It wasn’t too long ago when school board meetings discussed student success, teacher performance, and keeping buildings and budgets in good shape.
But COVID masking requirements elicited an ugly side of civic engagement. A new movement that used bullying tactics, name-calling, and “alternative facts” overrode any civil discourse and actual science, harming students, teachers, and school staff, and tearing apart communities.
Sadly, the decline of COVID hasn’t lessened the continued assault on our schools.
Bullying, name-calling, and alternative facts are in play again at school board meetings but not about masking. Now agitators are using these same despicable strategies to bring in high-paid consultants, impose a nationalist American history curriculum, whitewash the library shelves, and inflict a “Big Brother is watching” atmosphere on LGBTQ students.
All the while, the usual functions of the school board and important conversations about achievement and facilities get sidelined. For instance, the Central Bucks School District – a hot zone of upheaval – chose to spend taxpayer dollars on a 40% raise for the superintendent, a partner in crime with the ultraconservative board. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t have money to put air conditioning in their schools, nine of which had to close during this week’s heatwave.
The Children First Action Fund, Children First’s electoral partner, is gearing up to get voters in southeastern Pennsylvania out to vote in school board races this November through candidate questionnaires, campaign mailers, and talking with voters one-on-one. The Action Fund has run successful voter engagement campaigns over the past three election cycles – and many more candidates are now in office working to improve children’s lives and opportunities.
Let’s take board meetings back to a more civil and productive time, but not as far back as the 1950s. Give to the Children First Action Fund today and make it possible for voters to have the information they need to bring commonsense, leadership, and a focus on student success and happiness back to our schools.
*This message is paid for by the Children First Action Fund.
Don’t let lawmakers off the hook for not funding our schools! The Basic Education Funding Commission is holding conversations about state funding across the state this month.
Join us for an inspiring musical benefit featuring favorite selections from opera and Broadway! Diego Matamoros, former principal artist with the Metropolitan Opera and Royal Opera of Turin, is the headliner.
You don’t want to miss this extraordinary evening. 100% of ticket purchases support Children First – get yours here.
“I’m not any different from any other
student down the road. But knowing that
they get opportunities that I don’t just
because how much money their parents
have or things that are out of my control,
it hurts you because you just feel like, what
can I do about this?”– William Penn student Paul Vandy, who
was featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.