Now that Democrats have swept school boards in some Republican-controlled districts, what happens next?

Bans on “sexualized content” in library books and Pride flags in classrooms will be among the policies that Democrats who took control of the Central Bucks school board Tuesday say they plan to attack.

“I would like to absolutely revisit” those policies enacted by Republicans during the last two years, said Heather Reynolds, who ousted Republican board president Dana Hunter in the Democratic sweep of the five school board seats. Karen Smith, a Democrat who was reelected, said the policies were “the first couple of things I do want to look at.”

Smith called the election results — with Democrats claiming 57.7% of votes cast in the district — a “resounding rejection” of the Republican-controlled board’s agenda.

That message was echoed by Democrats on Wednesday as they claimed victory in culture-war battles in other area school districts. In the Perkiomen Valley School District, where the Republican-led school board this fall banned transgender students from using restrooms aligned with their gender identities, Democrats defeated Republicans for all five seats.

In the Council Rock School District — Central Bucks’ neighbor — Democrats won a majority on the board, propelled by voters “who wanted to be sure our schools did not become the next battleground for the far right,” said Rebecca Tillet, chair of the PAC supporting the Council Rock Democrats.

Democrats also swept the five open seats in the Pennridge School District, where the Republican board’s hiring earlier this year of a Moms for Liberty-aligned curriculum consultant — over the objections of the district’s own staff — sparked intense controversy.

“A lot of reasonable Republicans are fed up with the extreme right, and they jumped ship, big time,” said Ron Wurz, a voice of dissent on the Pennridge board who was reelected, along with four new members running as Democrats. “It was an easy message to get across to rational people.”

Similar dynamics played out in the Lehigh Valley and outside Harrisburg, said Susan Spicka, executive director of Education Voters PA, a pro-public education advocacy group.

In competitive races, “the people who had the message that we don’t want chaos, we don’t want to attack children, we don’t want to ban books — that message resonated incredibly strongly with voters,” Spicka said.

Still, Spicka worries that the conservative movement defeated in a number of Southeastern Pennsylvania districts may spread more easily in other parts of the state that receive less media attention.

“I think we’re going to see a whole new crop of districts where extremists got themselves elected,” Spicka said. “Central Bucks provided the playbook.”

The biggest backer of Republicans in Central Bucks — who contributed $280,000 of the more than $600,000 raised by both sides of this year’s races, an Inquirer analysis found — dismissed the idea that the election was a referendum on the GOP’s policies.

Pointing to Democratic wins elsewhere, GOP donor and venture capitalist Paul Martino wrote on Facebook that Pennsylvania “is a blue state and has been since 2020.”

“We stuck our finger in the dike in 2021, but the water has fully crested now,” Martino said, adding that “we will need to figure out [a] plan for 2025.”

Martino, a Central Bucks parent, funded the Republicans who cemented their majority on the board in 2021 — as he poured more than $500,000 into school board races across the state. Martino billed his effort then as organizing parents in opposition to boards that had voted for pandemic school closures, though conservatives had been targeting schools over issues like critical race theory.

But this year, the Central Bucks race was defined by hot-button issues taken up by the board: policies prohibiting “sexualized content” in library books — leading to the removal of Gender Queer and This Book Is Gay and challenges against 60 other books — and banning teacher “advocacy” in classrooms, including the display of Pride flags.

The board has also advanced a policy that would bar transgender students from participating in sports teams aligned with their gender identities.

» READ MORE: Which school board candidates are backed by Moms for Liberty? Around Philly, it’s hard to tell.

Republicans leaned into those issues in the campaign: A PAC bankrolled by Martino mailed explicit images from the removed books to thousands of homes, accusing Democrats of peddling “smut” to children. In a radio interview, his wife, Aarati Martino, a software engineer who lost in her school board run, said progressives were seeking to impose a “very, very dangerous” ideology on the district.

“A gay kid wants to learn how to build robots, too,” she said. “Learning about the 57 genders is not going to help a kid get a job in the real world.”

Democrats presented themselves as on the side of LGTBQ and other students upset with the board’s policies. “This is for Leo, for Lily, for Rowan, for CJ, for Anshul, for Dev, for Emma, for Ashley, for Julien, for Madyson, for Ash, for Evi, for Zandi, for Paree, for Jackson, for Millie, for Ben, for Alexandra, for Cheyenne, for Seth,” the Central Bucks Neighbors United group wrote on Facebook Wednesday — referring to students who had spoken out at school board meetings.

A sea change is also coming to the Pennridge school board, which has been mired in its own battles, most significantly since hiring consultant Jordan Adams — a former employee of the conservative Hillsdale College — and his nascent Vermilion consulting business, which pledges to deliver “ideology-free” education.

Along with hiring Adams, the Pennridge board required teachers to consult Hillsdale’s 1776 Curriculum, which has been criticized by historians as ideologically driven.

Adams’ contract with Pennridge is now expected to be terminated. “The fox is being removed. Or will be removed,” Wurz said — a reference to Adams’ remarks at this summer’s Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia, where he said he was the “fox in the henhouse” of school districts.

While the election was a “big step” in improving teacher morale, Wurz said, “the first thing we need to fix is the curriculum,” some of which has been upended under the current board. A plan will need to come from faculty and administrators, Wurz said.

In Central Bucks, policies aren’t the only possible changes on the horizon when new board members are seated in December. Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh, who has been seen as an ally of the current board, received a new contract with a nearly 40% raise this summer, spurring outrage among some community members.

Hunter, the current board president, said in a message to the community before the election that if Democrats won, “not only will they fire the superintendent, but they will settle” a pay equity lawsuit involving 360 current and former female teachers — which Hunter said would “devastate” the district. Becky Cartee-Haring, a teacher with a separate pay equity claim, is married to one of the Democrats who won, Rick Haring.

The district’s lawyer has said a $119 million settlement demand from the women would require a tax hike or program cuts; Democrats note that Pennsylvania’s Act 1 index limits property tax increases — next year, to 5.3%.

Of the lawsuit, Smith said Wednesday that “right now, I have no plans to settle anything.” As for “the leadership of the district, do I think a new board is going to review that? Sure. That’s part of your duties as a school board director.”

While seeing their victory as a rejection of the Republicans’ policies, both Reynolds and Smith said they would seek to work with the GOP minority.

“That’s part of the reason the community voted this way,” Smith said. Voters were “really uncomfortable with the negativity” that has dominated school board meetings, she said.