Meghan Budden’s family was considering moving if their Pennsylvania school district didn’t change course. She normally isn’t politically active, she said, but felt compelled to volunteer when a slate of Democrats launched bids to take back their school board in Central Bucks School District, just north of Philadelphia.

Central Bucks is well known both statewide and nationally for heated board meetings over masks and Pride flags, policies banning certain books and directives to not use students’ preferred names and pronouns. Accusations of discrimination against LGBTQ students have also led to an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Department of Education.

“I couldn’t have my kids in a school district where these kinds of things were happening,” Budden said.

  • be_excellent_to_each_other
    31•1 year ago

    Local venture capitalist Paul Martino bankrolled the Republican campaigns and donated a majority of their funding — $239,000 of the $279,000-plus total. Martino – whose wife, Aarati Martino, ran for the board as a Republican this year – spent a total of $500,000 on school board races across Pennsylvania in 2021.

    “Martino declined NPR’s requests for comment.”

    Yeah, I bet he did.

    • @Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de
      10•1 year ago

      Our school district is… 1/3 the size, and spent, I would guess at the finance reports I looked at, 1/10th the money (each candidate spending something like $500-1000 for signs and stuff)