks, teams like ReOpen Bucks (now called Protect Bucks) and Parents Have the Right to Know have been aggressively pushing for schools to reopen. Some activist parents equated mask-wearing with child abuse and invoked George Floyd’s last words: “I can’t breathe. “by opposing orders. Active members of a Facebook organization for the local bankruptcy organization Moms for Liberty of Bucks County, which has uncovered responsive communities in a state that now lags behind Florida in bankruptcy counts, have been increasingly vocal at board meetings.
“The treatment of our young people during this pandemic has been indicative of the deception and lies perpetrated by the other people in that room,” said Debra Cannon, a Warrington mother who was a member of the Moms for Liberty Bucks County Facebook group. in May 2021. In addition to his collusion with industrial unions, communist activists, private doctors, organizations advocating for a program of political and monetary gain to orient their ideologies towards sexuality and instill concern and conformity in the minds of our youth. . . » She continued, “Right now, as we speak, there are demonic adults recruiting, brainwashing, and adopting inordinate habits with young people, and both of them know it. “
That summer, network members advocating for stricter Covid mitigation measures held a press conference ahead of a board meeting that temporarily turned combative. Anusha Viswanathan, a local pediatric infectious disease specialist, wrote in an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the parents were called “killers. “, Hitler and the Illegal Aliens” and “told him to die. “A protester carrying a sign that read “Masks Save Lives” filmed hitting a woman in the head with it.
About a month later, John Gamble, the vice chairman and a recurring vote on an equally divided board, announced his resignation after 12 years, saying he and his circle of family members had received death threats because of their votes on a mask mandate. “No more hostility,” he said, “no more intimidation, no more shameful behavior, no more politics and no more threats. By the end of fall 2021, Central Bucks school board meetings “had become the site of a twice-monthly-happening scene that not even the most outrageous of parks and recreation can imagine,” Philadelphia Magazine said.
With five board seats up for grabs at the time, the Central Bucks also garnered national attention. The New York Times faithful two episodes of the Daily podcast to the district’s “junta wars. “Meanwhile, giant sums of cash were poured into board races across Pennsylvania. , of which $500,000 came from Paul Martino, a Doylestown venture capitalist and co-founder of Bay Area-based Bullpen Capital and a self-proclaimed “hardcore Republican. “
Martino funneled thousands of dollars to up to 50 other small PACs across the state for applicants who opposed school closures through the Back to School PA PAC, which he called exclusive and nonpartisan. Most of the school board nominees who have benefited from their investments have turned out to be Republicans and, in some cases, have embraced conservative culture war agendas far beyond reopening schools.
He also donated at least $100,000 to his other PAC, Bucks Families for Leadership, which funded a list of Republican applicants for the Central Bucks School Board. Among them were two local parents from the Facebook organization Moms for Liberty Bucks County: Cannon and Lisa Sciscio. Along with the Republican candidate, Jim Pepper, they received support through the Proud American Patriots Network, a local organization connected to the national anti-government defense forces movement Three Percenters.
In November of that year, Cannon, Sciscio, and Pepper won their elections and won a 6-3 Republican majority on the board. After the election, the national organization Moms for Liberty congratulated its 1,200-member Bucks County chapter on the board’s 33 seats. won in the county through the champions of “parental rights. “”Folks, we’re backtracking,” the organization wrote.
Karen Smith, a Central Bucks school board member since 2016, has been a registered Republican for most of her life. Although he disagreed with some of the more socially conservative positions (opposition to same-sex marriage, for example, or for school vouchers), he believed in small government. Smith, now a incumbent Democrat on the board, says his turning point came in the spring of 2021. An elementary school counselor had applied to attend a $1,000 pro-progression education on inclusion for transgender and gender non-conforming students. Smith voted in favor, but was in the minority via a 5-4 vote of the school board to reject it.
Within days, a GoFundMe page raised more than $5,000 to cover the costs, and the board faced a wave of complaints about the “scary and destructive message” its vote had sent. In response, the board reversed its resolution and approved the training, but at that point, Smith pushed himself to the limit. The vote was “a sectarian resolution. ” Smith says, “Don’t they need our staff to be informed about working with transgender students?. . . I was impressed. “
Smith has had a front-row seat to tectonic shifts at the Central Bucks. Shortly after the new school board took office, several parents showed up at a school board meeting in March 2022 to read excerpts from books they found objectionable, adding some from Moms for Liberty and other favorite targets of culture warriors: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir Gender Queer and George M. ‘s All Boys Aren’t Blue. One commenter recommended that other people check out a list of “Sexually Explicit Books” on the website of WokePA, a self-proclaimed organization of “parents who oppose grooming. “And some others compare the books to “indoctrination” before saying, “If you’re gay, straight, that’s fine. “You have the right to be, but not in the Central Bucks School District.
The condemnation of school fabrics soon followed symptoms that adjustments were coming. In the spring of 2022, the principal of a high school in the district asked teachers to remove pride flags from classrooms. Another principal told school teachers to use students’ pronouns when appearing in the school’s database for end-of-year awards and certificates, unless a parent officially requests a change.
Then Andrew Burgess, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Lenape High School and an advocate for LGBTQ scholars, was very publicly suspended from his position. A lawsuit filed through the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania alleges that the district retaliated against Burgess, adding that he was transferred to another school, for filing a complaint with the U. S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The U. S. Department of Homeland Security filed a lawsuit on behalf of a transgender student who had been the victim of repeated incidents of bullying that had not been resolved. Principals denied opting for Burgess because of his advocacy, however, the hostile environment for LGBQT students at Central Bucks prompted the ACLU to file a federal complaint with the Department of Justice and OCR, alleging widespread discrimination.
Ben Busick, then a standout student at Central Bucks South in Warrington, said the episode had a chilling effect on other teachers who feared a fate similar to Burgess’s. “No one needs to be in the middle of the political war that has been unleashed in Central Bucks,” said Busick, who gave birth male at birth, is nonbinary and uses his pronouns. The existing environment at Central Bucks, they added, is “dangerous for me and my teammates. “
A protester holds a protest sign against Moms for Freedom in Philadelphia.
The growing controversy hasn’t stopped the Republican-majority school board from redoubling its efforts to push its conservative agenda. In July 2022, they passed Policy 109. 2, which was drafted with the help of Christian groups, and allowed any district resident to question school library books for “sexualized content” containing “an implied written description of sexual acts or implied nudity. “Since Standard 109. 2 went into effect, at least 60 books have been challenged and two titles have been officially removed from school libraries: Gender Queer and This Book Is Gay.
Faced with a negative media policy and a potential reputational crisis, the district, which has maintained its policy, hired Devine Partners, a Philadelphia public relations corporation, for a monthly payment of $15,000. history of schooling in British Columbia,” Smith said at a board meeting (he voted “absolutely no” on Policy 109. 2). “It’s about seeking to divert attention from all the bad and illiberal policies. This majority advice has been followed in recent months. (The contract with Devine Partners ended after the company suffered “targeted harassment,” according to the district. )
In January 2023, Smith and his two fellow Democrats on the board, Dell’Angelo and Dr. Ann S. Mariam Mahmud, wrote an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer saying they were “fed up with ‘bad politics. ‘”That same month, the Republican majority passed a purported neutrality measure banning “promotional activities,” leading to ordering a school librarian to remove a quote from Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize-winning writer for his old memoir Night. “I’ve sworn never to stand. ” Neutrality is helping the oppressor, never the victim. Silence animates the persecutor, never the tormented. “
Dell’Angelo, who has made the decision not to run in the election this year, hopes that a new candidate who takes his seat in a strongly Democratic region will have a chance to start over. I feel more discouraged by the political apparatus and “the way it manipulates people,” he says, “than I feel through my neighbors, who really need the most productive for their children. “
Smith, who has faced calls to resign, has not left the board and is running for a four-year term as a Democrat. He remembers the days when a board member’s political association didn’t matter. “People [on the board] didn’t vote as a bloc because of their party, they voted on the issue,” he says. “But now it’s very political. ” In the past, narrow school choices didn’t generate much interest. “It’s like the vote is going the other way this year,” he said, adding that this crusade is unlike anything he’s noticed before. In his first race, he raised “about $50 and had two volunteers. “Today, she estimates about 50 more people volunteer for her, many donating cash and her budget will be about $13,000. “There’s so much at stake that I won’t feel calm until we’re sitting on this dais and one of us has the gavel in his hand. “
The school board’s moves galvanized protests in the community. In March, more than 800 alumni wrote a letter to board members condemning the “discriminatory and dangerous” policies. “An alarmist, dare I say almost fascist, right-wing haven for those who despise relaxed discourse and open learning,” a memo reads. In another, a former student and current resident said she made the decision to move before her baby reached school age. “It is clear to us, as an interracial family, that our son would not be safe in British Columbia if he continued down the current path,” she wrote. “Shame on you that you use our school district and the lives of our young people to advertise your own biases and ideologies. “
At a special board meeting the following month, a spouse from the Duane Morris law firm appeared before board members. The district had hired the company, for an estimated charge of more than $1 million in legal fees, to conduct an internal investigation into the allegations. in the ACLU’s complaint, and on that day, the findings would be shared with the board. One of the company’s spouses is Bill McSwain, a former federal prosecutor and Republican candidate for governor in 2022. In 2012, he won a lawsuit on behalf of the boy. Philadelphia City Scouts attempted to expel them because of their anti-gay policy.
The 147-page report submitted to the board concluded that the ACLU’s claims were baseless and found no evidence of a trend of anti-LGBTQ discrimination in the district’s schools. Instead, the report says, Central Bucks has been “ahead of the curve” when it comes to welcoming LGBTQ students. The findings also included harsh complaints from Smith and the minority on the board for attempting to “weaponize federal investigative resources to accomplish what they may not have accomplished at the ballot box. “Smith says she was never interviewed for the investigation, which the ACLU called a “sham. “
A few days later, venture capitalist Paul Martino gave the impression on Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, where he accused the “left” of inventing “a fake epidemic of neighborhood bullying. “” manager and claims to have helped propel more than 150 school board applicants to victory in 2021, he has also pledged to “elect the right other people” in the upcoming November 2023 election.
He’s stepping up his game. The Back to School PAC is now a blatantly conservative super PAC with a project to “stop the liberal left. “This year, Martino has already contributed more than $230,000 to the Bucks Families for Leadership PAC, which budgets for Republican candidates, adding his wife, Aarati Martino. Bucks Families for Leadership also funded an online page denouncing Smith and other Democrats as “political arsonists posing as firefighters. “(In reaction to an interview request, Paul Martino wrote, “In all transparency, I find it difficult to get a fair remedy in the press on those issues. He did not respond to a follow-up email with questions. )
However, in a Facebook post in October, he gave some insights into his strategy, saying he had brought in “experts” to challenge the “absurd narratives” coming from the left. Among other things, he sought to find other people to denounce. what he called the “blatant hypocrisy” of the e-book policy and “if successful, potentially take the manual across the country. “His team, Martino wrote, gave the “mission” to Bob Salera, a former political strategist at the Republican National Congressional Committee. and president of Virginia-based political communications firm Landslide Strategies.
A native of Pennsylvania, Salera introduced the Stop Bucks Extremism PAC in July to “educate the electorate about school applicants from extremist school districts on the Democratic side. “Its online page calls the Democrats “the corrupt five. “In total, the PAC sent 80,000 letters this election cycle. A campaign finance report shows that $40,000 of the group’s $40,485 available budget came from Paul Martino.
Of the letters, 17,000 were sent to citizens of Central Bucks with a warning in red letters on the envelope: “Attention. It contains sexually particular photographs taken from Central Bucks school libraries. The content included illustrations from the two books removed from the district’s schools. and an application to vote by mail. ” School board extremists hijacked the Democratic Party!The flyer also warned. They are fighting for those photographs to remain in the libraries of our best schools and universities. Another letter addressed to citizen Democrats encourages the electorate to “a bipartisan Republican who will keep this pornography away from our children,” writes Tracy Suits, a former school board president. and a member of the executive committee of CBSD Neighbors United who is not running.
“Democrats and liberals framed it as an e-book ban and Republicans compared it to the Nazis,” Salera told me. “So we made the decision to show parents and the electorate what’s in those e-books. The complaint about the letters, he argues, only proves the conservatives’ view is that e-books are too explicit. We’ve changed the situation and replaced the belief of what’s going on. “
Connor O’Hanlon, chairman of the Doylestown Democrats, said, “This is beyond partisanship, it’s political hacking. “Over the past two weeks, he has observed unnamed symptoms that accuse Democrats of “grooming” children. burn it all. “
Democrats have no qualms about rolling back the conservative takeover of the school district. The Bucks County Democratic Committee recently went to court to check and remove symptoms that “maliciously defame” Democrats, saying they violated state law by failing to disclose who paid for them. It was agreed and decided that the symptoms can be eliminated simply in public places. State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, the committee’s chairman, called the crusade against Democrats “bitter, nasty and increasingly desperate. “United, which won a $25,000 contribution from the Pennsylvania State Education Association’s PAC and $50,000 from the Turn Bucks Blue PAC, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board wrote that “it would be hard to believe that the infighting has been more violent. “more embarrassing or costly on any network than on the Central Bucks school board.
Amanda Litman, co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, an organization that recruits and supports progressive applicants under the age of 40, says the left wants to catch up with the right when it comes to building infrastructure and donor dynamics for local elections. . . « They are perfectly aware that other people who run and win elections in school, national, legislative, and municipal forums are a prime target of mobilization for greater engagement,” he says. “It’s a very smart vehicle to appeal to its base. . . and lure other people to the door. “
Over the past six years, Run for Something has helped elect more than 130 candidates to school boards and the plan is to step up the work, adding partnerships with other organizations to conduct extensive exercises within school boards, such as the Leadership Institute. conservative side. ” If you can shape what kids learn, if you can shape what other people think about their community, if you can shape the kind of citizens kids will become,” Litman says, “you can exercise a generation of voters. “
Democrats may have reason to be optimistic. In the first election in May, when school board applicants can cross-apply and run in either party’s polls, CBSD Neighbors United applicants garnered a higher percentage of Republican votes than Republican applicants for Democratic voters. (At Central Bucks, school board applicants run in other regions but serve as a whole. )In a strongly Republican-leaning region, Heather Reynolds, the first Democrat to challenge Hunter from the board, managed to get more than 21 percent. of the Republican vote, compared to his opponent’s six percent among Democrats. Democrats also appear to have outpaced Republican applicants, who appeared in the Moms for Liberty voter guide, by $100,000.
Karen Smith, Rick Haring, Susan Gibson, Dana Foley and Heather Reynolds, candidates from CBSD Neighbors United.
“It’s been very disheartening to see the embarrassment our district has experienced,” Reynolds says. “We used to be a community that emulated, that others strived to be, and now we’re literally an example of what they don’t need to be. “”His political debut came at a price. The local Plumstead Republican Party Facebook page called her a “disgusting human being” and she installed security hardware in the garage at the back of her space “just in case. “
Hunter, meanwhile, disagrees with the Central Bucks wanting a redesign. “We are excited about what is happening in our district,” he wrote in a local post, “committed to ensuring the most productive for our students and engaging with our community. “, including respecting our parents’ right to be involved and informed. “
In a purple web where the independent electorate makes up a significant portion of the electorate, both sides seek to send a message of common sense and smart citizenship opposed to chaos and extremism. But Democrats hope that some of the most recent resolutions adopted through the current Republican-dominated board of trustees will be enough to tip the scales in their favor. For example, a vote in July to give the superintendent a 40% pay raise, up to $315,000 a year, which would make him the second-highest-paid superintendent in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, the state’s largest school district. Or the board’s resolution to move forward with a policy to “segregate sports groups on the basis of gender. “
Doug Keith, a Buckingham Township resident and longtime Republican who switched parties after Trump’s election in 2016, says he opposes the “attack dog policy” that has governed the district. “In my opinion,” he said, “you go to a school board, you say terrible things about your opponent, and then you go to the grocery store, you go to see him. On the edge of a football field, you pass by to see him at the school dance. . . It’s much more of a popular crusade where the only goal is to win and beat the other team. He fears that Central Bucks will not live up to its motto of “leading the way” and that the very fabric of the network will be destroyed.
Casey echoes that sentiment. If [Republicans] are elected, we will be in a very vulnerable position, because then we will become a role-playing style for other far-right people who will move to our region,” he said. “It seems like this election is about the essentiality of our network and our school district. “
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It’s wonderful. So did the fact that Julia, who spent an entire year telling this complicated story, was temporarily heard from a Senate committee that will use her paintings in its own research into universal health care. There is no doubt that his revelations will continue to have a wonderful effect. It will have an effect in the months and years to come.
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