DV Journal

It only took six seconds for a transgender student to strike another Pennbrook Middle School student in the head with a Stanley tumbler, sending her to the hospital with a bleeding head wound.

Last week, a group of parents protested the district’s handling of the incident outside the North Penn administration building. They were outraged that the 13-year-old assailant had a “hit list” and that two girls had warned a guidance counselor about the troubled student that morning. The girls said the student had planned to assault specific students during the 7th-grade lunch period. Yet, district officials failed to prevent the attack, and the counselor told the girls who warned her not to worry.

Parents and residents remained upset when the district held a virtual Safe Schools Committee meeting Monday night.

Todd Bauer, Ed.D. told participants that adults quickly responded and stopped the attack on the 12-year-old girl during the April 17 incident. And, Bauer said, the district is going to hire an independent, third-party investigator to look into the case.

Andrew Pushart of Lansdale said, “Two things stood out” to him. One was that Bauer had not learned about the threats before the incident, and the other was the “template” generic email that Principal Nick Taylor sent to parents instead of a message that was specific to the incident.

He also noted the board will not approve its third-party investigator until mid-May and that other steps planned are forming committees.

“Is the climate at North Penn such that teachers and administrators just toe the line and don’t use common sense?” Pushart asked. “There’s the five monkeys experiment where they just keep doing things over and over again because of the way they’ve always been done.”

“It seems to me it’s kind of kicking the can down the road. In aviation, if we had an incident, we didn’t wait two weeks, three weeks, to do the initial, ‘Hey, here’s what we’re going to do.’”

“What are you doing right now to prevent this from happening again?”

Committee Chair Jonathan Kassa asked Bauer to address that question.

“We’re not going to wait for a report to fix things,” said Kassa.

Bauer said they’ve increased security at the school buildings, increased police presence, and reminded students and adults about the Safe to Say program.

“Other things have been put into place that we wouldn’t share publicly,” said Bauer. “You have to be very careful when you’re talking about school security.”

Dan Bucciarelli  of Lansdale said, “The problem is committees and bureaucrats like yourself who are ducking commonsense solutions and having staff that will report any red flag that comes up in the school.”

“My daughter attended Pennbrook two years ago,” he said. “And there were plenty of similar situations where students were going to staff. And the fact that upper levels, whoever, don’t have this knowledge…This has been an ongoing thing.

“When is somebody going to take ownership and resign?” he asked.

North Wales resident Susan Dziedzic, a parent and former public school teacher, said there is a board policy to address student threats that requires procedures for students whose behavior might be a threat to safety. She asked if officials are addressing specific student behaviors over time.

“That’s important.” The policies exist to “stop exactly what happened at Pennbrook from happening,” she said. “The staff needs clear choices for additional options for reporting threatening behavior if they feel their reports to admin are not being taken seriously.”

Jason Lanier of Lansdale said the school’s disciplinary system is clearly failing.

“What is the restorative discipline you’re giving kids additional breaks over and over again for breaking the rules in the school? It gets worse and worse. I know that this assailant had a long history and yet being put back in classrooms. Why? Was it this restorative nonsense where you’re trying to pad your discipline stats?

“Why is it that the Safe to Say website shows that violence at North Penn middle schools is several times the county average?” he added. “When do you establish a threshold that would constitute an acceptable level of risk for students?”

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Carrying homemade signs, about 20 determined parents and kids marched and chanted outside the North Penn School District administration building in Lansdale Tuesday morning in response to an assault on a 12-year-old girl there last week.

Bleeding profusely from her head after she was hit by a Stanley tumbler, the 12-year-old victim was taken to a hospital for treatment. Parents at Pennbrook Middle School were outraged that there had been multiple warnings about the alleged attacker — a student who happens to identify as transgender — to school officials. Now, some parents say administrators who ignored those warnings, including the superintendent, should resign.

As they marched on the sidewalk, the concerned parents and students yelled, “Our kids deserve better. What do we want? Answers. We won’t go away. Step up and do better. Violence equals no silence. North Penn strong.” Some drivers honked in solidarity as they passed the protestors.

Parent Cathie Shultz said there had been “a lot of issues” with the alleged attacker since kindergarten.

“With all the warnings they got, something should have been done,” said Shultz. “This never should have been allowed to happen. They didn’t take it seriously. This was the fourth school the child was at for middle school.”

“I don’t get it. I really don’t.”

Her 17-year-old daughter Amanda is a high school senior. “I just think it was crazy it went on for so long. It shouldn’t have been more than a minute. Security should have stopped it,” Amanda said.

Shultz added, “The school district does not provide cafeteria monitors to the middle schools anymore.”

Shultz is a cafeteria monitor in an elementary school and said the kids talk to the monitors, and “we’re interfering before something starts.”

Nicole Brown said she was at the protest because her son is a student at Pennbrook, and “there needs to be accountability.” She suggested Superintendent Todd Bauer, Ed.D. should resign.

‘There needs to stop being silence,” said Brown. “They handled the situation wrong from the start to the end. They’re protecting the rights of the other child, which is fine. But who’s protecting our children?”

Stephanie Palovcak said she and Brown organized the protest because “we want answers. We want accountability.”

“How did it even get to this point, where this child was attacked?” asked Palovcak, “Staff was made aware of this numerous times…there was something called a hit list of children that they wanted to beat up. It was reported by parents and kids.”

Taxpayers will pay for the third-party investigation the district will do, she said.

“There needs to be accountability really bad,” she said. School officials “were warned numerous times on Tuesday. And they were called and emailed by the mother of a student on the hit list. Her child was threatened to be curb-stomped by this attacker. And they sent her a generic email.”

Palovcak said, “The student was placed on an in-school suspension, but given the child’s violent background within the North Penn School District, I feel an out-of-school suspension should have been warranted for the threats they’re making.”

Two children told a counselor on Wednesday morning an attack would happen at lunchtime. The counselor told them not to worry.

“I don’t know why they allowed this child to enter into the lunchroom with the seventh graders being in there. They could have brought lunch to the child…They should have had better security, not just a climate coordinator (aide) walking her around. She managed to break away and attack the student so violently,” said Palovcak.

After the protest, Palovcak and Brown met with Bauer who told them there would be an outside investigation and that he would be able to give more details after it was completed.

“We won’t have any answers on that until close to the end of the school year, unfortunately,” she said. “I wasn’t really happy with that. He couldn’t answer many questions we had.”

Christine Liberaski, director of school and community engagement for North Penn, said, “We were aware of the protest and did want to hear concerns. Our superintendent spoke with the organizer and offered to meet in person, and that meeting was held this afternoon.”

One female student who spoke to DVJournal but declined to give her name said, “I go to school to learn, not to be afraid. I shouldn’t have to be annoyed and stressed about what things are going to happen to me. And that the district was lying to us that they would protect us. They said they would do everything in their power to protect us, and they didn’t.”

Another girl said, “It was scary. It was traumatizing. We were reassured we were going to be safe in school.  And I don’t know why they brought this student to school.”

The first girl added, “We had to watch them clean up the blood.”

Sarah Batory, the mother of a 13-year-old boy in seventh grade, said, “He was in close proximity when it occurred, and he has given me a recount of visuals I wish I had never heard.”

Asked if the school provided counseling, she said her son stayed home on Thursday and Friday after the Wednesday attack, and nothing was offered to him when he returned to school on Monday. “He has not left his room. He has not wanted to talk to anybody,” she said.

Parent Shannon Main said she wants to see changes.

“I think the [school] board needs to change, and the administration needs to change,” Main said. “I hope they will tell us what they know about what happened and how we can avoid it.”

“Somebody needs to be held accountable,” said Palovcak. “An innocent little girl was attacked.”

The 13-year-old alleged attacker, who was born a boy and identifies as a girl, was charged and appeared in juvenile court Monday. A Montgomery County District Attorney spokesperson said she could not comment on a juvenile court case.

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I have often referred to the North Penn School District Board of Directors as a political monopoly because its reckless decisions go unchecked. Case in point, six years of absolute control has manifested into four dissenting votes.

On January 16, this monopoly will continue to play “D.C. Style Politics” by providing the community with what it calls OPTION 1 or OPTION 2. Ask yourself this question: How can elected officials claim to provide their community members with options when they have consistently provided the taxpayer with their opinions on how the taxpayer should vote?

This unchecked political monopoly, which has lost my trust due to its actions, is now responsible for a sorely needed “Once-in-a-lifetime high school renovation” that will impact our community and its most precious resource – our children for decades.

Here are some examples … and some conflicts of interest that are undeniable.

The NPSD BODs has accepted thousands of dollars of political donations from the same architect – The Schrader Group, which provided the only bid for what is soon to be a high school renovation project that, regardless of option, will cost the community a minimum of hundreds of millions, of your tax dollars.

The NPSD BODs hired D’Huy Engineering as the construction manager for the High School renovation project. The BODs hired a “referendum consultant/specialist” employed by the same D’Huy Engineering. Ask yourself this question … why not hire a consultant with no vested interest in providing a recommendation? My answer is simple: hiring anyone outside their “circle of trust” is not how monopolies remain intact.

Now, allow me to get to the real point as to why political monopolies are so ineffective and dangerous.

The NPSD BODs has told the public board meeting after meeting that high school renovations are needed only to spend millions of dollars on Crawford Stadium and a health care clinic before addressing this “once in a lifetime project.” This political monopoly then sells this concept to the community by showing pictures of deteriorating electrical units (keep in mind that they allowed this to happen), cramped spaces, and testimonials from students who want a brand new school while also providing its opinion why the 9th graders must be moved to the high school.

Then, using the one architectural bid provided, it “sells” the community that an “open-air design” is necessary to foster “better academics.” Are they serious? A few months ago, taxpayers were told by a BOD that the undeniable decline in academics at North Penn was due to “algorithms with the data!” I believe the root cause of the undeniable decline in academics is failed policies and the simple fact that educators need more people to support them instead of more politically driven administrators who report on them.

But truth be told, the BODs never needed to convince the community that renovations were needed. While I share the same opinion that the 9th graders should be included in the high school … the community should be outraged that this ignominious BODs has put the interests of our students, athletes, and educators out to vote on January 16 because they want “open spaces.”

While this BODs, its superintendent, and its CFO have repeatedly stated that “You (the taxpayer) have the choice” in voting Option 1 or Option 2 and that they want the community to be “involved,” – it is my opinion that how this BODs took to get to this “once in a lifetime” renovation is filled with either unethical motives or terrible leadership.

Candidly, it doesn’t matter how I vote on January 16 because Option 1 will pass for the same reason why I was defeated on November 7 when I attempted to break up this monopoly. The NPSD political monopoly is funded by its contractors and the mighty teachers’ union that endorses candidates regardless of what results or decisions they make for our students and the community.

Lastly, it is also my opinion that this “special election” is a waste of taxpayer money, but if you follow the money, you will eventually get to the truth.