A year after Democrats won control of the Pennridge school boardthe new board is moving to repeal a controversial policy that banned staff “advocacy” in classrooms, including Pride flags.

At a meeting earlier this week, the board voted 5-3 along partisan lines to repeal the policy, which was enacted in 2022 under a Republican-majority board. It prohibited staff from pleading “personal beliefs about politics, social, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity” during classrooms.

But the reversal isn’t final: The matter now goes back to the board’s policy committee, where the board’s chairman suggested some changes might be made.

The vote also is not expected to end the dispute in Bucks County, which continues to face criticism for removing books from the library and rules around which transgender students can use them.

“It is painfully obvious that the legacy of extremism is not in the past,” Laura Foster, a Pennridge parent and diversity, equity and inclusion policy advocate, told the board Monday.

Here’s where the Pennridge school board stands on a number of important issues:

Repeal of advocacy policy

Pennridge is one of several districts that swung to Democratic control in last year’s election and has been at the center of culture war battles. But he moves slower than some of his peers, such as Central Bucksby repealing the policies of his predecessors.

Like Central Bucks, however, Pennridge is now ready to withdraw its advocacy policy and revert to its original version, specifying only that staff cannot engage in “political activities” in the school. (That version, which mirrors one in a number of other districts, says the study of politics and discussion of political issues in classrooms is allowed.)

Advocacy bans are “a vague policy,” said Pennridge board president Ron Wurz. Wurz was originally elected as a Republican, but was re-elected last year as a Democrat after disagreeing with the hiring of a curriculum consultant by the former board related to the conservative education movement.

Under the policy, “teachers could be uncomfortable” not knowing how they are allowed to support students, Wurz said.

Arguing that the advocacy policy should be maintained, Republicans expressed concern about the display of Pride flags by teachers. Some board members said teachers who did not have flags displayed were perceived as not providing a “safe space.”

“If we’re going to allow this, we have to allow everything,” including “straight Pride flags,” Republican council member Ricki Chaikin said at a policy committee meeting in early October. Another member, Jordan Blomgren, warned about teachers babysitting — comments that drew pushback from Democrats. “This has nothing to do with advocacy or politics,” said Bradley Merkl-Gump, a Democrat on the council.

During Monday’s council meeting, Blomgren noted that the council received an email from the group Gays Against Groomers asking them to keep the current advocacy policy. (Council Democrats pointed out that Gays Against Groomers has been designated an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for “dehumanizing anti-trans rhetoric.”)

In the move to reinstate the district’s former policy that only prohibits political activity, Wurz, in an interview, said the board may revise it to include religious advocacy. Some Republican board members expressed concern that the teachers had made anti-Christian statements.

More card removals

The current board has already repealed the library’s Republican-favored book policy that banned “sexualized content.” But some in the community have expressed frustration that books are still being pulled from library shelves.

The district announced earlier this fall that its high school librarian reviewed 22 books pulled from library shelves during the 2022-23 school year — eliminations that were not publicly announced at the timebut administrators admitted they were in response to banning sexualized content.

While the librarian determined that six of those books should be returned to the libraryshe eliminated 14 others and sent two for review by a review board.

The district also pulled 11 other books and graphic novel series from library shelves based on challenges sent this school year — some as a result of the old policy banning sexualized content. But others were removed and deemed inappropriate under the new policy adopted in September by the Democratic Council.

At the policy committee meeting in October, Leah Foster Rash, a Democrat on the board, said she was concerned the book removals were “out of touch” with what students want to read and that the district could miss opportunities to spark interest the children. .

“These are the books that our librarians feel are not age appropriate for our students,” Wurz said at Monday’s school board meeting, providing an update on the board’s progress toward policy changes. He said “now is the time to let our professionals handle any future issues.”

Bathroom policy

The council also faces criticism over its bathroom policy. While the Democrats repealed the previous board the policy that required students and staff to use the bathrooms according to their sex rather than gender identity, they replaced it with regulations that distinguished between bathrooms for “biologically” male or female students and others for students who identified as male or female.

This distinction is still discriminatory, appropriately a federal complaint which accuses Pennridge of creating a hostile environment for black students and LGBTQ students. The complaint was originally filed in November 2023, but updated in August with new allegations.

Foster, co-founder of the RIDGE Network, one of the groups that filed the complaint, noted Monday that queer students “experience restricted bathroom access”; critics say confining transgender students to “gender identity” or single-use bathrooms may force them to come out alone. She called on the board to address an ongoing “climate of racism, homophobia and transphobia” in the district.

Wurz told community members Monday that “there will be trade-offs.” In an interview, he rejected the claim by some that the council was “caving to the right”.

“Most people believe that solutions should be approached from a balanced approach,” he said.