“They have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.”
Catch-22
In light of new CDC misguidance that effectively shuts down most schools in America, it’s a good time to reflect on the failures and missteps that robbed many Bucks County students of their only shot at in-person education this year. Students obviously weren’t going to learn in person during the Spring of 2020, when the pandemic was new and everyone in America was freaking out. And they obviously aren’t going to learn in person for the foreseeable future with the new CDC chokehold. That means that public school students really only had one shot at in-person learning, and it was during the Fall & Winter of 2020-2021.
While some Bucks County districts figured out how to get schools open from Day 1, most didn’t. The majority of them floundered through week-after-week, month-after-month of feckless School Board meetings where absolutely nothing got done and most kids fell further and further behind.
Such was the case in Central Bucks School District (CBSD), where a series of missteps by the School Board and the Administration led to an all-virtual start to the 2020-2021 school year. To give you an idea of how massive a failure this is, let’s look at some numbers from the parent surveys conducted in July.
81% of parents believed school should resume
88% of parents intended to send their kid to school upon reopening
Ouch. It looks to me like Superintendent Dr. Kopicki had a mandate from the CBSD community, and he failed to deliver on it. CBSD even had results from a prior survey in June where they explicitly asked parents whether they would prefer hybrid or all-virtual if full 5-day did not work out. 84% said hybrid. Simply put: the vast majority of CBSD parents wanted their kids in school. Dr. Kopicki and the School Board failed to make that happen.
So, why did CBSD fail and how did that happen?
Something to Hide
Chalfont resident & parent Jamie Walker became fed up with several of CBSD’s missteps, culminating in her submitting a series of Right-to-Know (RTK) requests for district correspondence. The school district denied her RTK request, which is unusual and concerning in itself, but pales in comparison to what the district would eventually do to keep these records hidden from the public.
Mrs. Walker appealed CBSD’s denial to the Office of Open Records (OOR) in Harrisburg. The role of the OOR is to administer the Pennsylvania RTK law, which includes reviewing appeals and issuing what is known as a “Final Determination” in each case. The OOR reviewed all of the correspondence in question and determined that CBSD unlawfully denied Mrs. Walker’s RTK request. The Final Determination ordered the district to hand over emails to Mrs. Walker.
Instead of accepting the Final Determination, CBSD decided to sue Mrs. Walker in the Court of Common Pleas, hoping that the court will reverse the OOR’s decision. Yes, you read that right — the bureaucracy did what bureaucracies do: it used oodles of taxpayer money to sue a housewife in order to avoid being transparent, despite an oversight agency ordering it to be transparent. I wonder: how could such an upstanding organization ever have failed to get kids back in school?
Fortunately, Mrs. Walker has pried enough emails from CBSD’s cold dead hands that we can at least start to put together a timeline of what transpired to irrevocably harm the 18,000 students under CBSD’s charge. All correspondence referenced throughout the rest of this article was acquired through Mrs. Walker’s unrelenting pursuit for truth and transparency.
Timeline of Union Intervention
June 14 – Dr. Kopicki Emails the CBSD School Board
Dr. Kopicki informs the CBSD School Board that all Bucks County school districts are anticipating a “total reopen for all students and staff” in August 2020.
June 15 – Dr. Damsker Emails Chief School Administrators
Dr. Damsker (Director of Bucks County Health Department) provides guidance that schools can use 3 ft social distancing rather than 6 ft, and that the Bucks County Health Department will determine and assign quarantines.
Schools districts were advised by Governor Wolf to create their Health and Safety Plans with their local health department.
June 16 – Dr. Kopicki Emails AD Council Members
“we will use Dr. Damsker’s guidance to inform the development of our own Health and Safety Plans.”
“All CBSD team members should begin making arrangements for a return to in-person school and work activities for the 2020-2021 school year.”
June 17 – Erin Corrigan Emails Andrea DiDio Hauber
Erin Corrigan (CBEA Teachers Union President) tells Andrea DiDio Hauber (Human Resources Director) that she is “shocked” to learn that CBSD is conducting planning for back to school scenarios.
She says that “not one CBEA officer was included in any of the [planning] groups. We would like that rectified at once…“
* Note – This email correspondence from the Union President to the Human Resources Director was improper, as the collective bargaining agreement instructs the union to file all grievances directly to the Superintendent. Dr. Kopicki was not included on the email from Ms. Corrigan to Mrs. DiDio Hauber.
June 19 – Dr. Kopicki Emails All Teachers & Principals
Dr. Kopicki states that no final decision has been made about opening in the fall. He apologizes to the staff for suggesting that a decision had been made.
Let’s recap:
✅ June 14 – Schools are set to open ✅
✅ June 15 – Schools are set to open ✅
✅ June 16 – Schools are set to open ✅
⚠️ June 17 – Teachers union gets involved ⚠️
🛑 June 19 – Schools are no longer set to open 🛑
After reading that recap, if you’re somehow able to convince yourself that the teachers unions are not singularly responsible for keeping schools closed, then I’d like to talk to you about some ocean-front property in Arizona that I have for sale.
Goodbye Traditional 5-day,
Hello Hybrid
July 06 – Mark Hoffman Emails All Bucks County Superintendents
Mark Hoffman (Executive Director of Bucks County Intermediate Unit) sends an email to all superintendents warning them that hybrid options are currently illegal, absent a waiver or legislative change.
July 16 – Dr. Damsker Emails All Bucks County Superintendents
Dr. Damsker clarifies that revised guidance from Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) recommending 6 ft distancing is not a change from previous guidance, because it includes the qualifier “to the extent feasible“.
Dr. Damsker goes on to say “I firmly believe all 13 districts can offer a safe, and full time, in-person option.“
July 17 – Dr. Kopicki Emails All of CBSD
Dr. Kopicki announces that CBSD is ditching the traditional 5-day option, and will only offer hybrid and virtual options. He makes clear that this change is because “revised recommendations and procedures were released from the governor and the Pennsylvania Department of Education.“
Just the day before, on July 16, Dr. Damsker had clarified that the revised recommendations did not change any requirement for 6 ft distancing.
Dr. Kopicki’s ignorance of Dr. Damsker’s clarifying email implies that the district torpedoed traditional 5-day by using the 6 ft recommendation as a scapegoat. Dr. Kopicki also decided to ignore Mark Hoffman’s warning that hybrid options were illegal.
July 17 – Dr. Damsker Emails the CBSD School Board
Dr. Damsker reaffirms to the Board that all school reopening guidance at all levels of government–Bucks County, PDE, and CDC–always includes the “as much as feasible” qualifier.
Beth Darcy, CBSD School Board president at the time, tells the other Board members that Dr. Damsker was inquiring as a parent, not as the board certified public health doctor in charge of running the Bucks County Health Department. She later went on to publicly bash him at a school board meeting where he was not in attendance. Beth Darcy would go on to resign from the School Board on December 31.
July 21 – CBSD School Board Meeting
CBSD School Board passes a vote on the Health and Safety Plan, affirming traditional 5-day option for elementary students and a hybrid option for secondary students.
This move seems to have been a compromise between the School Board, who were getting pummeled by frustrated parents, and Dr. Kopicki, who was getting pummeled by the teachers union.
July 28 – CBSD School Board Meeting
CBSD School Board passes a resolution declaring that the COVID-19 pandemic is an “Emergency” as defined in Section 520.1 of the PA School Code.
This declaration essentially granted an extraordinary amount of power to Superintendent Dr. Kopicki, including the exclusive ability to determine learning model (without the Board’s approval) and the ability to sign Memorandums of Understanding (MOU’s) with the teachers union (MOU’s historically are always agreed to and voted on by the School Board).
It is clear from the Board meeting video archive that Board members did not know what this declaration implied or the amount of power that it transferred from them to Dr. Kopicki
Video Link – Relevant discussion begins at 2:36:50.
At this point we’re at the end of July and the CBSD School Board has been swindled of all its power to do pretty much anything. Under the guise of a Section 520.1 “Emergency”, all power to influence learning modality now rested exclusively with Dr. Kopicki.
Consider just how severely this moment is lacking in leadership. The opposite of leadership is spectatorship, and the CBSD School Board not only allowed itself to become a spectator–it voted for it 9-0!
Clearly the Board was either incapable or unwilling to lead during this time of crisis. They may as well have gone on a sailing trip to Florida.
Fortunately, the power to make in-person learning happen (which 81% of district parents wanted) was vested exclusively in Dr. Kopicki. Surely he wouldn’t blow it?
CBSD Drops All Pretenses of Caring Even a Little Bit
On August 10, Dr. Kopicki abruptly announced that CBSD will be offering only virtual learning. All in-person learning had been scrapped. Dr. Kopicki made very clear in his announcement that the change was due to staff shortages. Teachers coordinated with each other to call out sick or take various forms of leave at strategic times, to ensure that the district would not have adequate staff. In other words, the teachers union wasn’t satisfied with only derailing traditional 5-day learning, they wanted to derail any in-person learning altogether. If you give a mouse a cookie…
In June, CBSD was fully on track to offer traditional 5-day in-person learning, and 81% of CBSD parents wanted that. Once the CBEA Teachers Union got involved, led by Erin Corrigan, CBSD abandoned 5-day for hybrid in July, and then abandoned hybrid for virtual-only in August.
To date, the CBSD community has not received answers as to why any of this happened, what medical doctors recommended these changes at different points in time, or what metrics the district has used to make decisions. It’s just been one dumpster fire after the next, with no leadership or transparency.
Spin Doctor
Following the drama that unfolded in July, the CBSD Board and Administration distanced themselves from Dr. Damsker, since he was exposing their lie that traditional 5-day could not be done within PDE’s recommendations.
This led CBSD to pull other medical experts into the fold, as a way to establish credibility that they are right and Dr. Damsker is wrong. This move is unique within Bucks County–no other district has brought outside medical doctors into the fold.
So who did CBSD nab? None other than the Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Doylestown Hospital, Dr. Scott Levy. If that sounds like a pretty snazzy hookup to you, that’s because it is. For reference, Council Rock School District’s squad is made up of a district administrator, a school nurse, and a school psychologist.
No Vice President or Chief Medical Officer of a Hospital
So CBSD adds the top doctor at Doylestown Hospital to their Health and Safety Plan, while no other district in Bucks County has a medical doctor other than Dr. Damsker listed on their Health and Safety Plan. That’s…weird.
What’s even weirder is that CBSD went through all the trouble of getting Dr. Levy and a bunch of his Doylestown Hospital homies to sign on, but then didn’t even have the decency to ask them for any medical advice:
No dialogue or discussion between March and September? With the top doctor at Doylestown Hospital?? What a waste! And to think, we all thought listing this guy on the Health and Safety Plan meant that he actually knew what was in it…
Again, these little factoids would be completely unknown to the world if not for Mrs. Walker’s relentless efforts to figure out what the hell is going on in CBSD. I think that the community owes her a great deal of gratitude for discovering all of this information that otherwise would never see the light of day.
So What’s the Bottom Line?
While the lack of leadership and transparency in CBSD is stunning, it’s not necessarily unique. The majority of Bucks County school districts have experienced a similar lack of leadership culminating in poor education outcomes this year. The few districts who have consistently made it work–Palisades, Pennridge, Quakertown–all have strong leadership in their Board, their Administration, or both.
With the ever-growing power of the teachers unions, I predict that the education gap here in Bucks County will continue to grow rapidly. Strong districts with firm leaders will find a way to educate their students; weak ones will not. Ultimately, the deciding factor as to whether any particular student gets a decent education will be the zip code in which they live. For all the progress that has been made over the past few decades to achieve equal opportunity in education, I cannot fathom a worse set back than this.
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
