The past decade has seen a rise in school boards adopting policies that censor books, squelch anti-racist policies, limit student expression, and step on the rights of LGBTQ students. A new report by School Board Spotlight looks at how widespread that sort of repressive behavior is among Pennsylvania districts.
SBS is a project of the Pipeline Education Fund. According to its website, it “empowers grassroots organizations with information on school board members, districts, and populations served so they know where to focus their efforts around school boards in a strategic and impactful way.” SBS notes that school board members oversee $800 billion in funds and 51 million students. Says the website:
They are the closest policymakers to our students with critical decision-making power on curriculum, school funding, and other academic, legal, and financial issues that affect student lives and public education.
SBS is a response to the rise of repressive school policies that are part of the right-wing culture panic wave that has been sweeping the nation since the days of the COVID shutdowns. From Chris Rufos’s ginned up panic about Critical Race Theory through outrage over DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) policies, and with constant bigoted background noise about LGBTQ persons, school boards have been trying to impose a set of exclusionary cultural rules on schools, students, and teachers under a banner of “parental rights.” In Pennsylvania, there’s even a legal shop – the Independence Law Center – that exists just to help school boards craft policies that impose a conservative straight white heterosexual Christianist world view while banning books and voices that might dissent. Because when the culture warriors say “parental rights,” what they really mean is only certain parents.
SBS notes school districts across the country that have taken part in this culture panic wave, and they have also done deep dives into two states. One is Florida, which could be expected to lead the pack in all of these initiatives, but the other is Pennsylvania.
“Partisan school board members are implementing dangerous agendas across the Commonwealth that are directly at odds with the best interests of Pennsylvania students and parents,” said Denise Feriozzi, Executive Director of the Pipeline Education Fund. “The shocking prevalence of these policies across Pennsylvania should concern parents who just want to see their children learn and thrive.”
The analysis was based on 193 of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts and looked at board minutes and policy changes since 2023. The database flags districts for book bans, anti-LGBTQ policies, and censorship.
“Students deserve inclusive schools where they can learn without being subjected to partisan politics or discriminatory practices,” said Kristina Moon, Education Law Center-PA senior attorney. “These policies not only limit educational opportunities but also put vulnerable students, including LGBTQ+ youth, at serious risk. And school leaders need to be aware that both federal and state courts have found schools liable for discriminating against students on the basis of gender identity.”
The Education Law Center is calling attention to the report’s findings and the urgent need for accountability in Pennsylvania’s public schools.
Looking through the database
The Pennsylvania school board database provides 39 highlighted districts and a database searchable by county for looking up schools. The researchers warn that they have only included a representative sample of districts. If your district does not appear there, that doesn’t mean that your board is clear—only that the researchers didn’t get around to you.
Also, the 2023 stop date means that many repressive acts from the years before are not included.
In Bucks County, only two districts made the list, though more could have been included.
Quakertown is on the list for their curriculum censorship. Motivational speaker Dr. Mykee Fowlin was scheduled to present at an optional assembly but that appearance was canceled because some board members felt some of Fowlin’s topics were “controversial.”
The other Bucks County district on the list is Pennridge School District. Pennridge had already elected a right-wing board before 2023. They had trouble telling creationism from science. They banned Banned Books Week. They tried to clamp down on student expression. And they removed DEI policies.
Then in 2023, they hired Jordan Adams, a one-man right-wing education consultant, to scour through their curriculum and remove all things woke. Adams had previously almost been hired by Mom for Liberty Co-founder Bridget Ziegler for her Florida school board. There he made the mistake of giving Ziegler his actual plan on the public record, including his promises to be an extension of the same right-wing movement that got her elected with the intent of reshaping public education. He even offered to use his position to spy for her. That board declined to hire him; Pennridge was not so wise. Adams gave the Pennridge curriculum a right-wing makeover. Then the voters gave the board a makeover.
“These policies not only limit educational opportunities but also put vulnerable students, including LGBTQ+ youth, at serious risk.” – Kristina Moon, Education Law Center-PA Senior Attorney
But their culture panic adventures earned them a three=category warning on the SBS list.
In Montgomery County, Perkiomen Valley made the list for aggressively working to restrict reading materials, including a vague policy that defined material harmful to minors as “Materials that include depictions or representations in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse.” Students staged a huge walkout, but the policy was adopted anyway.
Kutztown Area Schools made the list for cancelling a reading promotion program because a book focused on climate change.
Lancaster County has five districts on the list, including Elizabethtown, Hempfield, Penn Manor, Pequea Valley, and Warwick. Lancaster County has been fertile ground for the Independence Law Center, the legal arm of the Pennsylvania Family Institute (“Our goal is for Pennsylvania to be a place where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished”) and four of these five districts are Independence Law Center clients. In fact, Hempfield was one of the first districts to adopt ILC’s trans student sports ban policy.
The database includes school districts from all across the state.
Mars School District in Butler County makes the list for being part of the 2023 lawsuit against the state’s plan to add Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education to teacher training in the state.
Penncrest School District in Northwest PA was served by a board member who called Black Lives Matter a “hate group” and that books with LGBTQ characters are evil. This was the board member who, in response to a challenge of the board’s new rules on censoring books, responded “I honestly don’t care what the law says.” Penncrest also imposed a trans sports ban.
Of the almost 200 boards that SBS looked into, nearly 40, or 1 in 5, had instituted some sort of bad culture panic policy. These are boards that help underline the importance of paying attention when electing board members, and paying attention to elections is part of the Pipeline Education Fund DNA.
Who are these folks
The Pipeline Education Fund is a part of a trio of organizations created with the Pipeline Fund, a group launched in 2024 to help promote downballot liberal candidates by both recruiting them and connecting them with state and national organizations for funding and support. Its pipeline announces (in all caps) that “the Pipeline Fund leads a robust coalition of over 100 organizations dedicated to ensuring our next generation of leaders is fully supported to run for office; wage effective campaigns; and, once in office, advance progressive policies that address the urgent needs of all Americans.” In Pennsylvania they have worked with LEAD PA, an organization that works to cultivate a “new generation of progressive community and civic leaders” across Pennsylvania.
The group was meant to counterbalance right-wing downballot candidates, like the school board members backed by Moms for Liberty. It was spun off from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a left-leaning dark money fund. According to the New York Times, the Sixteen Thirty Fund is funded by George Soros.
The co-founder and executive director of the Pipeline Fund is Denise Feriozzi. Feriozzi previously worked at the Civitas Public Affairs Group, Emily’s List, and on the campaigns of several Democratic candidates, including Hilary Clinton’s Presidential campaign as Iowa Caucus Field Director.
Is this database useful?
The material that SBS has scraped is neither broad nor deep. Much of the right wing culture panic that they are trying to document started well before 2023 and involved more than the 193 districts that they examined. If you are looking up your own district, you’re unlikely to find anything you didn’t already know, and if you are looking to find trends across the state, this collection may not provide enough dots to connect into a picture.
But for someone who hasn’t yet grasped how widespread the attempts to inject schools with repression, censorship, and a certain narrow religious view, this database might be an eye opener.
INTERVIEW: The Normalization of Book Banning in the United States, With PEN America’s Sabrina Baêta
And if the information motivates someone to run for a school board seat or at least vote more thoughtfully, then that is time well-spent. The story of way too many school boards across the country over the past decade has been voters, after the fact, exclaiming, “Well, I had no idea they were going to do that!”
Getting Democrats to run for local office is one of the main objectives of the Pipeline Fund. For that, this database may be a useful tool.
But there is an ironic epilogue to this project.
As several outlets have reported, this year’s gathering of Moms for Liberty featured a new mission. Rather than continuing to take over local school boards (a goal that seems to have stalled amidst backlash against the far-right Moms), leaders are now encouraging cranky moms to turn their grievances into lawsuits instead of campaign posters.
In the meantime, the Pipeline Fund has said it will expand operations to 21 states, including both blue and red states.
