Central Bucks Will No Longer Update COVID Dashboard, Superintendent Says

DOYLESTOWN, PA — The Central Bucks School District will no longer provide COVID-19 case total updates on its public dashboard, Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh said in his address at Tuesday's school board meeting.

The announcement came after a newspaper published, via documents provided by an anonymous employee, that the district had been dramatically underreporting COVID-19 case totals.

Chris Ullery of the Bucks County Courier Times said the documents showed the district had reported just 198 of a cumulative 775 positive test results across several schools between Jan. 4 and Jan. 19, due to not listing the at-home COVID-19 tests reported by staff and students on its dashboard. During public comment, multiple community members quoted directly from Ullery's article, expressing their frustration with what they see as a lack of concern for the safety of district families.

"The data is not presented in real time, nor was it ever intended to be a mitigation tool used as a basis for meaningful action," Lucabaugh said.

The matter of removing the COVID-19 dashboard, which has been active since September, did not come before the board in a vote since the dashboard was not actually mentioned in the health and safety plan; rather, the superintendent announced the decision himself.

“The administration will no longer utilize the dashboard,” he said at the end of his address, adding that he hoped this would let administrators focus more on teaching and students' learning.

All data will still be collected, he explained, as mandated by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. These case numbers inform classroom mitigation measures when positive cases occur in the district.

But case totals in the school buildings will no longer be publicly available going forward.

The dashboard remains active Wednesday morning, displaying previous counts of Central Bucks COVID-19 cases. According to the Courier Times, these numbers represent only those cases confirmed by Bucks County Intermediate Unit testing or by a doctor's office.

Later, in final comments, Dr. Tabitha Dell'Angelo said she was not in favor of removing the dashboard.

Field Trip Voted Down

At Tuesday's meeting, field trips prompted significant board discussion.

School officials confirmed that students' 504 accommodations to abstain from wearing masks should also apply to field trips, even where masks are mandated in the area.

Board members ultimately approved all field trips up for discussion, except for one.

Several board members objected to Tamanend Middle School's proposed ninth-grade class trip to Washington, D.C. scheduled for March 31.

Washington, D.C. currently mandates proof of COVID-19 vaccination for entry across a variety of indoor spaces, including all restaurants.

Some board members expressed concerns about students not being able to use restrooms or grab food if they wanted to. However, based on the mayor's order on vaccination it would appear that getting to-go meals and using public restrooms do not require vaccination in the city.

After ascertaining that there might be time to plan a trip elsewhere — despite the D.C. trip bearing specific relevance to students' history curriculum, with visits to museums and monuments that school administrators said would not require vaccination — the board members voted the trip down 7-1, with Karen Smith voting to approve and Dr. Mariam Mahmud not able to attend the meeting.

Union Contracts

Andrea DiDio Hauber, Central Bucks' director of human resources, said that the support staff union and the school district still have yet to reach a settlement on a contract.

After 12 months of negotiation, DiDio Hauber said, the district sought outside arbitration on unsettled issues.

When it adjusted the contract based on the arbitrator's recommendations for settlement, DiDio Hauber said the union voted down the arbitrator's report. After more negotiations, the union again voted down the district's latest offer, she said.

DiDio Hauber said she and the district "remain hopeful" about reaching a contract settlement.

Cyberbullying

Tensions on the board remain high, if a short scuffle at the end of the meeting was any indication.

Several public commenters Tuesday night raised the issue of the NOVA Cyberbullying Prevention Program, which provides classroom presentations and instruction to students on cyberbullying issues, and which board members unanimously approved.

While all approved of the plan for students, public commenters insinuated that "cyberbullying" was a problem on the board as well, saying that Democrat board members had participated in Facebook groups where Republican board members were disparaged.

Commenters also lumped in Karen Smith's comments to media outlets with this criticism.

“You would be hard pressed to find anything on social media where I said anything negative about anyone on this board,” Dell'Angelo responded at the meeting's end.

Public Health Concerns

Board members did not discuss a January letter from Doylestown Health in which hospital officials implored them to rethink their COVID-19 health and safety plan, which provides mitigation guidance that's incongruous with CDC and Pennsylvania Department of Health guidelines. (In his comments on removing the dashboard, Lucabaugh said students who feel sick should stay home until symptoms resolve and they are 24-hours fever-free before returning to school).

Later in January, board president Dana Hunter had apparently refused board members' requests for a special meeting to discuss the hospital's request.

While the health and safety plan got next-to-no airtime in Tuesday's board discussions, several community members had things to say.

Larissa Hopwood, who said her child is at high risk when it comes to COVID-19, said she contacted the board and district officials multiple times to find practical solutions for her child — who has now been pulled from school and is relying on virtual education after getting too far behind and being told they could not livestream classes.

“What I have seen from most of the school board since you took your seats on that dais is a lot of hypocrisy,” she said, asking board members to "do something to protect the children."

Jen Bish, another community member, was also disturbed by the board's health and safety action, referencing when the board voted back in December to cease contact tracing and instead outsource that practice to the Bucks County Health Department. The health department's director, David Damsker, has since said that the health department does not contact trace except in severe outbreaks.

Bish said, in voting to outsource contact tracing to a body that does not contact trace, the board was "voting in public to deceive the public in an official document.”

She also criticized the district's failure to provide KN95 and N95 masks to teachers and staff who may want them, despite having been allocated ESSER funding toward sustaining the safe operation of schools. Bish was one of a group of parents who recently organized to distribute 2,300 masks to those employees, according to a Courier Times article.

Other parents thanked the board for policies they see as prioritizing children's learning.

“I’m very thankful that the board has instituted policies that support the inclusion of a diversity of science," commenter Lisa Dietz said.

Here's some other recent Central Bucks news:

• 6 Central Bucks Students Awarded Top Prizes In Youth Art Contest
• 2 More Charged In Central Bucks South Bomb Threat: Police
• Central Bucks Choir Director Filmed Former Student Undressing: DA

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