Pennridge is moving to repeal its policy banning Pride flags and staff ‘advocacy’

A year after Democrats won control of the Pennridge school board, the new board is moving to repeal a controversial policy that banned staff “advocacy” in classrooms, including Pride flags.

At a meeting earlier this week, the board voted 5-3 along partisan lines to repeal the policy, which was passed in 2022 under a board with a Republican majority. It prohibited staff from advocating “personal beliefs about political, social, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity” while in classrooms.

But the reversal isn’t final: The issue now goes back to the board’s policy committee, where the board’s president suggested some changes are likely to be made.

The vote also isn’t expected to put an end to the contention in the Bucks County district, which continues to face criticism over the removal of library books and rules around which bathrooms transgender students can use.

“It’s painfully evident the legacy of extremism isn’t in the past,” Laura Foster, a Pennridge parent and advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, told the board at its meeting Monday.

Here’s where the Pennridge school board stands on a number of hot-button issues:

Pennridge is one of a number of area districts that flipped to Democratic control in last year’s elections and has been at the center of culture war battles. But it’s moved more slowly than some of its peers, such as Central Bucks, in repealing its predecessors’ policies.

Like Central Bucks, however, Pennridge is now poised to roll back its advocacy policy, and revert to its original version specifying only that staff can’t engage in “political activities” in school. (That version, which mirrors one in place in a number of other districts, says that studying politics and discussing political issues in classrooms are permitted.)

The advocacy prohibitions are “a vague policy,” said Ron Wurz, Pennridge’s board president. Wurz was originally elected as a Republican, but was reelected last year as a Democrat after disagreeing with the former board’s hiring of a curriculum consultant tied to the conservative education movement.

Under the policy, “teachers could be uncomfortable,” not knowing how they’re permitted to support students, Wurz said.

In arguing that the advocacy policy should be maintained, Republicans have voiced concern about teachers displaying Pride flags. Some board members said teachers who didn’t have flags displayed were perceived as not offering a “safe space.”

“If we’re going to allow that, we have to allow everything,” including “straight Pride flags,” one Republican board member, Ricki Chaikin, said at a policy committee meeting earlier in October. Another member, Jordan Blomgren, warned about teachers grooming children — comments that drew pushback from Democrats. “That has nothing to do with advocacy, or politics,” said Bradley Merkl-Gump, a Democrat on the board.

During Monday’s board meeting, Blomgren noted that the board had received an email from the Gays Against Groomers group, calling on it to keep the current advocacy policy. (Democrats on the board pointed out that Gays Against Groomers has been designated an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for “dehumanizing anti-trans rhetoric.”)

In moving to readopt the district’s former policy that only bans political activities, Wurz, in an interview, said the board may revise it to also include religious advocacy. Some Republican board members have voiced concerns about teachers making anti-Christian statements.

The current board has already repealed the Republican-favored library book policy, which prohibited “sexualized content.” But some in the community have expressed frustration that books are still being removed from library shelves.

The district announced earlier this fall that its high school librarian had reviewed 22 books pulled from the library’s shelves during the 2022-23 school year — removals that weren’t publicly announced at the time, but that administrators acknowledged were in response to the ban on sexualized content.

While the librarian determined that six of those books should be returned to the library, she removed 14 others, and referred two for review by a reconsideration committee.

The district has also pulled another 11 books and graphic novel series from library shelves based on challenges submitted this school year — some as a result of the old policy banning sexualized content. But others were removed and deemed inappropriate under the new policy passed in September by the Democratic board.

At the October policy committee meeting, Leah Foster Rash, a Democrat on the board, said she was concerned the book removals were “out of touch” with what students want to read, and that the district could be missing opportunities to pique kids’ interest.

“These are books our librarians feel are not age-appropriate for our students,” Wurz said at Monday’s school board meeting, giving an update on the board’s progress toward policy changes. He said it was “now time to let our professionals handle any issues going forward.”

The board is also facing criticism around its bathroom policy. While Democrats repealed the previous board’s policy that required students and staff to use bathrooms in line with their sex rather than gender identity, they replaced it with regulations that distinguished between bathrooms for “biologically” male or female students, and others for students who identified as male or female.

That distinction is still discriminatory, according to a federal complaint that accuses Pennridge of creating a hostile environment for students of color and LGBTQ students. The complaint was originally filed in November 2023 but updated in August with new allegations.

Foster, co-founder of the RIDGE Network, one of the groups that brought the complaint, noted Monday that queer students “still face restricted bathroom access”; critics say limiting transgender students to “gender identity” bathrooms or single-use bathrooms can force them to out themselves. She demanded the board address an ongoing “climate of racism, homophobia, and transphobia” in the district.

Wurz told community members Monday that “there will be compromises.” In an interview, he rejected the assertion from some that the board was “caving to the right.”

“The majority of the people think that solutions should be approached from a balanced approach,” he said.