PA: Penncrest School Board Member: "I Don't Care What The Law Says"
Penncrest is a small rural district up the road from me, a district that has been mirroring the reading suppression battles of the more famous Central Bucks School District (and by mirror, I mean that some folks on the Penncrest board appear to be literally copying some of the Central Bucks work).
But Central Bucks is a big district in the busy part of the state, and Penncrest is a tiny district up in the wilderness, so it’s not getting much attention. But it’s worth paying attention to, because here in the rural school region, it’s not unusual for board members to say the quiet part out loud because they don’t realize they shouldn’t. That happens a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the rest of the state doesn’t pay much attention to what rural districts do. Someday I’ll tell you the story of a local district that fired a teacher for being gay, didn’t bother to cover that reason with even a tiny fig leaf, and was really surprised when they were dragged into court and lost.
Penncrest has been trying to wield a tiny tattered fig leaf over its motivations for a new set of rules aimed at getting LGBTQ+ books out of its libraries, even as some board members have been quite clear about what they mean by “sexualized content,” and while we’re at it, all that racism stuff, too.
Board member David Valesky on LGBTQ books in the library:
Besides the point of being totally evil, this is not what we need to be teaching kids. They aren’t at school to be brainwashed into thinking homosexuality is okay. Its [sic] actually being promoted to the point where it’s even ‘cool’.
https://buckscountybeacon.com/2023/03/penncrest-school-board-member-i-dont-care-what-the-law-says/
