Jeneal Hobbs can rattle off the stories her children tell her about their days in the Pennridge School District: the white student holding cotton and yelling in the hallway, “Hey everyone, I’m Black.” A school bus accident in which the police were called and a white child told one of Hobbs’ daughters, “Make sure the cops don’t shoot you.”
A white classmate of her younger daughter, a second grader, said while talking about Black Lives Matter: “I only like good Black people, not bad Black people.” (Another parent said the school addressed the comment with a lesson on kindness, but without mentioning racism.)
Like a number of Black parents in the predominantly white Bucks County district, Hobbs had been hopeful that a district initiative focused on diversity, equity and inclusion would help educate children about racism, create a more tolerant environment for all students, and empower teachers to better respond to episodes such as those their children have faced.
School districts around the Philadelphia region have been taking similar steps — from rethinking curriculums to ensure they reflect different cultures to hiring administrators focused on equity and narrowing achievement gaps.
But Pennridge has scrapped its DEI program. After suspending the initiative last summer amid community backlash over whether it was needed — and complaints that the effort was painting the entire district as racist — the school board announced recently that a committee formed to reevaluate the program would no longer meet.
Equity efforts are seen as vital by many schools and educators — regardless of how many students of color populate their district. All children, they say, need the cultural competency to succeed in a society that may not resemble where they grew up.
“This is not just germane to communities that are diverse. It’s sometimes even more important in communities that aren’t,” said Charles Lentz, superintendent of the New Hope-Solebury School District in Bucks County, a largely white district that has audited its curriculum and launched an equity committee to suggest changes.
But such initiatives have faced new challenges as conservatives target public schools as a culture-war battleground — even more so the further from the rallying call of George Floyd’s death two years ago.
“Pennridge is not the only one that’s retrenching” on diversity and equity work, said Robert Jarvis, the former director of the nearly 20-year-old Coalition for Educational Equity at the University of Pennsylvania, which counts more than half of school districts in the four collar counties as members of a consortium it leads promoting equity in schools.
In recent weeks, Jarvis said he has spoken with some schools that have put DEI efforts “on the back burner” — at least publicly — in response to pushback.
And there’s historically been less buy-in in Bucks County, Jarvis said, noting the area’s more conservative demographics.
In Pennridge, where Republicans swept the recent school board elections, parents like Hobbs see the dismantling of the DEI effort as a refusal to acknowledge the racism they’ve experienced.
“The school really doesn’t have the tools to deal with it,” Hobbs said. She recently decided to send her children to private school next year.
The roots of the district’s DEI initiative go back to the introduction of social-emotional learning programs a handful of years ago, and progressed in 2018 with professional development. Eventually, a district DEI team expanded to include some community members in 2020.
Among them was Adrienne King, who had been pressing the district — where only 2% of the 6,800 students are Black, and nearly 83% are white — on its diversity, equity and inclusion plans for years.
Within six months of their oldest starting first grade came the first remark about the color of her skin; by third grade, there was a two-week period during which, King said, “every other day” her daughter was the subject of some racial comment, including “You’re Black, you must be a slave.”
“I kept going to the district: ‘What are you going to do?’” King said.
The district invited a group of parents and students to work on a DEI guidebook. Plans included implementing a “culturally responsive” curriculum, requiring staff to participate in at least one DEI training session a year, and surveying students about their sense of belonging.
“That’s when everything sort of exploded,” King said.
During a school board committee meeting last June that featured a presentation on the DEI work, Joan Cullen — then the board’s vice president — voiced concerns that had been rippling across conservative media and parent groups online.
“Microaggressions, implicit bias, white privilege, equity of outcomes,” Cullen said. “These are all things that are discussed in critical race theory” — an academic framework analyzing racism as embedded in institutions that had become a national flashpoint.
Cullen questioned where the “different perspectives” were, listing a number of Black conservatives, including U.S. Sen. Tim Scott and radio host Larry Elder, who “have been very vocal about CRT and the different names it goes by.”
During public comment, one woman, complaining the district had described social justice “as a core value” in an April 2020 initiative, said: “So, we’re teaching rioting?”
Another said parents were “blindsided” that 50 teachers had participated in a book club reading of White Fragility: “Do you want our teachers looking at our students — ‘Oh, you’re white, you must be racist’?” (The district’s superintendent, David Bolton, noted that club was one of possibly “hundreds” that teachers had participated in that year, adding, “These are adults coming together for professional development. This is not curriculum work.”)
The pushback might have been predictable: Cullen had drawn attention in the weeks following George Floyd’s murder for sharing a tweet that systemic racism didn’t exist, prompting calls for her resignation. (She again faced demands to step down after attending the Jan. 6 rally at the Capitol.)
But Laura Lomax, who had been hired by the district as a consultant to help create the DEI plan, hadn’t expected the opposition.
“They just totally ripped it apart,” Lomax said. “They said it was created in a basement in secret, it was harmful to children … that I was being a racist, because of trying to teach understanding.”
Lomax, who is Black, attended Pennridge schools in the 1960s. She doesn’t think that it’s a bad community.
But the “fear-mongering” that Pennridge was trying to teach that “white people are bad, Black people are victims” was potent, Lomax said. She had done similar work in other Bucks County districts a few years earlier that was well-received.
A version of history that lays bare deep-seated inequities may be new for some people, and hard to accept, Lomax said, “but it’s not new to us.”
She noted that race has never been easy to talk about, “Black people included.” And the “campaign of words” around critical race theory has added to that dynamic.
“Even the words ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ have been soiled,” she said.
As the summer continued, a group called Pennridge for Educational Liberty organized on social media and turned out at board meetings, arguing that their voices had been left out and objecting to resources the DEI team had posted online.
“What is really the goal: improve academics, or push social justice and disrupt systems of power, oppression, and whiteness?” asked David Bedillion, an organizer of the new group, at an August school board meeting. Bedillion declined to comment for this article.
His mother, Kim Bedillion — the president of the Pennridge GOP, which didn’t respond to requests to connect with Bedillion for comment — told board members that she had reviewed proposed English curriculum changes and found that “the concept of oppression, particularly racial oppression, is overwhelming and out of balance,” citing James Baldwin’s Autobiographical Notes and a TED talk about racial imbalance in the criminal justice system, among other content.
Other members of the public who spoke shared their views on racism. A white woman said that “being called fat or ugly hurts just as much as a racial slur.”
There were also objections to an elementary school bulletin board honoring Pride Month, though Bolton, the superintendent, said “nothing in our curriculum speaks to LGTBQ in any way.”
Cullen, the board member, said she was concerned that “we’re not really respecting people of traditional faith and values,” and that public schools were veering too far into activism. She suggested the district might need to “start back from the beginning.”
At a school board meeting later that month that drew hundreds, the board’s then-president, Bill Krause, said it was “increasingly clear to me that we have made some missteps” in the DEI initiative. He announced a new committee to review the district’s mission statement, and said three board members — Cullen among them — would be part of the effort.
Cullen then called for a vote to pause all DEI work.
“This has not been the district’s recommendation,” Bolton said. The board approved Cullen’s motion, 6-1.
The board’s vote was condemned by the NAACP of Bucks County. “It is clear that right now, only white children are welcome in Pennridge,” the civil rights organization said, also calling Cullen’s appointment to the new committee “a slap in the face to children of color” and their parents.
But the committee did include supporters of DEI — such as Leah Rash, a parent who had also attended Pennridge schools.
“This has always been a pretty conservative area, but I don’t remember feeling like it was so closed-minded,” said Rash, who is white. She was trying to understand the concerns of DEI opponents and thought there were misconceptions.
The committee held its first meeting in November, less than two weeks after school board elections. Conservative candidates had mixed success across the region, with Democrats in a number of districts defeating challengers who opposed critical race theory and coronavirus school closures.
But in Pennridge, the GOP-backed candidates — running on an openly anti-DEI platform — swept the Democrats. “It was charged,” Rash said. Among the Democrats who lost was Adrienne King, the Black parent who had pushed for DEI; her husband, Donte, was part of the new committee.
From the start, a disconnect was clear between the 20 committee members: Some — such as Rash and Donte King — saw their purpose as restarting DEI. Others, such as Cullen, questioned whether Pennridge needed DEI at all.
Language was also an issue. “We can’t even decide what the ‘E’ stands for, because a lot of us aren’t happy with the ‘equity,’” said Elia Garrison, a parent on the committee.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education defines equity as “every student having access to the resources and rigor they need at the right moment in their education across race, gender, ethnicity, language, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, family background and/or family income.”
Cullen, however, argued that Pennridge shouldn’t be taking its cues on the topic from state organizations — and said that under an equity policy written by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, “every single thing we do, from hiring to professional development, curriculum, discipline of the students, would have to be viewed through the prism of race.”
Rash objected. “It’s evaluating your own bias,” she said.
While equity efforts consider more than just race, “you can’t take race out of the equation,” said Jarvis, the former coalition director at Penn, noting that achievement gaps have long been a driver of the equity work to connect to all student backgrounds. “It’s one of those variables that has historically, unfortunately, defined student success.”
In Pennridge, Black students on average scored 22 percentage points below white students on reading in 2019, and Hispanic students, 18 percentage points below white students, according to a report by Children First, a Philadelphia-based advocacy group that found similar trends across the Philadelphia suburbs. The gaps were slightly larger in math.
“This work has always been perceived as a zero-sum game,” Jarvis said. “Part of that fear is you’re going to take something away from my kid to provide something to ‘those kids.’”
At a meeting the following month, one committee member acknowledged that he had never really understood what equity meant, until he heard this example: Three children looking over a fence, trying to watch a baseball game. One had a good view, but the second, who was shorter, could barely see over the fence, while the third, in a wheelchair, couldn’t see at all.
Equality, as opposed to equity, the man said, would be giving every child a box — but the one in the wheelchair couldn’t get on it, while the taller child didn’t need it.
In other districts, school leaders credit students and young alumni who spoke out in the wake of George Floyd’s murder two years ago with propelling their DEI work.
In New Hope-Solebury, alumni had called on their district to do more to educate students about systemic racism. “They felt they were ill-prepared,” said Lentz, the superintendent. That caused the district “to really think about, how do we do this differently.”
New Hope-Solebury formed an equity committee of students, teachers, administrators and parents, looking at changes it could make immediately — such as using books representative of different cultures — and longer-term initiatives. With a teaching force that is primarily white, and a student population that “increasingly is not,” Lentz said professional development will be key: “How do you make sure they’re better aware of the needs of the community they’re serving?”
New Hope-Solebury’s efforts benefit from a supportive school board, Lentz said — noting that write-in candidates who were “anti-DEI” lost in November’s elections.
In Lower Merion, the district has three committees focused on equity, race and achievement gaps; programs in its high schools for students of color; and cultural proficiency plans for staff. It’s also recruiting for a DEI director, who will be a cabinet-level administrator.
Superintendent Khalid Mumin said the district’s efforts, underway for years, ramped up in response to student participation in the racial justice protests of 2020.
In the largely liberal community, there’s been little pushback. For instance, all K-5 students receive cultural proficiency lessons. Parents are informed and have the ability to opt out, but Mumin said only “five to 10″ did this year.
In Pennridge, the committee ultimately agreed on a mission statement that included the word “equity.” But any consensus was lost by its third meeting in February, which ended up being its last.
As Kim Bedillion, the local GOP chair, made public comments saying the November elections had provided “conclusive evidence” that Pennridge didn’t want DEI, and accusing the Kings of benefiting from promoting a “lie” that the community was racist, the discussion erupted with some people walking out.
On March 21, Cullen, now the school board president, announced at a meeting that the committee would no longer meet.
She said everything the group discussed is already handled by other school board committees or staff — noting that diversity in hiring is an existing goal, and that “we always welcome suggestions” for curriculum. Disparities in achievement are the purview of administrators, she said.
Bolton, the superintendent, declined an interview to discuss DEI, but said in an email that the district provides lessons “regarding character, behavior, and school citizenship,” and “remains committed to its mission to offer the best academics in the most supportive learning environment possible for our students.”
Of concerns listed by Black parents, Bolton said he was “not able to discuss individual student discipline situations, but we take all behavioral incidents seriously.”
Cullen also declined an interview request, but said in an email that the board had “received a good deal of positive feedback from the community” for its approach to DEI, adding that “Pennridge is not alone in going in this direction.” The eight other school board members didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.
After the announcement of the effort’s dissolution, Brittany Ballantine-Brown, who is white, told the school board that her biracial children had faced bias from teachers, and that her son had been called the N-word by students.
“How is something so real to my family and many others like me dismissed so easily, because you have the privilege of it not being an issue in you or your children’s lives?” she asked the board. “Doesn’t that lack of depth or perception … prove the need for something like DEI?”
Some parents have since been trying to organize — thinking that if they can’t persuade school board members, maybe they can win over some in the community by better communicating why DEI matters.
Back in February, “I feel like every single one of our Black-family kids got attacked,” said Ruth Fields, who has two sons in the district. Among other experiences, her second grader was called “Blackey” by a fellow student.
“For you to say we don’t have a problem, or for you to say, the schools are addressing them independently, or for you to do nothing, or for you to not call racism what it is … you’re masking it,” Fields said. “And you’re making the child that has been hurt feel like you’re not acknowledging their pain.
”That trauma continues to happen over and over again.”
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