School Director Makes Return In Bensalem

BENSALEM TOWNSHIP, PA — She's a lawyer, an actor, and once again, a school board member.

You may remember Rachel Fingles.

She served on the Bensalem Township School Board from 2017 to 2021, during a time when the Republican party ruled the roost and when the COVID pandemic raised fears among parents, school staff, board members, and children.

Fingles rode the wave of a Democratic party sweep through the council and the school board, surprising results in a town known as a Republican stronghold.

Democrats won four school board seats in the November general election, flipping a 5-4 GOP majority to an 8-1 Democratic board.

Fingles told Patch that she loved her time on the school board, but decided not to run for re-election as COVID caused friction and tension in the community regarding mask mandates.

For Fingles, the decision — while difficult — was sensible for this simple reason.

"I was getting death threats. It was so bad. I would have run again. But I was so burned out over COVID," said Fingles, who also served on the Bucks County Intermediate Unit 1 board. "Once the death threats started, that was it."

The nearly 40-year-old Fingles is a busy woman these days.

Besides rejoining the school board, Fingles is a partner at Cantwell Law Offices, practicing family law in Bucks and Montgomery counties and in Philadelphia.

She also acts with her two daughters, ages 14 and 11, who attend Bensalem Township schools. All three will perform two-to-three shows each year at the Music Mountain Theater in Lambertville.

Fingles said more work needs to be done in the school district to support the arts.

"We have great music programs," she said. "But we have no theater programs besides the high school. We need to get kids interested in performance theater."

Fingles also plans to rejoin the school policies committee. She also has some other improvements throughout the school district.

"Priority One is ensuring that kids get what they need," she said. "We need to support the teachers. They are with our children more than parents."

Fingles was pleased by the run the Democratic party made in the November general election.

"I believe we ran a very serious, aggressive campaign. We were very in touch with the feeling that was on the ground," she said. "We did it with hard work and really smart people."

Shre understands that her party has the opportunity to accomplish a great deal before the next school board election.

"We know that we have two years to do some good things," Fingles said. "We will do what's best. The school population deserves a solid future. We can't predict what's going on at the federal level. But we want to put a finger on the dam before it bursts.

(Allie Brown Photography)