DV Journal

This article first appeared in Broad + Liberty

Three of the six attorneys representing the teacher at the center of a year-long controversy and who is now suing the Central Bucks School District withdrew on Thursday as his counsel in the lawsuit, according to court documents.

The timing is notable because the move came just two business days before Andrew Burgess and his remaining attorneys, mostly from the American Civil Liberties Union, filed an amended complaint with the court which makes new allegations against the district. By removing themselves when they did, the three attorneys did not sign on to and become a party to the newer allegations, although there is no evidence establishing that was their motivation.

Burgess is the suspended teacher who has been the face of the controversy in Bucks County over accusations mostly from the left that the district has created a hostile environment for LGBT students, while the right has argued Burgess manufactured the controversy to set the district up as a patsy for those attacks.

With the help of attorneys from the ACLU, Burgess launched his original lawsuit on April 11, alleging that the district had fired him in retaliation for his support of LGBT students, as well as his criticisms that the district was allegedly falling short in its protection of those students.

On Aug. 10, Eli Segal, John Stapleton, and Kali J. Schellenberg, of the law firm LeVan Stapleton Segal Cochran LLC, all removed themselves as Burgess’ counsel. The amended complaint was filed Monday.

The attorneys did not respond to a request for comment as to what motivated their exit, or as to whether they took the case on a contingency basis, meaning that they would only be paid if Burgess were to win.

The firm’s website makes it clear that it does take some cases on a contingency basis, which not all law firms do.

The departing legal team did express an enthusiasm for Burgess’ lawsuit just months ago, however.

“Andrew Burgess stood up for the LGBTQ+ students of the school district,” Eli Segal was quoted as saying by Patch.com, shortly after the original suit was filed. “And now we are proud to stand up for him.”

With Segal, Stapleton, and Schellenberg removed, Burgess is left with two attorneys from the ACLU, and a faculty member from the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey School of Law.

The two attorneys for the ACLU of Pennsylvania likewise did not return a request for comment on the developments.

In May 2022, some students at Lenape Middle School walked out in support of Burgess after the district suspended him. Burgess and the students claimed his suspension was retaliation for his support of the LGBT community in the district, and especially because he helped guide one transgender student’s mother to file a federal complaint of sexual discrimination.

The district has since responded that it fired Burgess because it believed he violated policy by hiding some student allegations of bullying from administrators.

The CBSD board, which took on a Republican majority after the 2020 elections, authorized an independent investigation by the local law firm Duane Morris in November of 2021.

The final report of the investigation, delivered on April 20 — nine days after Burgess filed suit — claimed that Burgess had actually withheld allegations of bullying by the main student in question so as to manufacture a pretext for the federal complaint. The federal complaint, in turn, would publicly harm the new board, and add fuel to the fire.

The amended complaint largely featured new allegations that the Duane Morris investigation and report was itself a form of district retaliation against Burgess, saying the report to the board “excoriated and made false allegations” against the teacher.

One example of a “false allegation” cited in the amended complaint is that the Duane Morris report claimed Burgess violated district policy regarding reporting of bad student behavior.

“The [Duane Morris] Report concluded that, prior to CBSD suspending Burgess, he violated the provision of CBSD Board Policy 104 that states: ‘[a] school employee who suspects or is notified that a student has been subject to conduct that constitutes a violation of this policy shall immediately report the incident to the building principal,’” the amended complaint states. “This language requiring reporting to the building principal was added to CBSD Board Policy 104 in June 2022, one month after CBSD suspended Burgess. This version of Board Policy 104, therefore, could not have justified CBSD suspending Burgess on May 6, 2022.”

The Duane Morris report, however, says on page 56 that the policy in question previously existed as Board Policy 103, and “was merged into Board Policy 104…as part of a revision and renumbering of certain Board Policies in 2022.”

Attorney Eli Segal was signed on to Burgess’ original April 11 filing, while John Stapleton entered his appearance on behalf of Burgess on the same day. Only Kali Schellenberg entered her appearance after the Duane Morris report. Her entry landed on April 28, roughly one week after Mike Rinaldi, the attorney for Duane Morris, presented the full investigative report to CBSD.

Along with the Burgess controversy, the district has also been dealing with contentious social debates.

The district’s policy to ban political displays from classrooms has been a consistent point of debate, especially in the media. Although the policy is sometimes portrayed in the media as a policy that bans Pride flags, it actually bans all forms of political advocacy, which would include Trump flags, Thin Blue Line flags, the Confederate battle flag, and other such displays, unless those materials are relevant to the day’s teaching curriculum.

The district has also established a policy that students should be called by the names given by their parents. If a student wishes to be called by a different name or have different pronouns, the district notifies the parent.

And the district has also reviewed some library books which contain sexually explicit images. Two books have been removed. One of those books, Gender Queer, has been a flashpoint nationwide. The book is a cartoon memoir that documents the author’s own journey with sexual identity, and has an explicit drawing of one person giving oral sex to a male.

Critics of the district have taken these three policies together to allege that the board is trying to foster a climate hostile to LGBT students.

The conservative board majority has denied this allegation, most notably in a co-authored opinion piece in the Inquirer that focused mainly on the prohibition of political symbols.

“Most importantly, students learn best when they learn how to think, not what to think,” the board majority wrote. “That sort of critical thinking will equip them for a successful future. Accordingly, the classroom should be a place of education, not indoctrination. And that can occur only when teachers check their politics at the door when instructing students by not advocating their own personal views on partisan, political, or social policy issues.

LeVan Stapleton Segal Cochran LLC describes itself as “a strategic, authentic, efficient, and innovative litigation boutique.” The law firm also espouses a commitment to the community through a My100 initiative. “Commitment to the community is a core principle of LSSC. Our attorneys have a long history of significant and far-reaching pro bono achievements and contributions. As part of the My100 initiative, every LSSC attorney will devote at least 100 hours to pro bono and non-profit board service matters each year. No exceptions.”

The three attorneys who previously represented Burgess cited collaboration with the ACLU as part of their pro bono work, although it’s not clear if that is a reference to the Burgess case. Segal focuses on freedom of expression and government transparency, Stapleton is interested in first amendment rights, and Schellenberg has a focus on civil rights.

This op-ed first appeared in Broad + Liberty.

The Inquirer editorial board is at it again.

Last December, the ACLU filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education alleging a hostile environment for LGBT youth at the Central Bucks School District (CBSD) and the editorial board eagerly lapped up every accusation, treating them as settled facts in an attempt to foment anger at the recently elected conservative majority on the school board. We called them out on this one-sided rush to judgment, noting the irony that a publication called the Inquirer did not appear to have any interest in actual inquiry.

We now know that the facts do not support the ACLU’s over-hyped allegations against the school district. An independent investigation by the Duane Morris law firm concluded that there was no evidence to support the allegations that the District was awash in anti-LGBT bullying, harassment or discrimination. The firm’s detailed, 147-page report and accompanying exhibits are available on the district’s website for the world to see. The report took a deep dive into the evidence, including interviews of witnesses from each of the district’s 23 schools, tens of thousands of documents, and voluminous electronic records and emails.

But the Inquirer’s editorial board is not one to let the facts get in the way of waging their ideological crusade against one of the top performing public school districts in the commonwealth.

Its latest target is Central Bucks Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh.

At the end of July, the school board raised Dr. Lucabaugh’s annual salary from $229,500 to $315,000. While this is undoubtedly a significant increase — one that the school board must justify to its constituents in an election year — the editorial board gratuitously sounded the alarm, claiming that the increase was out of step with similarly situated superintendents and merely a donation granted to Dr. Lucabaugh by local Republicans for supporting an “extreme political agenda.” At Broad + Liberty, we give the Central Bucks taxpayers a bit more credit than that.

The CBSD is one of the largest in the state and at or near the top of any state educational ranking. At his previous salary, Dr. Lucabaugh was paid significantly less than several other superintendents in suburban Philadelphia who oversee much smaller districts. For example, John Sanville of the Unionville-Chadds Ford District makes nearly $300,000 and Dusty Blakey at Kennett Consolidated School District makes more than $250,000. Both districts are less than a quarter the size of CBSD.

Had the editorial board conducted even a cursory review of superintendent salaries across the region, they would have been compelled to conclude that  Dr. Lucabaugh’s pay raise brings him in line with the market.

Additionally, Dr. Lucabaugh recently proposed comprehensive systematic changes that will have a significant impact on students across the district. The Inquirer never bothered to report the fact that the superintendent developed a plan to implement full day kindergarten next year. They failed to give him credit for redesigning the middle and high schools to reflect best practices for teaching, learning, socialization, and athletics. Dr. Lucabaugh’s efforts demonstrate he is an insightful and competent superintendent.

But let’s be honest, the pay raise is not the reason for attracting the ire of an editorial board that is rarely concerned with excessive government spending. Dr. Lucabaugh’s real crime is carrying out what they call an “extreme political agenda.”

How extreme? As superintendent, he has had the temerity to support policies that require classrooms to be politically neutral, where children are taught how to think instead of what to think; policies that require parent or guardian consent to change a student’s name or gender pronouns, so that children cannot be socially transitioned or renamed without the support of their families, or even against their parents’ wishes; and policies limiting sexually explicit content in elementary and middle school libraries. These are reasonable, legal policies supported by the majority of the community. And they were adopted by a duly elected school board.

It is that last point the ACLU and editorial board activists find so galling. Instead of accepting the results of the 2021 Central Bucks School Board election that gave conservatives a 6-3 majority, the editorial board contorts the facts to advance a demonstrably false narrative that, sadly, leverages vulnerable children for political gain. Standing in the way of this false narrative is the Duane Morris report, which includes a well-reasoned, substantive, exhaustive examination of district policies, practices, and outcomes. The editorial board barely acknowledges the report’s existence, labeling it “essentially a whitewash.”

Upon reading their editorial, it is transparently obvious that they have not even read the report. I have read the report. And I encourage them to challenge their own ideological assumptions just once by reading the report. They might learn something.

Their editorial astonishingly claims that “a popular teacher was suspended after he advocated on behalf of LGBT students who were getting harassed and bullied.” That teacher was Lenape Middle School teacher Andrew Burgess. As the report makes plain – based on Burgess’ own sworn testimony, emails, chat messages, and other documents discovered on his school laptop – Burgess repeatedly violated district policy by hiding alleged bullying from school administrators in a subversive scheme designed to embarrass school directors with whom he disagreed politically. Instead of working  on behalf of LGBT students, Burgess had the audacity to endanger them. Leaving this out of their editorial is gross journalistic malpractice — a lie of omission.

The editorial also accuses the report of being one-sided because the investigators did not “speak to any students who alleged bullying.” Again, as the Duane Morris investigators made clear in their public presentation of the report, investigators were not at liberty to contact students directly for an interview. Instead, they were required to contact parents or guardians and ask permission. The investigators did so, contacting the families of the plaintiffs in the ACLU’s complaint, as well as the families of other LGBT students who had interacted with school administrators or spoken at school board meetings. Indeed, the ACLU’s intransigence made identifying those who alleged bullying unnecessarily difficult by hiding their identities and redacting a significant majority of the ACLU’s complaint to the U.S. Department of Education.

Initially, several of the plaintiff families expressed interest in speaking with investigators. But once the ACLU found out about the investigators’ offer, the ACLU stepped in and prevented the families from sitting for interviews. Nevertheless, the investigators interviewed several parents of LGBT students, including the mother of the student who filed the lone Title IX complaint with the school district in the last three years that alleged sexual orientation-based discrimination. She was pleased with the District’s handling of the complaint, calling it “sensible and helpfully specific.” Investigators also interviewed several self-described allies of the LGBT community, including moderators of LGBT-themed student clubs, guidance counselors, teachers and community members.

A “whitewash” this investigation was not.

Finally, no Inquirer editorial board commentary about CBSD would be complete without a gratuitous swipe at the lead investigator, former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain. McSwain is a well-respected Yale and Harvard-trained lawyer, former Marine Corps infantry officer, and former federal prosecutor who has dedicated much of his career to public service. McSwain’s crime? As U.S. Attorney, he dared to challenge progressive orthodoxy, exposing the dangerous and destructive criminal justice policies of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a favorite of the Inquirer editorial board.

The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. The editorial board’s addiction to a painfully narrow-minded narrative and blatant disregard of the facts is a problem for all of us. Their analysis of the major issues facing our region is profoundly flawed simply because it is derived from a world that does not exist. A useful first step is to encourage the editorial board to abandon its war with the facts in the CBSD, but perhaps something more drastic is needed.

We at Broad + Liberty would love to engage directly with the Inquirer editorial board to make sure the public learns the full truth about what’s happening in Central Bucks. Let’s have a public debate — the people can hear a robust airing of all the facts and concomitant analyses and figure out what they do and do not support for themselves.

When our Fourth Estate — a free press — functions as it ought to, our democracy is strengthened. Their fact-free crusade against the Central Bucks School Board suggests that reality may be what the Inquirer editorial board fears most. I sincerely encourage them to take us up on this offer, but in the meantime we will keep giving voice to issues, ideas, and facts that have been shut out of our public discourse for long enough.

A progressive political group is pushing a Central Bucks redistricting plan for the school district that would turn the nine single-member districts into three three-member districts. The effort is backed by Democrats. Critics say the proposal would make it harder for Republicans to win any seats on the board.

The reapportionment process, done every 10 years to conform to U.S. Census results, ensures the nine districts represent roughly the same number of people. While the school board voted to approve a new map drawn by the solicitor and superintendent in November, CBSD Fair Votes challenged that map in court.

Fair Votes is part of a national organization backed by progressive donors that advocates election policies backed by many on the left. The CBSD Fair Votes map would change the school district from nine regions to only three, with each fielding three candidates.

Tracy Suits, a Chalfont mother and former school board president, said when she saw the new map the board adopted, she looked into it and realized some people in New Britain Borough and Doylestown Township would be “disenfranchised” by having their vote for school board director delayed from this year to 2025.

She first devised her own nine-district map and soon “realized how hard it was to make an alternative.”

Eventually, Fair Votes settled on the three-district map, garnered nearly 3,700 signatures, engaged lawyers Brandon Lloyd and Theresa Golding of Curtin and Heefner, and filed a petition with the court.

Suits said the law firm, where state Sen. Steve Santarsiero (D-Bucks) was once a partner, is working pro bono on the effort. Santarsiero, chair of the Bucks County Democrats, resigned from Curtin and Heefner in 2019 over an alleged conflict of interest and is now of counsel at Rudolph Clarke.

Curtin and Heefner has close ties to Democratic politics, and one of its partners, Joe Khan, is a Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania attorney general. Suits’ social media feed features posts critical of Moms for Liberty, a parents’ rights group active in the district.

Chalfont parent Jamie Cohen Walker opposes the effort to change the district from nine regions to three.

“Central Bucks is a huge district,” said Walker. “There’s no way the candidates could even door knock those areas. Now every region has its representative. Doylestown Borough is way different than Plumsteadville, where it’s very rural. We are very diverse.

“You would never be able to know your school board member,” Walker said. In filing its plan, the school board followed state law in a process that occurs every 10 years. Walker believes Suits and Fair Votes proposed “gerrymandering” the district to “make it so Republicans can never win seats again.” And it might lead to all or most of the seats being filled by Doylestown residents, she said.

The Pennsbury School District changed to three districts in 2011, and “not one Republican has been elected since. People aren’t represented fairly when such a big district is regionalized,” Walker said.

The entire Bucks County bench recused itself from the reapportionment case because one judge’s wife works for the school district, said Suits. So, the case is now before Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Cheryl Austin. A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 28.

The public is invited to a meeting of the Committee to Evaluate the Regional Maps for the Election of School Board Members at 7 p.m. on Monday, July 24. However, that meeting may be canceled if CBSD Fair Votes, the group that filed an alternative plan, does not present its plan as requested.

Austin told the district to garner public input, so the board formed a committee with board members and residents. Residents have until Aug. 4 to submit plans.

Board Vice President Leigh Vlasblom, on the Maps committee, said Fair Votes was offered a chance at the committee’s July 19 meeting to present its proposed map at the July 24 meeting but declined.

“This committee will review all submitted plans,” said Vlasblom. “And then the committee will invite certain plans that are submitted to be presented publicly. Our solicitor has to review the plans because we don’t want to submit a plan that won’t hold up in court.” They want the public to see the plans and be able to comment on them.

Despite having their plan for four months and presenting it to the court, Suits said they needed more time to be ready to present it to the public on July 24.

“That was really quite short notice, in our opinion,” Suits said. “We also felt like everyone else in the community has a deadline of Aug. 4 to submit their proposal, so it didn’t feel equitable that we would be given such a short amount of time to prepare and present because our submissions to the court have really been grounded in the legal argument and that’s not what we want to present to the public. It’s a little bit different approach.”

Committee Chair Sharon Collopy said groups will have 20 minutes to present their plans, followed by 30 minutes of public comment. The presentations will be uploaded to the district’s website.

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The computer science curriculum at CBSD is pretty solid. We teach kids Scratch, Java, computer programming, AP computer science, and data science. I was excited my kids were introduced to Minecraft in elementary school because with Redstone the kids are learning to code simply and intuitively. Like Steve Jobs said, “Everybody should learn to program a computer… because it teaches you how to think.”

I compared our curriculum to what I needed to know to build scalable systems like Google Web Search and Google Calendar. I have found a couple of gaps in our kids’ technical education. It is not just restricted to CBSD, by the way. I’ve noticed elite private schools like LaSalle have these gaps as well.

One of these gaps is understanding computation as a way of thinking about data, particularly concerning high-performance computing. To fill this gap, I designed my course called “Google Magic,” which I have been teaching in Winter Enrichment at Doyle since 2017.

Google Magic gives a high-level overview to 4th to 6th graders about how systems at Google work. I show the kids how Google Search actually operates. (Hint: it is the computer version of the index that any reference book already has.) We sit together and build a little “search engine” for Pokeman cards, where you can ask questions about the Pokemon, like color or HP, and instantly find the cards that match.

It never fails to delight me. I patiently walk the kids through some dry crawling and indexing algorithms, and their eyes glaze over. But once they see how it all works together to help them find their favorite Pokemon card, their eyes light up, and it is the most wonderful experience.

I love to teach the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. This is the basis for the cryptographic handshake you make with every website on the internet so no one can snoop on your browsing. The coolest way to describe it is. It is a way for you and me to have a public conversation in full view of everyone else, but in the end, you and I will share a secret that no one else can easily figure out.

I show the kids a simplified version of this algorithm using calculators to multiply and exponentiate the numbers. Once again, it is so delightful to see this in action. The amazement when the two actors end up with the same very large numbers on their calculators, but none of the audience can guess what it is. We repeat this algorithm several times because it really piques the kids’ interest. Math is so cool.

(This actually reminds me of when I saw Whitfield Diffie at the retirement party I organized for my Ph.D. advisor, John McCarthy. They were good friends, and John gave Whit lots of support and even a place to stay while he was working on his now-famous algorithm. Whit is really tall and a pretty snappy dresser for a mathematician. His wife was super nice, and I remember talking to her about their dogs, one of whom was sick.)

The highlight of the Google Magic course is the demonstration of MapReduce; maybe you know it as Hadoop. The name comes from two LISP operators, map and reduce. (LISP is the programming language invented by my Ph.D. advisor!) MapReduce is a framework we used at Google to quickly process information over thousands of computers.

Because kids learn best with tactile demonstrations, I show the kids how to use this framework to process three pounds of fruit runts, which is about 2500 pieces of colored candy. With a handful of kids and this algorithm, we cannot only sort by color but count all the candy in 10-15 minutes! No comment on how many pieces of candy are “lost” during computation, by the way.

Anyway, these are the ideas I would love to bring to the district regarding technology. Show kids how the hi-tech systems we build in Silicon Valley actually operate so they can build the next generation of them.

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The curtain has just risen on Act Two in a bitter battle between the newly-elected Central Bucks School Board versus the ACLU and its allies over issues involving gay and transgender students and allegations of discrimination and bullying.

In Act One, the school board initiated policies that I believe have scrutinized library books with graphic sexual themes and have demanded that classrooms be free of things like flags that support gay pride.

I have interviewed school board President Dana Hunter on multiple occasions and concluded that she and the majority are the victims of a false narrative that is not factually based. I believe the Central Bucks Board is targeted because it is one of Pennsylvania’s largest, most affluent, and well-educated. Its current school board reflects parents who believe the school district in the past had teachers and others who were pushing an agenda.

In Act Two the other night, during a special board meeting, the board unveiled a report from lawyers with the Duane Morris law firm that cost close to $1 million. The report essentially says the narrative that there is widespread bullying, harassment, and discrimination against LGBTQ students is a hoax. Furthermore, it contends the narrative that the school board has knowledge of this discrimination and has done nothing is a bigger hoax.

The report centers on district teacher Andrew Burgess. He was suspended not for not telling authorities about a child’s allegations of bullying in an attempt to create a narrative that the administration didn’t care about LGBTQ students. The lawyers seized the teacher’s laptop and found a dossier that showed the plan to involve two students in an effort to create a false narrative.

The report also focused on an email from Democratic board member Karen Smith to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and others asking for a federal investigation of the district around LGBTQ issues. That part of the report illustrates how explosive issues have become in the district.

Smith’s email also shows how hard some are working to drive the false narrative that this school board and administration have an agenda against gay students.

The situation has intensified because the lead lawyer was former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain, who, while running for governor last year, called out indoctrination in schools around LGBTQ issues. I have supported McSwain because he is a very buttoned-up public figure who confronts issues calmly and factually. However, the ACLU and other activists in this dispute see him as the personification of right-wing bias.

We are now into Act Three. This report outlines the hoax that was started in the school district in careful legal terms. But I don’t believe it will lessen tensions. Instead, I believe we will see the ACLU and others ignore the evidence presented and organize more protests and demonstrations. This drama is playing out in school districts across the country.

I also believe situations like this will be a significant factor in the big elections in 2024.

I plan to continue to focus on my radio show on this battle in this district. In her first interview on this report, Central Bucks School District President Dana Hunter will join me Friday on my TalkRadio 1210 WPHT.

You’ll get a sense of what has happened and what she expects to do next. Hunter has been very transparent and details in previous interviews, and I expect that to continue.

Malcolm X famously said, “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the guilty innocent and the guilty  innocent.”

The public should be wary of this power as it is not only enshrined in our Constitution but in stable nations the world over, that innocence should be assumed until guilt is proven and proof requires facts. Factual reporting and journalistic standards are desperately needed from members of the media, some of whom have spent more than a year flaming the fires of division and discontent in the Central Bucks School District community and beyond, with allegations and innuendo that are yet unsettled.

It’s almost a year since the story broke regarding the suspension of teacher Andrew Burgess. and the subsequent grandstanding that resulted when the ACLU filed a complaint alleging a “toxic educational environment for LGBQ&T students.” That allegation is truly a charge against the entire district: Teachers, students, administration, and parents. It’s an accusation against the reputation of a stellar school district and,d ultimately, an indictment on the entire community of people who have built their lives and raised their families here and fostered deep bonds with their neighbors. Many of us chose to live in this special community because it offers so much opportunity and an incomparable quality of life. It is a truly wonderful place to live and put down roots.

The allegations themselves are an open wound for our district that must be healed and therefore warrant a thorough investigation and accurate reporting of the facts. All of us as stakeholders should be eager for and demand factual information so that our district can understand what brought us to what feels like a war within our community.

In the year since the Burgess story broke, one can argue that the power described in MalcolmX’sX quote has been demonstrated by multiple media outlets who failed their duty of journalistic integrity to report on the story in a non-biased manner.

Reporters from the Bucks County Courier Times, the Bucks County Herald, WHYY, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, just to name a few, created a narrative and amplified it without conducting a thorough investigation, exposing their bias and fanning the flames of division without regard for the collateral damage they unleashed on our school district and the greater community. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board unmasked its prejudice with a December headline, “What is going on at the Central Bucks School District is an appalling disregard for LGBTQ students.” How can such a headline presuming guilt be written, by an editorial board of a once esteemed and venerable newspaper, without verified facts regarding a complaint that incriminates an entire cadre of teachers, administrators, students, and families?

Front page news last week informed us Mr. Burgess is now suing the district. It’s wise that this reporter used the word ‘allege’ in one form or other 17 times, as the matter of this new lawsuit is exactly that, another allegation. And yet she tells us that this suit “provides the first details” surrounding these events. Thank you, Ms. Ciavaglia, for telling the public there have been no details, despite the press crowing about this matter for a year.

Democracy is in peril, and the very tenets of our Constitution are in peril when reporters exist to only extol a narrative without honesty and journalistic integrity.

Once the ACLU filed a complaint, entirely redacted, without any complaints reported to our staff and administration, CBSD had no choice but to hire a legal firm to conduct an independent investigation of the allegations. It is the administration’s duty to protect all of our students, as well as the future and the reputation of our district, its teachers, and students, and to not conduct an investigation would constitute a dereliction of duty.

A great deal of ink and breath, combined with the innumerable keystrokes expended by fierce, often anonymous activists and keyboard warriors, has been spent regarding the cost of the investigation that will be passed on to the taxpayers. We are due an exhaustive and fair reporting of the expenses incurred as a result of this ACLU complaint.

The Central Bucks School District announced it will receive the report from the legal firm regarding the ACLU complaint at a special meeting on Thursday, April 20, and the board will consider dissemination of the report. For the sake of our fractured community, it is crucial the manner and operation of the bullying charges finally be divulged. If we live in a district where bullying is commonplace, we all should want to know specifics.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) subscribes to a Code of Ethics regarding journalistic standards and professional conduct. According to its preamble, “Members of the SPJ believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair, and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity.” Their four principles are to: Seek Truth and Report It; Minimize Harm; Act Independently; and Be Accountable and Transparent.”

It is right and just that the report be released to the taxpayers that paid for it, and the journalists covering the results of this legal investigation write about the findings in a fair and unbiased manner. For the sake of the public’s trust in them, they must do so as vigorously as they have written about allegations this past year. To do anything else would be to fan the flames of divisiveness and anger that have deeply broken our community.

Many people tell me the media tell a story, but not always the whole story. Over the past year, it feels as though our stellar school district has been targeted by the media intent to paint a picture so as to destroy what so many of us hold so dear.

For the sake of our democracy, our Constitution, and our entire populace, we should all demand the truth. Anything less will prove Malcolm X’s words true, eroding the presumption of innocence and baring the festering wound that will continue to devastate all of us.

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Sadly, the Central Bucks School District’s library policy continues to be mischaracterized by many as a “book ban” that discriminates against LGBTQ+ authors and people of color. Likewise, a handful of media outlets continue to publish articles that propagate the same harmful and misinformed narrative, further dividing the community and villainizing the school board majority.

The reason behind these false allegations is puzzling, as the policy is entirely neutral regarding sexual orientation and gender identity issues and treats explicit content equally regardless of whether the sexually explicit depictions happen to be between straight, gay, or transgender persons.

The board and superintendent have tried to set the record straight several times, but it doesn’t seem to correct the deceptive rhetoric. Board President Dana Hunter and Supt. Abe Lucabaugh clearly stated that the intention of the library policy is to “prioritize materials that support and enrich curriculum and students’ personal interests and learning” and to provide standards for age-appropriate materials.

The policy also states, “district libraries must comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) as specified in 47 U.S.C. §254(h)(5), including technology protection measures, and all state and federal laws relating to the prohibition on pornographic and other harmful materials for minors.”

Seems reasonable for our libraries to abide by the law, right?

It is interesting that a book containing graphic sexual content is seen as appropriate for a school library. Yet, if you post images from that very same book on Facebook, your account gets locked for “violation of Facebook’s community guidelines.” That happened to a Central Bucks parent.

To provide some history, before the last school board election, parents discovered numerous sexually explicit books in Central Bucks schools. But they found they had no recourse. The library policy had been archived. It was clear that Central Bucks needed a new one. The new policy resurrected a book challenge process, providing parents with the option to challenge books they deemed inappropriate for students.

Shannon Harris, a concerned Central Bucks parent, recently explained that “more than 60 challenge requests were submitted to the district to date. The administrative regulations allow for 60 days to review the books being challenged.” Harris also stated all 60-plus books being challenged were due to sexually explicit content. Harris explained the book challenges would be reviewed by committees of Central Bucks staff members, who will read the challenged books and present their findings within 60 days.

This process is anything but a book ban. It is the best of both worlds. It provides a balance between upholding parental rights and trusting in the professionalism of an educated staff to weigh in on the decision-making. It seems measured and cautious. It gives parents a voice and provides enough time for school staff to form an opinion.

Parents across the district remain grateful that the school board majority honored their campaign promise to defend and uphold parental rights. They listened to concerned parents about the lack of standards regarding sexually graphic content in elementary and secondary libraries, and thankfully, the school board majority is doing something about it.”

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During the summer of 2020, I was told by numerous people that the PSEA had absolutely no influence over the decision on whether to open schools in Bucks County for the start of the 2020/2021 school year. Two years later and several thousand emails obtained via the Right-to-Know requests, I have learned that was a lie. I have also realized that the people who kept schools closed were either scared of COVID or scared of the PSEA.

That is just the beginning of the story I will tell about why it was so hard to get children back into school in our area. Keep in mind Bucks County had more kids attend in-person education than surrounding counties, thanks to our health director and the parents and board directors who fought to make it happen.

Central Bucks School District is the largest suburban school district in Pennsylvania. Up until July 17, 2020, former Supt. Dr. John Kopicki had been telling parents that school would open for a full five days per week. On July 17 he tried to change the law regarding how children are educated in Pennsylvania. Without board approval, he made the unilateral decision to switch the entire district of 18,000 students to “hybrid” education.

In announcing his decision, Kopicki lied to parents about what the state guidelines actually were.  Then he had district employees incorrectly measure desks from edge to edge rather than from center to center, which is what county health director Dr. David Damsker advocated that would have allowed schools to open normally.

Because of Kopicki, kids could only attend school two days per week. Secondary students weren’t even allowed to eat lunch in school.

Now we know that he kept kids out of school because of pressure from PSEA Mideastern Regional President Bill Senavaitis. Instead of preparing his classrooms for the upcoming school year, Senavaitis went on an unprecedented assault against Damsker, who was giving parents hope that children could have a relatively normal school year.

Senavaitis spent his time writing op-eds bashing our health department and asking Bucks County citizens to tell a board-certified public health doctor to change his health guidance in order to align with what the PSEA wanted–not what was best for children.

From emails, we learned he attacked Bucks County Health Director Damsker with a flurry of personal attacks so repulsive that Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie chided him for it. Later, he went as far as calling parents “jerks” in his PSEA newsletter. On August 6, 2020, he got the PSEA state president to send a letter to Bucks County commissioners pressuring them to force Damsker to change his guidance so that kids could be kept out of school. But Damsker never changed his guidance.

Bill Senavaitis left his position as president of the PSEA Mideastern Region when the truth came out. But now that time has passed the PSEA feels it’s safe to promote him again so that he can be in the same position when the next crisis occurs. Is this the type of leadership the PSEA wants to represent its organization? Is this the type of organization politicians want endorsing them?

Now, two years later, we know Damsker was correct about learning loss, distancing, and treating COVID like the flu. Senavaitis was wrong about everything concerning COVID. His op-ed titled “David Damsker’s remarks about 3-foot social distancing in schools are harmful,” is a personal and professional humiliation for him. We need to ask why he is back in the leadership role in the PSEA.

The PSEA under Senavaitis’ leadership advocated for thousands of children to be kept from school—catering to the unions’ agenda, not the children’s. That speaks volumes about the PSEA and should make every citizen and especially parents wonder what type of organization is influencing our district administrators, our school board, and our kids. All the emails and documents backing up my opinions can be found  here.

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The Central Bucks School Board voted 6-3 Tuesday night to enact a new policy of reviewing school books for inappropriate sexual content. The policy was widely debated for weeks.

Protesters, including the ACLU and Education Law Center, opposed the restrictions on library materials that would keep books with “visual depictions of sexual acts” and “written descriptions of sexual acts” out of elementary and middle schools.

Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh, an advocate of the policy, explained guidelines will now be developed to implement the policy and that the district previously had no policy for reviewing library materials.

In a letter to parents from Lucabaugh and Board President Dana Hunter last week, they said the policy has been “mischaracterized.”

“A major mischaracterization of the proposed library policy is that it’s a book ban. That is unequivocally untrue. The policy is intended to prioritize materials that support and enrich the curriculum and/or student’s personal interests and learning.”

“The administration, not the school board, came to us and said, ‘We need a process,” said Hunter. “And so we are giving them a policy to create a process that we will all be made aware of.”

Opponents dismissed the explanation, arguing that any restriction on children’s access to books is problematic.

“As PFLAGers,  we support policies that lead to honest, accurate, and inclusive education to help every child learn and thrive,” said Rachel Fitzpatrick, co-leader of PFLAG Bucks County. “Removing the resources that empower our children to learn and ask questions removes a critical function of education. Let’s give schools and libraries more books, about more topics and people. Let’s empower kids to learn and ask questions.” She urged people to vote, educate, and “lead with love.”

Another opponent called the policy “evil and abhorrent.”

Parent Pam Masciotro of Warrington appeared taken aback by the opposition.

“It’s disturbing to me that some of you are fighting so hard for their children to be exposed to some of this material. An earlier speaker said our library coordinator, Melissa Burger, chose books without political or personal bias. That’s not true. She has previously denied books written by Candace Owens, Justice Antonin Scalia, Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, the list goes on. Are we seeing a pattern here? Yes. They’re all conservative authors… And speaking of majorities, despite the turnout of people opposing the library policy, please know most CBSD parents are appreciative of you all looking out for their children and protecting them.”

She also decried board members and opponents of the policy who had said derogatory things about the district on social media. “For people who preach ‘hate has no home here,’ it sure does get nasty online,” she said.

Her comments drew angry remarks and boos from some other audience members.

Another Warrington mother who noted that one of her children is LGBT, said “sexually explicit material has no place in schools. It happens that some books in question are about LGBT kids. That fact does not make the books unacceptable for school libraries.” Instead, it is ‘graphic’ pictures and explicit descriptions,” she said. She said it was the graphic content of the book “Gender Queer,” and not the transgender character — that make it “inappropriate to have in a school library. If it were art depicting a heterosexual couple engaging in oral sex it should also be excluded,” she said.

“This is not a ban, this is not censorship. It’s common sense.”

According to the new policy passed Tuesday night, “The District recognizes there exists a vast array of materials with rich educational content. It is the District’s objective to choose material that provides such rich educational content appropriate to students in the District over material that may provide similar content but with elements that are inappropriate or unnecessary for minors in a school setting.”

The policy also notes parents are free outside the school setting to choose whatever materials they want for their children, no matter how graphic.

Parent Paul Martino blamed the media for the brouhaha that swept through the district over the library book policy.

“The way that the press has completely obfuscated the real issue here is a disgrace. How many parents actually want pornographic — yes, pornographic — materials in their elementary school libraries?”

Elana Fishbein of Lower Merion, founder of the national parents-rights group No Left Turn in Education, issued a statement “applaud[ing] the Central Bucks School District for a good faith effort to create a healthy, common sense policy for selecting books for their libraries. They include parents on the committee that makes the recommendations.

“The district recognizes that there are boundaries regarding sexualized content that is ‘inappropriate and unnecessary for minors in school.’ Unfortunately, the ACLU, the Library Association, and the LGBTQ community know no such boundaries. They apparently feel that a good education includes a healthy dose of pornography,” she said.

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