Yes Virginia, It Could Happen Here
Nearby school districts have fallen to outside money and extremism. Will East Penn be next?
Central Bucks was, until very recently, one of the best school districts in Pennsylvania. Their educational programs were the envy of many neighboring communities, and families made housing and even job decisions based on getting their kids into Central Bucks schools. But oh what a difference a single school board election can make.
In 2021, extremists funded by multi-millionaire Paul Martino took over the school board in Central Bucks. And they quickly got to work using the district to fight national culture wars. They moved to censor dozens of books from school libraries with arbitrary and unworkable rules about what kinds of content books could contain, banned overt displays of support for the rights of LGBT students and staff, and muzzled teachers from discussing topics that might be considered controversial.
The result? Division, chaos, and lawsuits. Central Bucks board meetings are filled with anger, insults, threats, and profanity. Several meetings have had to be halted with "cooling off" periods. Police are now routinely stationed in the room during meetings. The board members who took over the district have tried to sweeten the image of their unpopular policies by diverting tax dollars from the classroom to pay as much as $15,000 a month for a public relations firm. They also started using education dollars on high-priced lawyers, including paying former candidate for governor Bill McSwain almost $1,000 per hour for legal services-- and have-- after controlling the school board for less than two years-- amassed legal fees for the district in excess of $1 million.
The same multi-millionaire-- Paul Martino-- also funded the takeover of the school board in Pennridge by extremists. The script has since looked much the same. The new board moved quickly to ban books books on a variety of topics, including pregnancy, sexuality, and mental health. Fearing opposition to such policies, they then even banned the observance of Banned Books Week. Next came draconian limits on both teacher and student expression. And most recently, they cut their own teachers and administrators out of the curriculum development process in order to adopt ideologically-driven materials recommended by an outside consultant. The guy has ties to national extremist groups, and has neither credentials nor professional experience in public education.
The results of this ideological fervor in Pennridge haven't been much different than those in Central Bucks either: division, chaos, and lawsuits. Police have had to be called to Pennridge school board meetings. They too have dramatically increased their spending on lawyers. And they've lost their superintendent and many key administrators and teachers.
Is East Penn next? Well, Paul Martino-- the same multi-millionaire who funded the takeovers in Central Bucks and Pennridge-- has now turned his eye toward our district. He's the single largest donor to Schneider, Barbahenn, Mull, Huyssen, and DePaolo-- board candidates who are trying to "flip" our district next. And they've amassed tens of thousands of dollars for their effort, most of it from people who don't even live in East Penn.
Central Bucks and Pennridge both offer cautionary tales of where just a single school board election can lead. Whether East Penn's story follows that of the previous districts that have fallen to Paul Martino's money depends on whether ordinary parents, grandparents, and community members are paying enough attention to the upcoming election. It depends on whether all of us turn out to vote in favor of educational excellence instead of ideological extremism in East Penn on November 7th. I plan to vote for Levinson, Klotz, Jankowski, Ford, and Kelly to stop outside interests and extremism from taking over our schools.
Here is some other information on the upcoming East Penn school board race:
Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Ziad.