A new Central Bucks School Board met, but sharp divisions persist: ‘This room has been filled with hate’

Few communities have offered a better window than Central Bucks into the politically charged, vitriolic arenas that school board meetings have become. It’s Pennsylvania’s third-largest school district, at the heart of a county that stretches from the edges of the city to rural towns, and features sharp political divides.

So after more than a year of angst and anger over pandemic policies, heated meetings featuring two opposing sides, elections with bitter campaigning — and just last month, public comments that outraged many community members as hate speech — a lot of eyes were on the new school board as it met for the first time Monday night.

Some hoped for a more civil and collaborative environment.

“We cannot change what has happened, what has been said, or the indelible impact of the last 21 months,” Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh said near the start of a meeting that would last four hours. “We can change how we respond moving forward.”

But many people waited hours in the rain to get inside, vying for limited seats and a chance to address the board — and it was clear they were not quite ready to move on from the controversies that have enveloped the district. Or at least, not without first making themselves heard.

“Adults are supposed to be our role models, but right now, this room has been filled with hate and a division of six to three,” Lily Freeman, a student at Central Bucks East, told the board, referring to the partisan divide on the board. She noted that as a “proud Jewish female of trans experience,” she had felt “under attack” in Central Bucks — as did a number of students who said they had been bullied for their identities.

“Can you honestly in the mirror tell yourselves that you are proud of what you are witnessing and how you’ve responded to it?” Freeman said.

From battles over masking and how much of a risk COVID-19 presents, to disputes over the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Central Bucks has been ground zero for many of the issues consuming school boards in the pandemic era. The culture wars in the community — which last month elected three Republicans and two Democrats to the school board — have generated intense interest in meetings and even national news coverage.

That wasn’t lost on the crowd Monday.

“It is ridiculous what Central Bucks has become,” student Cheyenne Torres told the board, going, she said, from “one of the top school districts in Pennsylvania to practically being the laughingstock of the nation. … We’re better than this.”

Much of the uproar Monday was over the board’s handling of comments during its last meeting, when one man alleged ties between Jews and organized crime and called for “a stand against Zionism and communism,” while another claimed that transgender students could rape girls in the women’s bathroom.

The board president, Dana Hunter, didn’t stop either stream of comments. Based on a court ruling last month against another Bucks County district, that decision was in line with First Amendment protections.

“It is not my position to publicly determine which comments are offensive, and which hit the mark,” Hunter, who is part of the Republican majority on the board, explained Monday before she was reelected president. “Where would we draw the line?”

Many felt the board should have condemned the remarks, widely seen as anti-Semitic and transphobic: While its Democratic members did after the meeting, the rest did not. Some said they saw a worsening pattern of hateful speech in the contentious environment.

“We are told ‘Unity now’. But where is the unifying experience, the middle ground, when you are dehumanized?” Anusha Viswanathan, a parent and physician who says she was called an “illegal alien” at a pro-masking news conference this summer, told the board. (At the same event, a township supervisor was cited for striking a mask opponent with a sign.)

Others noted past inflammatory comments at meetings, including comparisons between pandemic restrictions and Nazi Germany, and references to George Floyd and the phrase “I can’t breathe” by one person arguing against masking.

“Let’s not forget that Hitler rose to power under a democracy before becoming a dictator,” said Dawn Haaz, who worried it was “only a matter of time” before her son would experience anti-Semitism.

A few speakers said they felt the opposition to the board over the recent comments was overblown. Donna Shannon, claiming that “the media is in the tank for people who flagrantly throw around the word hate,” said it was no wonder people “may have felt their only outlet was to come to a school board meeting and speak here.”

Another woman said attacks on the school board over hate speech were “all a narrative by the antichoice, pro-mask, pro-vaccine group.”

And so it went.

The board limited public comment to two hours. Still, it couldn’t accommodate all who had something to say — and didn’t get to its business until close to 11 p.m.

By 11:30, it had voted 6-3, along party lines, to rescind its masking requirements for elementary students — the part of its health and safety plan that would come into play if the state order is dropped — and to have the Bucks County Health Department do the contract tracing, rather than district staff.

Almost lost in the shuffle was an item that in years past might have taken center stage at a typical school board meeting: contract talks. The district’s union for education support professionals also sought to be heard, warning it would face still more challenges if it didn’t grant them a new contract.

“Honestly,” Deneen Dry, a nurse and president of the union, told the board, “it’s getting increasingly difficult to stay under these conditions.”