All of the 65 challenged books appear on the Book Looks website, a site focused on banning library books with “objectionable” and “sexual” content. A member of Moms for Liberty, a national organization and the most widespread group leading the charge for book bans in the country, created the site and the organization uses it as a resource in its campaigns.

Fifty-two school board directors from 25 Pennsylvania school districts have condemned the Central Bucks School board majority for “fostering intolerance,” “discrimination,” and targeting LGBTQ students “for political purposes.”

The consequences of implementing extreme partisan policies that stifle a student’s ability to learn true history, to express themselves fully, and to be supported by the people around them will be regrettable and irrevocable.

We were right in every danger we predicted. Neither the board nor the administration understands its own policy, how to implement it, or appears to care about its dire results.

Had the board done any research, had it spoken to any teachers, and had it listened to the preponderance of public comment, it could have fostered a vibrant conversation about how to navigate the roiled waters of public opinion while safeguarding students’ trust.

But instead, the board chose to focus on accusation (“indoctrination”) and platitudes (they need to learn “how to think, not what to think”) while dodging the real work of guiding teachers to do their best.

Policy 321 reveals the board’s low opinion of its own employees and students. Kids will always be able to think for themselves. To assert otherwise is to insult their intelligence.

The district also stated that it does not consider an internal review as the same as an external book challenge, though the processes and potential outcomes are the same: A review committee issues a recommendation and books found to be age-inappropriate will be replaced with another book of the “same genre.”

The district contends as an internal review it does not have to follow the same regulations and timelines as outside challenges outlined in the new library policy, according to its Thursday statement.

The residents have formed an organization called “CBSD Fair Votes" to fight the majority on the current school board’s plan to realign the voting districts into nine districts that lawyers for CBSD Fair Votes say are unconstitutional under both the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Pennsylvania Public School Code.

The district’s proposed map disenfranchises 6,000 voters and violates the ‘one person one vote’ 14th Amendment principle.

CBSD Fair Votes gathered 3,600 signatures for their three-region voting map, far surpassing the 840 signature legal requirement to petition the court.

A new policy banning educators from “advocacy activities” in the Central Bucks School District is causing confusion and frustration over what educators can and cannot do.

This week, a principal evoked outrage from the larger community after ordering a librarian to remove posters with a quote from Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, peace activist and author.

Someone in the Central Bucks School District administration is behind the first test of the district's new controversial library book policy, and if successful, five book titles — all but one containing LGBTQ themes — could be removed.

Policy 321 is another clear example of how hatred and bigotry can spread. While the school board’s primary focus may have been on making the LGBTQ community invisible, their “neutrality” policy actually impacts every vulnerable population, including us Jews.

Besides the district removing the Wiesel quote, my daughter’s middle school has also suspended its membership to the Anti-Defamation League’s “No Place For Hate” campaign, a program of inclusive curriculum, activities and signs designed to make Jewish kids and other minorities feel safe in school.

Students fit and learn best in a setting where they feel welcomed and comfortable. As students feel welcomed and validated, and feel that they are participating in a safe environment for themselves, their learning will flourish.

But, when it comes to students and their identities, a sense of inclusion has started to fall short at the school door. People’s identities aren’t politics, and the conflation between the two needs to end.

​​Andrew Seidel, vice president of strategic communications for Americans United for Separation of Church & State, said “a public school system should not be exporting a review of its literature to a Christian nationalist organization or affiliated organization … It is going to be imposing this anti-LGBTQ Christian nationalist ideology on public school children, and that is a huge problem.”

"Our goal is for Pennsylvania to be a place where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished," the institute's website states.

About 30 Central Bucks School District educators and 30 students, parents, and community members gathered Tuesday at Central Bucks East High School to protest one of the district’s new policies.

It was the first teacher-led protest after months of administrative directives and the Republican-led school board passing policies that many say are anti-LGBTQ.

Instead of tackling core educational issues, our colleagues on the board have decided to spend the last year fueling culture wars.

Instead of finding ways to support student learning, some school boards focused on policies intended to remove books from school libraries, eliminate the use of a student’s preferred pronouns and chosen names, and strip away programs that reinforce the positive representations of diversity that reflect the beauty in our society.

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“This is a policy born out of bigotry and discrimination and one only needs to look at the previous versions to see symbols of pride targeted,” said CB East Teacher Keith Willard, who also serves as an advisor to the school’s Gay/Straight Alliance.

Nevertheless, the LGBTQ community at CB West is on edge. Its members are wondering what will happen now that the district has passed a policy that’s supposed to be about “neutrality” when the district superintendent seems to have labeled their community, at least in the form of pride flags, as “political.”

Hall, one of the organizers of the potato chip giveaway, said that the policies the school board has passed in the last year have subtly changed the culture at West, where she is a senior. “There's a shift in the way the LGBTQ community at CB West is being treated,” Hall said.

Wassman, who is gay, said she’s never experienced violence. “But I have been targeted for very inappropriate comments and jokes,” she said. “And it's just gotten worse because these people are making it seem like it's OK if pride flags can't be hung in the classroom.”

Andrew Burgess, a longtime social studies teacher at Lenape Middle School in the Central Bucks School District in Pennsylvania, learned that lesson the hard way, when he filed a complaint on behalf of a transgender student who was being bullied at the school.Description goes here

“As a teacher, I not only feel unheard and untrusted, I ache for our students – not just LGBTQ+ students – all students because Policy 321 is an attempt to close them off from the world that exists outside of Central Bucks,” said Rebecca Cartee-Haring, an English teacher at CB West High School. “Teachers need real leadership from our administration and not a PR tour after a decision has already taken from us our teachable moments.”

LGBTQ and nonbinary students have a right to feel safe and supported in all PA schools. We are alarmed that @CBSDSchools has approved Policy 321, another policy that will further dehumanize and discriminate against gay, transgender, and nonbinary students.

The new library policy has a proposed addition of several paragraphs [which either copy and pasted from Central Bucks School District’s largely unpopular and recently revised library policy, or from the source/template its right-wing school board members may have used]:

“The district recognizes there exists a vast array of materials with rich educational value. It is the District’s objective to choose material that provides such rich educational content appropriate to students in the district over material that may provide similar content but with elements that are inappropriate or unnecessary for minors in a school setting.

Students fit and learn best in a setting where they feel welcomed and comfortable. As students feel welcomed and validated, and feel that they are participating in a safe environment for themselves, their learning will flourish.

But, when it comes to students and their identities, a sense of inclusion has started to fall short at the school door. People’s identities aren’t politics, and the conflation between the two needs to end.

A new draft of a controversial policy restricting displays of “political, sociopolitical, sexual orientation, gender identity, or religious beliefs” in Central Bucks classrooms moves out of committee but residents and some board members say it hasn't addressed concerns first raised months ago.

The Central Bucks School District is paying former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain $940 an hour to address allegations it has created a hostile environment for LGBTQ students.

The hostile environment has worsened since the election of new school board members in November 2021, the ACLU found. (Sadly, school boards have become politicized and radicalized, largely by conservative-driven culture wars.)

The Central Bucks School District’s board voted Tuesday night to hire the Duane Morris law firm to look into school district policies amid LGBTQ discrimination claims made by students and the ACLU.

The right-wing majority school board’s paranoia that teachers are “coercing” and “indoctrinating” students has manifested itself in a policy that will lead to censorship in classrooms.

In an email, Manuel Bonder, spokesperson for Shapiro’s transition team, said that the governor-elect “will work to ensure all Pennsylvanians receive equal protection under the law — regardless of who they love, what they look like, or who they pray to — and he will continue to stand in the way of any attempts to discriminate against or restrict Pennsylvanians’ freedoms.”

Over the past two years, school board watchers have been raising the alarm about growing extremism and the weaponization of public comment periods by right-wing culture war zealots in school districts across the nation.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education has released standards for Culturally-Relevant and Sustaining Education. This will mark the first time that Pennsylvania has included these sorts of standards in its requirements for teacher preparation programs.

The school board and “complicit upper-level administrators” have “exacerbated the hostile environment by making homophobic and transphobic statements, enacting blatantly discriminatory practices and policies targeting LGBTQ+ students, and retaliating against teachers and staff who support LGBTQ+ students,” the complaint says.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania in a federal lawsuit Thursday said actions by the Central Bucks School District constitute “intentional gender-based discrimination” in violation of the U.S. Constitution and Title IX.

At a minimum, the ACLU wants the federal agencies to require the district to follow U.S. Department of Education recommended measures to support transgender and other gender-non-conforming students in its schools, according to a complaint filed Thursday with the offices of the U.S. Justice and Education departments.

“These children deserve a safe environment where they can learn and be their full selves without fear of being bullied by other students,” said Witold Walczak, legal director at the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “Unfortunately, rather than combat the toxic educational environment faced by LGBTQ+ students in Central Bucks, a new school board majority and the administration have exacerbated the problems with new homophobic and transphobic policies that have heightened the climate of fear for this group of students and supportive staff.”

At least four teachers from Lenape Middle School and Central Bucks High School West said they would defy a CBSD directive dealing with transgender and gender-nonconforming students.

“At a time of unprecedented attacks on marginalized youth, we want to send the message that everyone is equal in value and importance to our community,” said Kate Nazemi, Doylestown resident and Central Bucks School District parent who helped organize the parade.

Bans, restrictions and challenges to books have reached levels not seen in decades.

Administrators at Central Bucks West High School have introduced a new “Gender Identification Procedure” that many teachers say is discriminatory against LGBTQ students.ion goes here

Speak up. After becoming familiar with the new policy, email your school board members with your questions and concerns, specifically asking for clarification about parts that are unclear or vague. Show up at your school board meetings to share your concerns. It’s important that the school board understands that the policy does not represent the values of the community.

The district has become an increasingly more unwelcoming and unsafe place for marginalized students. We’re worried about what this 2022-23 school year will look like for us.

The question of whether to teach the true warts-and-all history of our country, founded right here in Philadelphia, is literally tearing America in two — and some of the fiercest debates are happening locally. Resolving this existential crisis could be the most vital task we face as a nation.

As many as 50 teachers and their lawyer allege that CB has systematically deceived and underpaid female teachers for decades. The judge has ruled that these professionals qualify for a collective action suit. He also determined that the statute of limitations, which the district claimed would invalidate their suit, did not apply. Evidently in order for the statute of limitations to kick in, you have to have stopped inflicting the damage, but the underpayment of these teachers continues to this day.

From Philadelphia, the mess that occurs when charters close. It’s a patchwork of neighborhood schools, charters in various stages of understaffing and closure, and families struggling to find a school for their kids the day before school was to start.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said she has never seen such a strong, successful movement to limit the ability to read. She warned of lasting consequences for the current generation of students — especially given that school libraries are often the “only source of vetted, reliable information” on topics such as health care.

The policy “effectively bans human development and sex education in the schools,” said Sharon Ward, senior policy advisor for the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania. It also raises concerns over “excluding and stigmatizing LGBTQ+ people,” said Marlene Pray, a parent in the district and the regional LGBTQ+ youth education coordinator for Planned Parenthood Keystone.

A dangerous phenomenon is spreading across public school districts in Pennsylvania and the nation. Some newly elected school board members who ran on a “freedom platform” in response to the pandemic are now working to take away cherished and vital freedoms from students, parents and teachers.

“What all of this does, it takes so much trust away from the ability of kids to make rational decisions for themselves, which they are capable of doing. And it forces them to be in lockstep with one particular ideological view… that is a fascist approach to education”

Despite objections from teachers, parents and staff, and a legal threat from ACLU over free speech concerns, a Pennsylvania school district will move ahead with a controversial library policy giving residents the ability to challenge books available in schools.

The policy intends to limit any non-school materials disseminated by students. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve sued a lot of school districts. This is going way further than anything I have ever seen.”

Facing heated community opposition, the Central Bucks School District on Tuesday approved a contentious library policy that takes aim at challenging books with “sexualized content” — guidelines the district’s superintendent says ensure students are reading “age-appropriate material,” but that the Pennsylvania Library Association calls one of the most restrictive in schools across the state.

A 6-3 vote in favor of a new draconican book plan in Pennsylvania’s third largest school district will put more power in the hands of adults to determine which books children in the schools have access to. The Central Bucks School Board, swayed by a loud and vocal Moms For Liberty group, will now create committees that will decide which books are appropriate for which age groups.

Where were the stakeholders who were most affected by this narrow and divisive policy? Out of a district of over 18,000 students, why did only a few choose to stand up at a meeting publicized months ahead of time?

After months of outcry from parents, employees, students, and the ACLU Pennsylvania, the Central Bucks School Board on Tuesday passed a new library book policy that many are viewing as a book ban.

Students, parents, teachers and librarians spoke passionately about a controversial new policy that could remove books from the Central Bucks School District. NBC10’s Brian Sheehan has the latest from Doylestown.

Why is it too much to ask for a book policy that holds steadfast to the notion that “the freedom to read and learn is an additive, not subtractive, process,” and is curated by the deep expertise of the librarians and teachers within our own district?

One of the largest school districts in Pennsylvania has implemented “the strictest” book ban policy in the state after community members, parents, teachers, and even board members got caught up in a rowdy board meeting.

DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (CBS) — Protestors were loud and their message was clear. They wanted a controversial book screening policy voted down in Bucks County.

They rallied against COVID-19 safety protocols and now they are proposing book bans and censorship. What’s next?

We’ve heard a lot in the news lately about the future of books in Central Bucks School District libraries; we’ve heard that toleration for a multitude of ideas and viewpoints is in short supply in our community. Unfortunately, what’s most in short supply are the facts.

Pennsylvania’s third largest school district, Central Bucks, is poised to pass likely the most restrictive library policy in the state, which will allow censorship in school libraries, only to appease a small group of parents whose vile catchphrase for excluding books is "Stop the Grooming."

A federal judge indicated Tuesday that a lawsuit against Central Bucks School District alleging routinely paying male teachers more than female teachers will become a collective action.