Quiet Central Bucks Board Majority Votes Against CDC’s COVID-19 Guidance

DOYLESTOWN, PA — The Central Bucks Board of School Directors met for a little over two hours this week, in its first meeting of 2022 and second meeting as a new board.

From public comment on book banning campaigns and pay for emergency substitutes, to a vote on aligning the district’s health and safety plan with COVID-19 health guidance, there was a lot to talk about at the Tuesday meeting.

But some board members were tight-lipped during discussion on the district’s health and safety plan, revealing discord on the dais.

When asked if an agreement might be reached through some dialogue on the issues, one board member only said, “I doubt that would happen.”

Several speakers in public comment also referenced speaking to the board in this forum because emails had gone unanswered and issues of concern unaddressed.

Here’s a look at where things stand for the district.

Near-Silent Majority Votes Down Safety Updates

Several motions to add new language and provisions to the board’s health and safety plan — in line with guidance from the CDC and Pennsylvania Department of Health — failed on Tuesday night, in votes of 6-3 along party lines.

To kick off the discussion, Dr. Mariam Mahmud, a Democrat, asked several clarifying questions on the proposed changes to the plan. She proposed the following amendments to ensure the plan aligned with new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control:

• That those who test positive should stay home for five days from the positive test, and then spend the subsequent five days masked in school.
• That when someone has an exposure and is asymptomatic, they return to school wearing a well-fitting mask seven days from the onset of the exposure, and test at at least five days out; and that when someone has an ongoing exposure, they quarantine for five days and mask for the next five days, if symptom-free.
• That the school nurse’s office be treated as a medical office, with masks mandatory, since immunocompromised and high-risk students frequently go to the nurse’s office for medication.

Republican board members voted these amendments down. The original proposed changes, without Mahmud’s amendments, never went to a vote as no one called for the motion.

With the health and safety plan remaining as it was previously, most board members declined to share their apprehensions about the policy changes.

The district’s current health and safety plan provides that people in the district who are symptomatic should remain home at least three days, and return masked through the seventh day if symptoms resolve; that those who are asymptomatic with one-time exposure should come to school normally; and that those with ongoing exposures should return to school but wear a mask for seven days from the date of last exposure to their household member.

This plan partially aligns with updated guidance from the CHOP PolicyLab, which numerous public commenters cited — with the notable exception that the CHOP PolicyLab still recommends universal indoor masking, and Central Bucks has a mask-optional policy.

“It’s disappointing that we’re not even willing to have a discussion,” Dr. Tabitha Dell’Angelo, a Democrat, said. “It’s a failure to just close this up and say we’re moving on and we’re not going to do anything.”

Dell’Angelo then proposed that the board strike the health and safety plan’s references to guidance from the CDC, the state health department, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and the Bucks County Department of Health, and simply call the plan “CBSD’s Fun and Crazy Safety Plan.”

“We can’t say we follow any legitimate guidance unless we do,” she said. This motion was also voted down.

“We could say ‘recommended’ if we’re having a hard time saying ‘mandated,’” Mahmud offered, but her suggestion was not taken up by other board members.

Community Concerns On COVID-19

COVID-19 safety was on the minds of many speakers in the public comment portion of the meeting.

“I am a scientist by training,” Robin Pettit, of Doylestown, told the board. “The reason I am here tonight is to highlight disinformation that is spreading through our district … Masks should be worn to keep the COVID virus from spreading.”

But community member Donna Shannon disagreed, saying about mask-wearing in schools: “It is wrong to punish success and it is wrong to punish healthy people.”

She was one of a few commenters at Tuesday night’s meeting who supported the direction the board has taken in making masks optional and instituting only brief quarantine and isolation periods. Some of these commenters wanted even fewer public health precautions in place.

But others feel differently, and are concerned for the safety of their children.

"Hate speech is confused with free speech [and] people are not safe physically or mentally, neither students nor teachers nor support staff," said Buckingham resident Laura Napier, who called for universal masking in the schools.

Laurie Bartolomeo, whose son was exposed to COVID-19 on a school bus — where masks are supposed to be mandatory — expressed her anger at the board for “ignoring the pandemic,” as well as not answering her prior emails on the issue.

“You have knowingly exposed him and the most vulnerable children in this district to this life-threatening virus, and you don’t even care,” she said. “My son is nonverbal. He is unable to stand up here and fight for himself, so he easily falls prey to your callous and unethical practices.”

The Central Bucks School District will also end its virtual learning program this month, given that children five and older now have the option to receive vaccines.

Immunocompromised students who might need or prefer a virtual option for school will no longer have one; instead, they will need to enroll in homebound learning should in-person school not meet their access needs, the board clarified at this meeting.

Advocacy For Support Staff

Several community members and Central Bucks employees showed up on Tuesday to advocate for support staff in the district while their contracts are being negotiated.

The school district announced recently that, due to staffing shortages which closed schools on the first Monday back from winter break, they will be hiring substitute teachers and emergency certified substitute teachers and encourage community members to apply. (Emergency certified substitute teachers can be anyone who holds a bachelor’s degree, makes it through the hiring process, and completes emergency certification with the Pennsylvania Department of Education).

“Why don’t we have any substitutes?” sophomore Anshul Shukla said in his public comment. “Because people don’t want to work in buildings where masks are optional.”

The district is offering payment for these subbing positions at an increased rate of $225 per day. Shukla also criticized this choice when compared with current support staff hourly wages, which are closer to $16 per hour.

“Tonight I ask you to commit to giving our support staff the respect and honor they deserve through a good and livable contract,” Shukla said.

Community member Lela Casey, of Doylestown, agreed.

“To add insult to injury, you’re proposing paying these new inexperienced subs who don’t know our kids, who don’t have that dedication to our community, double,” she said. “Can you imagine what that feels like to them, how hurt they must be?”

Donna DiMarco, an instructional special educational assistant who works at Central Bucks East, thanked parents for gifts and goodies at the holidays and implored the board to “think about the support staff” and “be fair” when giving out contracts.

Negotiations are expected to produce viable contracts to vote on in the coming weeks.

Mental Health & Hate Speech

Some commenters used their time to address hateful and divisive rhetoric that has dominated some recent meetings.

Community member Doreen Stratton spoke to the board about her family’s long history in the district and in Doylestown, where they’ve lived since 1887.

“The white exceptionalism happening in our school district and across America is absolute ignorance,” she said.

She described learning Black history not in school but from her father, who told her about her grandfather's life and service. But she said she didn’t really learn her family’s history further back until she was 57 and used Ancestry.com.

“Without that, my family would have never discovered Tobias Stratton, born in 1757,” she said. “He was a free Black living in Philadelphia. Tobias is not ‘CRT’; he is Black history, Black culture, Black legacy, and Black heritage. It is embedded in the American fabric. Banning books and history about Black Americans will only weaken Americans’ future.”

In Central Bucks and across the country recently, conservative groups have pushed to remove books from school shelves based on content around race, gender expression, sexuality, and more. One website, Woke At Bucks County, emerged in November and specifically targeted books on Bucks County school shelves, as reported in the Bucks County Courier Times.

“Banning books and banning history is un-American,” Pettit, another commenter, said to the board. “I hope you do not go down that path.”

Student Justin Lowe spoke to what he sees as a regressive culture in the district.

“The amount of racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti Semitism, sexism, ableism, and all the other words ending in ism, in the schools — particularly middle schools — are off the charts,” he said to board members.

Lowe also spoke about struggling with his mental health while in the district, and feeling that he did not receive adequate support.

Junior Paree Pasi said she was spoken to by a police officer before the last meeting, and a community member lashed out at her online, after she was seen cutting the line to stand with adults she knew. Pasi, who is known in the district for successfully advocating for schools to recognize Diwali, said a parent called her a “miscreant” and a “spoiled brat” on Twitter.

“I should not have to be scared to speak at a board meeting for my own district,” she said.

One parent spoke specifically to offer support to students who are struggling with mental health issues and feeling attacked by hate speech in the community.

“I want them to know that if they are ever feeling afraid of speaking here because of some of the rhetoric you hear, please know that we have their back,” TJ Kosin said, adding, “We must come together as a community and stop arguing about policy in ways that scare our children.”

Tensions On The Board

Democrat Tracy Suits, a former board president (who was ousted from that role in a May vote, and no longer serves on the board in any capacity), spoke during public comment. She said that, having received no reply to her emails, she was speaking out after having been ignored by board president Dana Hunter and reprimanded by vice president Leigh Vlasblom for calling a point of order in a previous meeting, when the board did not observe procedure.

She also offered her condolences to Karen Smith, who was recently removed from a position she’s held for years as the board representative to the Bucks County Intermediate Unit and Middle Bucks Institute of Technology. All representative seats to those boards are now held by Republican board members.

“To be clear, I most definitely wanted to remain on both of these boards,” she said, explaining her family connections and longstanding relationships to those institutions.

She said other board members shared with her that they didn’t approve of how she voted on those boards and that they were upset over her interactions with the media.

In her comments, Smith also encouraged constituents, regardless of whether they receive a written response, to continue emailing board members to ensure their opinions are heard and reflected in the votes.

Dell’Angelo used the comment time to express her frustration on the board’s silence during the discussion period for the district’s health and safety plan.

“We only meet once a month,” Dell’Angelo said, acknowledging that Hunter had tried to get the board together last month for a special meeting. “This is our opportunity to discuss the issues on the agenda. The fact that today most of the board was silent — you had the opportunity to give a rationale for your vote, to let people in the community know and understand why you believe what you do about the health and safety plan. … It’s shocking to me that instead of us trying to work together and understand one another, we’re choosing silence.”

Dell’Angelo added, “to not use this meeting effectively, it becomes just a performance. And I’m not here to perform – although it seems like it now.”

Republican board members did not respond to her comments. Mahmud suggested creating a student safety committee, to interact with the policy and operations committees but focus on having deeper discussions around public health issues. This also did not garner a substantive response from the board.

Before the meeting’s close, board member Debra Cannon said she has received emails calling her “deaf and dumb Debra” due to her need to lip-read, read body language, and focus intensely on speakers in order to understand them during comment – having been profoundly deaf since age three. She explained her access needs to community members and asked for more respectful communication.

Sharon Collopy moved to adjourn the meeting and Jim Pepper seconded, a little while after the two-hour mark.

Read Central Bucks’ board policies and see records of their meetings and agendas online.

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