In last month’s election, Republican school board candidates scored many decisive victories up and down Bucks County, leading to widespread expectation that most of the county’s school districts would soon make a shift towards further normalcy and parent choice. Now that the newly elected board directors have been sworn in, 8 of the 13 school districts in Bucks County have a Republican-majority Board. Those 8 districts total over 76% of all Bucks County public school students, and due to their political makeup they can reasonably be expected to pursue normalcy in schools such as mask-optional approaches and reduced quarantine requirements.
The five districts that remain Democrat controlled are Bristol Borough, Bristol Township, Morrisville, New Hope-Solebury, and Pennsbury, and I am unfortunately not covering them here as they will not move toward normalcy until other districts do it first.
Out of the 8 Republican-controlled school districts, 2 of them (Council Rock and Quakertown) conducted their swearing-in ceremonies and reorganizations last Thursday, December 2nd. The remaining 6 (Bensalem, Centennial, Central Bucks, Neshaminy, Palisades, and Pennridge) conducted their swearing-in and reorganizations last night, December 6th.
So the question has been, who will strike first?
Last Thursday, neither Council Rock nor Quakertown Community School Districts made any changes to their Health & Safety Plans, although Quakertown did see some noteworthy action.
Democrat Chris Spear attempted to amend the Quakertown Health & Safety Plan towards normalcy for students, but was essentially blocked from doing so by Republican and newly-appointed Board President Jon Kern. This situation was rather unique, as a Democrat was trying to improve the student experience and the Republican-majority Board was trying to block it. The situation was captured succinctly by community member Karen Majewski (sp?) in her public comment accusing both Jon Kern as being a “puppet” of Superintendent Bill Harner and the other Republican board directors (most of whom were elected this year) as sitting idly by.
For anyone who likes to think of ReOpen Bucks as being politically motivated, let me just say that when it comes to Quakertown, our favorite current board member is far-and-away Chris Spear, and we are thus far disappointed with the Republican Board Directors for not expressing a desire to hear Mr. Spear’s proposed amendments.
Last night, the remaining six districts (Bensalem, Centennial, Central Bucks, Neshaminy, Palisades, and Pennridge) reorganized. Four of those districts, Bensalem, Centennial, Neshaminy, and Pennridge, stuck to the script and reorganized without any changes to their Health & Safety Plans.
Palisades discussed and passed a new Health & Safety Plan which makes masking optional and eliminates contact tracing, but it does not go into effect until the current statewide masking order is ended. 😕
And that leaves us with Central Bucks, the one and only Bucks County school district to immediately move towards more normalcy upon swearing in the new Board. Leigh Vlasblom, a long-time staunch advocate for normalcy and parent choice, was elected by the Board to serve as Vice President, and her first order of business was to amend the Health & Safety Plan with two adjustments.
First, the “charts” that were created in August were removed from the Plan altogether. These charts were used to determine the masking policy based on community transmission levels. Now that vaccination is available for all school-age children, it was somewhat bizarre to have charts which require masks for elementary students but not secondary students. With the charts gone, the CBSD policy will revert to mask optional if and when the statewide order is ended.
Ms. Vlasblom’s second adjustment to the Plan was to shift the burden of contact tracing from school staff to the Bucks County Health Department. The rationale was that the BCHD performed the contact tracing last year and, as a bonafide health department, is a better organization for conducting that activity. In addition, it was pointed out that contact tracing in the schools has put a burden on the staff, notably the school nurses. A recent New York Times article covered this well, stating “Nurses are overwhelmed with the demands of contact tracing from Covid-19 cases and paperwork for hundreds of requested exemptions from a school mask requirement.” Following Ms. Vlasblom’s motion passing, Central Bucks now places that burden of work where it belongs: with the health department.
These improvements to the CBSD Health & Safety Plan were passed by affirmative votes from returning board members Dana Hunter (President), Leigh Vlasblom (VP), and Sharon Collopy and new board members Debra Cannon, Jim Pepper, and Lisa Sciscio.
What’s Next?
Of the eight Bucks County school districts that have a prayer of achieving further normalcy with their new boards, three have additional board meetings in December.
Centennial will meet on December 14th and is expected to begin the process of turning school mitigation around, as the previous board was one of the most extreme in their mitigation efforts, and the new board has flipped to Republican.
Bensalem will meet on December 15th and may also see baby steps towards normalcy, as the new board, like the previous board, is firmly Republican-controlled.
Finally, Palisades will meet on December 15th, but they are less likely to make significant changes, because they now have a new Health & Safety Plan that will go into effect upon the statewide masking order ending.
After those three, both Council Rock and Quakertown will meet on January 6th, and from there we should see a steady stream of districts returning more and more to normalcy with each passing week.
