Thursday, June 22, 2023

PA: Penncrest on PBS NewHour (with Penncrest Reader)

Judy Woodruff took a trip to Penncrest school district (right up the road from me) where the culture wars have been raging for a while now. I've been writing about their reading restrictions for a while, part of their attempt to imitate Bucks County and just generally stamp out those "evil" LGBTQ persons and that naughty CRT (whatever it is). 

The report is pretty well balanced. You will note that member David Valesky, who in print comes off like some cranky old fart, is actually more in the Chris Rufo-Corey Deangelis cranky young white guy mold. If you want to read up on the district to go along with the piece, here's the Institute Reader for these folks:

PA: Another CRT Panic Tale

In which an English teacher is denied the opportunity to represent the district as a presenter at an NCTE conference because a board member thought there might be CRT cooties there.

In which two board members become alarmed that there are "totally evil" LGBTQ books in the library, and they decide to Do Something about it.

PA: Penncrest Passes Reading Restrictions

In which the newest version of the reading restrictions pass, because that's what God wants.

PA: Board Member "I don't care what the law says."

In which the board says the law doesn't matter, but they're looking for a good conservative lawyer, anyway.

And here's the Judy Woodruff report, which puts some faces and voices with those names, and captures to some extent how the community wrestles with this stuff.


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