In 2024, the conservative majority on the West Shore School Board set out to do what many other far-right school boards in Pennsylvania have done. They wanted to quietly install legal counsel who would back their extremist agenda. But this time, they didn’t just catch public attention—they got sued for it. At the center of…
In August 2024, South Western School District’s school board spent $8,700 on bathroom windows. Yet these weren’t normal bathroom windows to the outside. They placed these windows into the walls of only the gender-inclusive restrooms at Emory H. Markle Middle School. Board President Matt Gelazela authorized this action. Gelazela is a conservative and registered Libertarian…
In 2021, the Central York School District made national headlines for all the wrong reasons. Its board was led by a faction that included PA Economic Growth PAC’s current education director and then-Vice President of the board, Veronica Gemma. The district enacted a sweeping ban on a list of over 400 diversity-related educational materials. Many of these resources were books written by or about Black and Brown people. Teachers and staff in Central York compiled the list in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. They intended it to be a resource for classrooms and students. The list included books, articles, and documentaries that addressed racism, civil rights, and equity. It included episodes of Sesame Street as well as biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.