At a Dec. 2 school board meeting, the Pennridge School District revoked its controversial revised Policy 321 (referred to as the Advocacy Policy), which was used to forbid all Pride materials and displays on school grounds, and forbade teachers from certain actions to help LGBTQ+ students. The revocation narrowly passed with a 5-4 vote.
The Advocacy Policy, which replaced the previous Policy 321 (the Political Activity Policy) in 2023, was enacted by the previous Republican-majority board with the help of the Independence Law Center. For the past few years, his radical right-wing firm has been helping conservative school boards throughout Pennsylvania, such as Elizabethtown and West Shore, craft anti-LGBTQ policies.
Democrats regained a slim majority of the Pennridge School District board seats, and for the last year have been attempting to correct the damage inflicted by its Republican predecessors. In the past year, the current board has rescinded an anti-trans bathroom policy, and has revised its library policies, allowing previously banned books to be returned to the shelves.
In addition to revoking the discriminatory Advocacy Policy, the Dec. 2 vote reinstates the previous Political Activity Policy, under which the school allows the presence of Pride materials and as other materials celebrating diversity. Several people, both parents and board members, noted that the previous policy had been in place for years with no problems until conservative Republicans made an issue of it.
The board meeting itself was a surprisingly sedate affair. Usually, school board meetings dealing with LGBTQ+ issues are filled to the brim with contentious parents arguing their different points of view. The Pennridge meeting had far less than a full house, and most of the parents who spoke favored the revocation.
One mother, Stacy Smith, said, “What does it say about our district if we don’t support the most marginalized students?”
Another father, Bill Setina, who supported the revocation, said, “My best teachers taught me to think critically — the exact opposite of indoctrination.”
Most of those who opposed revocation expressed concern that, under the previous policy, students who wished to use alternate pronouns had the option of whether or not to inform their parents. It should be noted that none of these parents expressed any concern over their child’s privacy rights.
Also at the meeting, the board said that it would be looking to revise and expand the school guidelines for dealing with bullying, acknowledging that cyberbullying has increased drastically in recent years and that current policies don’t adequately address the growing problem.