Once again, we’re back here to Correct the Courier because of lazy journalism.

Courier Times Journalist Chris Ullery published an article yesterday about last Tuesday’s Central Bucks School Board meeting, where about a dozen parents gave public comments critical of graphic excerpts from books that are available in Central Bucks middle- and high-school libraries.

In the article, Mr. Ullery ties the parents’ effort to an organization known as WokePA, and then attempts to connect WokePA to ReOpen Bucks. His attempt to do so is not surprising, as radical progressives have been desperately trying since last August to tie ReOpen Bucks to various organizations that have nothing to do with COVID or reopening. As a card-carrying member of the radical progressives, of course Mr. Ullery would try to do the same.

What is surprising, however, is the sheer magnitude of laziness in this article, and the complete lack of any attempt whatsoever on the part of Mr. Ullery to report truthful information to the Courier’s readers. Let’s get into it.

Mr. Ullery has written several articles about WokePA over the last few months, but up until yesterday he did not, to my awareness, ever try to link WokePA to ReOpen Bucks. Let’s go through the middle part of his article which uses about 260 of the article’s 1500 words to make his assertion that WokePA and ReOpen Bucks are linked.

While Woke PA may be taking inspiration from national groups, the unknown leaders behind the Bucks County movement do appear to be local.

Quite abruptly we’re met with an amazing fact: Chris Ullery does not know who is behind WokePA. This was stunning to me to read, because, you know, Mr. Ullery is supposedly a journalist with an outfit that is supposedly a newspaper. Such people and such organizations are supposed to be able to figure such things out, right?

For reference, I am aware of literally dozens of people, myself included, who know exactly who runs WokePA. It’s not like it’s some ultra-top-secret G14 classified material. It’s out there and a lot of people know. I find it at first astonishing, and then pitiful, that Mr. Ullery is not able to solve this head-scratching whodunit.

Rumors have cropped up on social media claiming that ReOpen Bucks, a group that has long fought against mask mandates in schools, is either in charge of or is involved with Woke PA.

Ah, yes. “Rumors have cropped up“. When a writer wants to make a flimsy assertion but has neither the brains nor the balls to do so, they use terms such as “rumor has it…“

Obviously, ReOpen Bucks is neither in charge of nor is in any way involved with WokePA. Again, the people who are in charge of WokePA are not exactly a secret.

In my last Correcting the Courier article, which focused on the Bucks County Government phone block of Megan Brock, I chastised Courier Times Executive Editor Shane Fitzgerald for making no attempt to contact Mrs. Brock. He wrote a whole article asserting that Mrs. Brock is verbally abusive, yet never once tried to contact her to hear her side of the story. That’s not journalism; that’s narration.

Similarly, I find it wild that Mr. Ullery would insert this “rumor” into his article without making any attempt to contact me or any other Administrator of ReOpen Bucks. Making a simple phone call goes a really long way to understanding truth, and yet that seems to be something folks at the Courier are consistently incapable of. I guess I already nailed it above: they’re not journalists; they’re narrators.

If Mr. Ullery had contacted me, I probably would have told him exactly who is behind WokePA 🤷‍♂️

ReOpen’s Twitter account in February posted that it had “absolutely nothing to do with ‘wokePA’ or any movement anywhere that is not focused on the issue of COVID/return to normalcy.”

“Any suggestion to the contrary is either ignorance or deceit,” the posted added. Yet the organizations seem to share members.

Mr. Ullery deserves some credit for reporting on this tweet, which I would have thought settles the issue once and for all. Yet here we are.

Furthermore, ReOpen Bucks is 10,000 people right now. When we say “share members“, are we talking about all 10,000 people, or just one person, or what? What does “share members” mean?

A member of the group’s private Facebook page shared an email with this news organization this week they said came through an email group for Central Bucks parents that ReOpen Bucks maintains.

The email, which appears to have been sent by Mazzoni on Tuesday morning, reminds recipients of the meeting to come that night and that a group of parents will be reading from “this filth” during public comment.

Ah, yes. Now that explains it. Lazy journalism leads to misinformation, and that is exactly what happened here.

Mr. Ullery is publishing an assertion from an unnamed source that ReOpen Bucks maintains an “email group” which was used by Erin Mazzoni. If Mr. Ullery had made any attempt whatsoever to contact either Mrs. Mazzoni or an Administrator of ReOpen Bucks, he would have easily learned that to be untrue. But again, phone calls are hard for these folks.

The ReOpen Bucks email list has been used exactly one time: to send out a reminder to vote on Election Day last November. That is the only time we have ever sent an email to our email list.

I decided to do some actual journalism and reach out to Erin Mazzoni to ask about her email list. I know, I know–it was very hard to do. I didn’t think I could do it. But I reached out and–viola! I had a conversation with someone to try to get to the bottom of a story. Miraculous, I know.

It turns out that Mrs. Mazzoni built her email list over the last year or so, by circulating petitions that she wanted to send to the Central Bucks School Board. All it took to learn that fact was one little phone call. 🙂

I’m left with a simple question: is this obvious misinformation due to Mr. Ullery’s lack of ability, or is it intentional laziness designed to push a narrative? Remember, earlier in the article, Mr. Ullery wrote that WokePA’s website “offers no information on its administrators or members” and that “No social media accounts appear to be tied to Woke PA“. He had already clearly stated that he knows nothing about WokePA’s membership, but he was all too happy to lazily publish a blatantly false connection. 🤔

While the email doesn’t mention ReOpen Bucks, Mazzoni reminds readers to email elected Central Bucks board members who have voted against mask requirements.

So Mrs. Mazzoni sent an email to her own email list, and that email did not mention ReOpen Bucks, but somehow because masks are mentioned ReOpen Bucks is now in charge of WokePA. Lmao. I mean, I seriously can’t even with this. As I write this, I can’t stop laughing. What in the hell is going on with local journalism in Bucks County? Are local papers really that afraid of ReOpen Bucks? It’s weird.

Despite the hilarity, I do see an issue here that I need to address. When speaking of ReOpen Bucks, radical progressives consistently fixate on the mask issue, as if to imply that masks are the one-and-only point of advocacy that ReOpen Bucks cares about. In the sentence above, Mr. Ullery is claiming that the email’s reference to masks somehow proves that it must have to do with ReOpen Bucks. The implicit point being made is that anything to do with masks anywhere in Bucks County must be from ReOpen Bucks.

Look, we’re certainly very proud of our anti-mask stance (which we adopted way before it was cool), but it is only one component of our efforts.

The Bucks County Commissioners exhibit the same behavior: fixating on the mask issue in order to suggest that masks are the only thing ReOpen Bucks cares about. I very pointedly brought this up with them a week ago in an email. The Commissioners have not responded to that email, and I can’t help but feel there is some level of coordination between the Commissioners and Mr. Ullery in trying to tie ReOpen Bucks to only caring about masks. I have no proof of that of course, but these underlying themes seem pretty coincidental.

As I said at the beginning of this article, radical progressives in Bucks County have spent months desperately trying to connect ReOpen Bucks with various other movements. In most cases, I’ve made the intentional decision to let them run with their wild ideas, because average people (average voters) see them for exactly what they are: crazy people. I trust the average person to be able to distinguish normalcy from insanity, and truth from lies.

While the ReOpen Bucks movement and brand is strictly focused on the issues of COVID, everyone in the group is an individual person with their own background, thoughts, stories to tell, viewpoints, and beliefs. That includes me and every other leader in the group. If you’re ever curious what we think about any other issues, you can always just ask.

I encourage everyone to stop making presumptions about others based on preconceived tribalism. Until you find the courage to talk to someone, you’ll never know what they might contribute to your world.

I’ve been waiting 354 days to write this letter.

All those days ago, on March 9th, 2021, you submitted a message to the Bucks County Sports Association website, chiding us for daring to allow children to play sports without wearing face masks. You called our policy “dangerous,” “self-serving,” and “hypocritical.”

Indeed, you were correct that BCSA did not comply with the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s Updated Order which called for every single child in Pennsylvania to wear a face mask while actively engaged in athletics. Not only did we not comply with the order, we openly flouted it by prohibiting masks altogether. While the vast majority of intramural leagues cancelled their season, we had a fully normal one. That was the whole point.

Because of our actions, the Bucks County Health Department eventually joined us in opposing the PA DoH’s Updated Order. The Health Department’s letter came out less than two weeks before your message. Maybe you weren’t even aware that our policy was in line with county guidance at the time?

At the same time that we received your message, folks much like yourself were reporting BCSA to various “authorities”, like health departments, the police, and even the FBI (lol). Some even went so far as to attack the league’s sponsors. But our sponsors remained steadfast, and so did we.

The reason that I waited until now to respond is because I knew that this day would eventually come.

I knew that your position, the position that children should be masked while they actively play sports in a youth league that you have nothing to do with, would eventually be seen for what it is: complete lunacy.

I wondered how you would handle that shift in public opinion. I wondered how you would fare once you were the one in the extreme minority.

And now here we are.

As of today, 97% of Bucks County public school students already attend school in a mask-optional environment. Children in New Hope-Solebury School District, over which you preside as Board President, are in the mere 3% who do not. I wonder what it’s like to be so alone, so abandoned, that you are the only Board President left in Bucks County clinging to mask mandates that clearly don’t work.

Yesterday, the CDC released new guidance under which all organizations in Bucks County should immediately be mask-optional for everyone. As you’ve already decided that New Hope-Solebury will maintain its mask requirement until March 7th, you are now choosing to defy that guidance. My, how the tables have turned. I wonder what that feels like, after two years of claiming to “follow the science.“

On March 9, 2021, the day that you sent your message to BCSA, the 7-day average of Pennsylvania COVID deaths was 44 (source). Today that number is 66, and it has not been as low as 44 since September, five months ago. Yet New Hope-Solebury athletes have played sports this entire school year without masks.

So you chided us for allowing kids to play sports without masks back when COVID mortality was lower, but make no admonition upon your own district for doing the same thing now when COVID mortality is higher.

I wonder how you justify that.

Public opinion has left you behind. People have moved on. While the accelerated return to normal continues, it seems that you are one of the few intent on keeping your own perverted sense of control for as long as possible. I wonder why.

Two days ago, you cemented your legacy at the February 2022 meeting of the New Hope-Solebury School Board of Directors. Throughout the meeting, you repeatedly showed clear disdain for all parents who desire mask choice. You kicked several parents out of the meeting for not pulling their masks up. I lost count of how many times you barked, “Mask up or leave.” The meeting audio was muted during every round of applause given to mask-choice parents.

The image below captures your role in this moment stunningly well.

The man in this picture is a father in your district. His views represent nearly half of the parents who have children in the district. And yet you stand over him, arms crossed, cold and indifferent to anything he might have to say. You eventually had him removed from the meeting, too, because he didn’t pull his mask up quickly enough after delivering a public comment that you apparently did not like.

That picture reminded me so poignantly of your message to BCSA, and helped me decide that it’s finally time to respond.

You were on the wrong side of history 354 days ago, and you’re on the wrong side of history now.

Those of us with whom you disagree have weathered much worse than your contempt. We’ve actually become quite hardened by the challenges of the last two years. We are stronger. We are more united. We look forward to the future, and we are ready to seize it.

On the other hand, people like you seem to be spiraling, cut off from family, friends, and institutions whose support you so obviously need during this time of transition. Society is returning to normal, with or without you.

There could be no better illustration of this dichotomy than what took place outside of this week’s school board meeting. While you shouted at people about masks and tossed parents out of the meeting, a completely normal, pre-pandemic basketball game was in progress right across the hall. I encourage you to watch the clip here.

For what it’s worth, that basketball game looked an awful lot like Bucks County Sports Association did 354 days ago. Normal.

I hope you are ready for the societal change that is about to happen. You, as much as anyone, need it.

At last Wednesday’s Bucks County Commissioners Meeting, Megan Brock revealed that her phone number has been blocked from calling any Bucks County Government offices.

Two days later, the Bucks County Courier Times attempted to address the issue by publishing an online opinion column written by its editors, including Executive Editor Shane Fitzgerald.

Two more days later, the column was printed in the Courier’s hard copy version, this time without any reference whatsoever to being an opinion piece.

The gist of the editors’ column is that Bucks County blocked Mrs. Brock’s phone number from calling all county offices because Mrs. Brock was “verbally abusing” Commissioner Diane Marseglia’s executive assistant, Anna Payne.

In perfect alignment with their complete lack of journalistic standards, the Courier’s editors did not even attempt to speak to Mrs. Brock before publishing this column which essentially accuses her of harassment and verbal abuse. This directly violates the Courier’s published Principles of Ethical Conduct For Newsrooms, which claims that “We will strive to include all sides relevant to a story. When news develops and we can’t include important perspectives immediately, we will share updates, including additional sources, when possible. We also will share attempts to reach sources who add value to the story.“

I went ahead and spoke with Megan Brock, and now I feel compelled to once again Correct the Courier.

The column spends the first 703 of its 1178 words pontificating about the state of COVID discourse in Bucks County before actually addressing what happened and why. Finally, mercifully, they get to the point:

“County Commissioner Diane Marseglia on Wednesday said blocking the resident’s number was intended to be for only one direct number, from a front-line staff member who routinely returns constituents’ calls. That staff member, who had talked with this parent several times, said she couldn’t take the extensive verbal abuse anymore.”

The Courier’s editors printed as fact that the staff member (Commissioner Marseglia’s assistant Anna Payne) spoke with Mrs. Brock “several times”. Unfortunately, that claim appears to be untrue and easily disproved by simply speaking with Mrs. Brock.

Mrs. Brock sent me call logs from her service provider that show she could not have possibly spoken to Ms. Payne any more than one time in August 2020 before her number was blocked.

Moreover, the call logs also show that Commissioner Marseglia used her cell phone to call Mrs. Brock about a week later. It does not make sense that Commissioner Marseglia would use her personal cell phone to call someone who she believes to be “verbally abusive”.

“We don’t see the upside to naming the parent or the county employee who ended up in a place where she couldn’t stand the thought of talking with this resident again. Neither deserves what probably would come their way.”

First of all, why does an office assistant have the power to block private citizens from contacting their government? If the Courier was honest, they would start with that question. I believe that question deserves an answer.

Secondly, the county employee in question is Commissioner Marseglia’s executive assistant Anna Payne. Why do the Courier editors not want to name her?

Could it be because she is an elected Democrat Supervisor in Middletown Township? What if I told you that at the time Commissioner Marseglia and Ms. Payne blocked Megan Brock’s phone number from calling the County, Ms. Payne was Supervisor of the Township in which Mrs. Brock lived?

Do you think that would be “relevant to the story”?

I love it when the Courier claims to be unbiased. The entire editors’ column is an obvious attempt to protect Commissioner Marseglia from scrutiny by applying a veil of journalism to a completely one-sided story. It’s literally one-sided in the sense that the Courier took every word from Commissioner Marseglia but did not make any attempt to contact Mrs. Brock.

Despite this, the Courier’s editors still find a way to claim that they take heat for being unbiased:

“We ask tough questions. We analyze the data. We talk to both sides. Facts are still disputed and our motives questioned.”

First of all, let’s all just get out a good laugh that the Courier literally writes “We talk to both sides“, when this particular column is a blatant example of how they don’t.

Furthermore, to my awareness the Courier and its editors have never once questioned the efficacy of any form of COVID mitigation. I’m honestly not sure what they’re talking about when they claim “We analyze the data“. I have never seen anything close to data analysis come from the Courier during the pandemic, but I would love to see it if it exists.

Maybe they could start with the Bucks County data that clearly shows mask requirements in schools have made no difference.

Ask yourself, have you ever seen the Courier provide objective analysis of whether or not mask requirements in schools actually work? If they “asked tough questions“, then I must have missed it.

“We know a segment of people won’t believe Marseglia. But in light of where we are right now on this subject, it’s easy to understand how public officials and their staff members can get to a point where enough is enough. Maybe it’s not a good look for the county in one sense. But it’s a good look that the county supported one of its employees who doesn’t deserve the verbal onslaughts.“

Stunningly, the column ends with the line that I’ve bolded above. With that line, the Courier’s editors acknowledge as fact that Mrs. Brock delivered “verbal onslaughts” to some poor, unnamed, sweet, innocent county employee who doesn’t deserve them.

• Never mind that Mrs. Brock can produce call logs that show she could have only spoken with that county employee one time in August 2020 before being blocked.
• Never mind that the county employee just happened to be Mrs. Brock’s elected Township Supervisor at the time.
• Never mind that Mrs. Brock’s side of the story includes Commissioner Marseglia erupting into a verbally-abusive tirade of her own when she used her personal cell phone to call Mrs. Brock in August 2020.
• Never mind that Mrs. Brock did not even realize she was blocked until 18 months after the fact. Definitely do not ask yourself how she could be so determined to harass county employees that she went 18 months without realizing she couldn’t even call them.

Never mind any of those things, because Mrs. Brock’s side of the story doesn’t matter to the Courier. The editors, including Executive Editor Shane Fitzgerald, have a job to do here and it’s not to provide objective reporting. No, their job is to protect Bucks County Government from scrutiny.

In this case, very deserved scrutiny.

As the Bucks County Courier Times continues their descent into becoming a far-left tabloid (think of them as our own local version of the Huffington Post), the falsehoods they publish must be corrected.

Our new “Correcting the Courier” series aims to counteract the Courier’s disappointing withdrawal from honest reporting.

The latest offense from the Courier, which is the inspiration for this “Correcting the Courier” series, is Chris Ullery’s misrepresentation of last week’s Central Bucks School Board meeting, where the board chose not to approve a 9th-grade field trip to Washington, D.C.

Mr. Ullery predicated his “journalism” — which was really an opinion piece — on a single tweet that went viral the day after the Board vote.

Before going any further, I want to let you know that the falsehoods spread through Diana Leygerman’s tweet (which we’ll discuss in a second) and Mr. Ullery’s article led to documented bullying within CBSD. We have received reports that a child of one of the CBSD Board directors was bullied this week specifically on this issue. Dishonest journalism has the potential to cause real harm to our community, and when this harm befalls children, it can no longer be ignored.

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

David Ogilvy (the “Father of Advertising”)

The original headline for Mr. Ullery’s article asserted two falsehoods, both of which will be addressed later in this article: 1) the trip was cancelled, and 2) the trip was specific to the Holocaust Museum. As you can see below, the headline was eventually changed two days later.

It’s important to address this issue with the headline before we get into anything else, because the headline is far more visible than any content found in the article itself. Changing the headline two days later was certainly called for, but by that time the damage was done. The community had been led to believe damaging falsehoods, all because of a lack of basic journalistic integrity on the part of the author and the overseeing editors.

While I would prefer to give the editors at the Courier the benefit of the doubt and say this was laziness, there is one other huge, glaring falsehood in the original headline that simply cannot be overlooked. That’s the omission of why the Board pulled the trip in the first place. By headlining that the trip was specifically to the Holocaust Museum, and then suggesting that the trip was just canceled for no particular reason, the reader is led to assume that the Board simply has something against the Holocaust Museum.

This particular tactic is extremely harmful to the community, and we will address it further later in this article.

The content of Mr. Ullery’s article (even after the headline change) asserts that the Tamanend Middle School field trip was cancelled, which would mean the Board decided that a previously-approved trip was no longer going to happen. From the article:

“Although the vote canceled the field trip, other places for an alternative visit, like New York City, were suggested for future consideration.”

Since this was the first time this particular field trip was ever put in front of the Board for approval, there was nothing to “cancel.” The Board simply decided not to approve this trip in its current form. A simple listen to the meeting archive shows that the entire Board and administration were in agreement that a trip would still take place, whether it be to a different location or the same location with different logistics (i.e. no segregation of students).

For reference as to what it would mean to “cancel” a field trip, consider an identical field trip for Tohickon Middle School that the Board approved last July. Since the Tohickon field trip was already approved, any action to stop it from happening would “cancel” it.

In the case of Tamanend Middle School, no such trip was ever approved, so there was nothing to cancel. Furthermore, it was obvious from the Board’s deliberation that a field trip for these students would still happen one way or another.

As they’ve done in the past, the Courier can’t help but try to insinuate that the Central Bucks Board majority is antisemitic. Perhaps this is a popular topic for their USA Today masters. We can only hypothesize.

The truth is that the “because-of-antisemitism” trope generates clicks, so irresponsible & intellectually-lazy “journalists” run with it. Never mind that the duly elected Board President Dana Hunter is herself Jewish. Never mind that Jamie Walker, one of the district’s most outspoken parent advocates, is Jewish. Never mind that Health Director Dr. David Damsker is also Jewish. Never mind that there has never been a shred of factual evidence presented to establish that the Board or the district in any way embraces antisemitism.

Furthermore, during the meeting, not a single word was spoken by either the Board or the administration about the Holocaust Museum in particular. Go ahead and double-check: the discussion is from 1:07:00 to 1:12:30. There was zero discussion of this destination specifically. The written motion was to approve the trip “to see the Smithsonian Museum, the Holocaust Museum and various memorials and monuments.” The language in the Field Trip Request provides the following list of curriculum items that will be experienced on the field trip: “both World Wars, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, the Civil Rights Movement, government structures, labor and industry, earth sciences, and evolution.“

Simple put, emphasizing the Holocaust Museum over any of those other visit locations is an obvious attempt to smear the Board. It’s beneath the dignity of real journalism.

As I discussed last week, Diana Leygerman was rejected by the community last year in her Region 9 loss to Jim Pepper, and now she seems fully committed to causing as much destruction and chaos as possible. Just days after losing the election, she expressed her desire to “burn it all down“, and that’s exactly what she has attempted to do since then.

The tweet that she sent out after the Board meeting, which Mr. Ullery then used as the basis for his Courier Time article, was both sensational and inaccurate.

Aside from the intentional misrepresentation of the Holocaust Museum as the focal point, the real damage caused here by Mrs. Leygerman is that she suggests the entire situation is being caused by just one student: a Board Director’s child.

Unfortunately, Chris Ullery further amplified that message in his Courier article:

“A Twitter post from Diana Leygerman, a former school board candidate and Philadelphia teacher, lambasted the vote saying one board member’s stance on vaccinations robbed students of an important opportunity.”

According to the CDC, ~43% of children 12-17 years of age are not fully vaccinated. Given that this trip was planned for roughly 285 students, we can calculate the number of students who would have experienced segregation or exclusion on the basis of vaccination status as: 285 * 0.43 = approximately 123 students.

So the Central Bucks School Board used their 7-1 vote to protect 123 students from the negative experience of segregation or exclusion, and the Courier Times responded by amplifying the false message that only ONE kid, Mrs. Sciscio’s kid, would have been impacted.

It’s easy to see why the Courier is hemorrhaging subscribers.

The night before Mr. Ullery published his article in the Courier, Maddie Hanna published the same story in an Inquirer article that was, overall, much more fair than Mr. Ullery’s.

Ms. Hanna’s article included a quote from the Central Bucks School Board:

District spokesperson Angela Linch provided a response on behalf of the board, citing “concerns that a daylong trip to the city, with many attractions, restaurants, and other venues requiring proof of vaccination to enter, would place an unfair burden on students, faculty and volunteer chaperones.”

She said, “The majority of the board was unwilling to place the district’s students and teachers in such an unpredictable scenario, with concerns that any student or teacher could be singled out due to vaccination status.”

Under the district’s board-approved health and safety plan, “the vaccination status of a person is private; therefore, employees will not ask, solicit, or engage in discussion around the vaccination status of another adult or student.”

I find it hard to believe that Mr. Ullery would not have known about this statement from the Board prior to publishing his article in the Courier, as typically district statements are provided to all local media. Maybe I’m wrong–I’d like to hear an explanation from him as to why he makes half of his article about Karen Smith’s opinions (as the only CBSD Board Director who voted for segregation based on vaccination status), while leaving out the Board’s official statement, which was already published in other publications the night before.

Perhaps the most bothersome thing about the Courier Times article, the viral tweet from Mrs. Leygerman, and the ensuing community drama, though, is that none of this helps put the focus back on the kids and their well-being.

For example, it’s been particularly difficult to watch people attack Lisa Sciscio’s remark about sending the 9th-grade class to Dorney Park. When hate-filled people hear her comment, they want to hear an ignorant person who doesn’t know the difference between an educational trip and a recreational trip. When the rest of us hear her comment, we hear someone who cares deeply about the students of Central Bucks and understands what they really need right now: getting their lives back. What better way to take the pressure off the kids and just let them have a fun day than to send them to Dorney Park, where they all will be treated equally? And yes, there are educational offerings at the theme park.

It’s extremely disappointing that anyone could possibly attack Mrs. Sciscio’s suggestion the way they have, but I guess that’s just the world we live in now, and that’s the sort of local media we’re working with.

Similarly, I take major issue with the fact that the adults in the room all shriek about the Holocaust Museum, meanwhile nobody says a peep about the Unami Middle School field trip to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty that was unanimously approved by the board.

Why is this important? It’s important because it shows that the adults are making it about themselves, not about the kids. Sure, labeling this as a cancelled Holocaust Museum trip sounds shocking, and this mischaracterization opens the door for cheap shots. But did anyone consider that the Board had no problem approving the trip to Ellis Island, which is one of the most relevant sites in the history of American Judaism and also Judaism generally?

In my opinion, one cannot comprehensively teach about the Holocaust without describing the impact that Ellis Island had on the Immigration Laws of 1921 & 1924, and how those Laws devastatingly undermined the ability of European Jews to emigrate safely prior to and during the Holocaust. And did you know that Jews were the only group of immigrants who had their own dedicated kitchen (for kosher food preparation) at Ellis Island? The fact that Unami students can visit this historic landmark free from threat of segregation, exclusion or embarrassment, should be celebrated.

But no, none of that is worth mentioning. Not while we have an agenda to push. Let’s never find a silver lining or a ray of sunshine; let’s just keep screaming at each other over complex adult topics. To hell with what’s best for the kids. [/s]

At the end of the day, the Central Bucks community has no choice but to make peace with the fact that there are community members with access to local media who, for whatever reason, are determined to keep people divided and angry. I honestly don’t know why exactly they want to do that, but I do know that their irresponsibility has caused real harm to the child of a Central Bucks School Board director. Stop and think about that for a minute.

I’m not so naive to think that any of what I’ve said will in any way improve Mr. Ullery’s journalism. But I hope that at least I’ve helped you, the reader, understand the poor choices that Mr. Ullery made with this article, and the consequences associated with those choices. It is incumbent on the public to hold our local media responsible when they misinform.

And tangentially, I hope that I’ve also given you reason to reflect on how fortunate we are to have the Central Bucks School Board, who continue to lead the community and put kids first despite the immense personal hardship they face.