Freedom to teach, freedom to read, freedom to be LGBT: win the primary!
Congratulations to all the Central Bucks School District candidates and let’s hope they had a good sleep after a long night.
We are delighted that the candidates that are invested in the freedom to read and the freedom to learn, and committed to best-practices, teacher-trusted education won, AND that they had bi-partisan support. Now their focus will turn to November, and ours remains where it always was: on policy.
Fortunately, yesterday's primary results, including significant bi-partisan support for good governance and great education, should encourage everyone fighting for the things our kids need.
There is hard work that needs all of our attention:
As we write this, 2 books have been banned from CB school libraries and 60+ more are under consideration for banning. Evidently, “liberty” means not merely guiding your own child to appropriate literature, but deciding for all the other families in the district what their children may read.
The district faces scrutiny from the Department of Education for alleged toxic culture of bullying, which the board majority has denied exists and which they have tried to pin on a single teacher and a school board member.
The district continues to rattle sabers over the heads of teachers, with consequences if they post a poster someone doesn’t like or if they use the name their student requests without clearing it with parents first. These policies are ill-defined and often un-enforced.
The district has paid a million dollars to a law firm that took down a single teacher in public, with no chance for defense or even explanation. Pour encourager les autres?
The district faces a multi-million-dollar lawsuit from many of its female teachers, who allege a decades-old pattern of sex discrimination, given that they were hired at lower pay than male teachers with comparable years of experience and education.
The district is awash in talking points and propaganda from well-funded national groups who wish to take over our discourse and steer our policy toward their own goals.
The school board majority has toyed with the idea of removing language that advocates for public education from board policy “Principles for Governance and Leadership.”
Good governance and good policy is where it’s at. None of this is about individuals. All of this is about our kids, all our kids, and excellent schools.
And whoever wins the election in November, we all have to work together to create those schools for our kids. With tolerance, good listening, research, and best-practices, we can do just that.