10/21/2023
Yesterday The Morning Call published an extensive op-ed from Edward Erickson on the East Penn School Board race. Take a read! The contrast could not be starker.
The candidates we support are:
✅ Bipartisan (3 Democrats & 2 Republicans)
✅ Not supported by extremist groups
✅ Funded by local people, not outside special interests
✅ Experienced in service, education, and compromise
Your View: Take a look at the two East Penn School Board slates. There’s no comparison.
By EDWARD J. ERICKSON | Special to The Morning Call
October 20, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
There are two slates of five candidates each in the upcoming school board elections in the East Penn School District.
There is a pro-education slate composed of Joshua Levinson, Shonta Ford, Jeffrey Jankowski, Timothy Kelly and Gabrielle Klotz, who are supported by Defend East Penn.
They are a bipartisan group, three Democrats and two Republicans, and this is important because partisan political agendas don’t serve our schools well. I believe their approach to leading our school district will be based on pragmatic, nonpartisan, local solutions to school improvement.
The opposing slate is composed of Angelic Schneider, Paul Barbehenn, Kristofer DePaolo, Matt Mull and Lawrence Huyssen, who coordinate and collaborate as Your Voice on the Board.
In the primary elections, 60% of their funding came from outside far-right sources, notably venture capitalist Paul Martino, who donated $5,000 to Your Voice candidates. They are also strongly supported by Moms for Liberty and Restoring Excellence in East Penn Education. Moms for Liberty, which the Southern Poverty Law Center labels an extremist antigovernment organization, support a culture war-driven, partisan approach to retrograde changes in American schools.
The Your Voice candidates also have financial support from many of the same people who have brought chaos to the Central Bucks and Pennridge school districts and who are backing similarly extreme slates in the Parkland and Southern Lehigh school districts. I would characterize the Your Voice slate as advocating a reactive, national-issue board posture based on recreating an imaginary American past.
A Defend East Penn majority board would leverage the improvements that East Penn has achieved since the COVID-19 epidemic by continuing to support administrators, teachers and students. Two candidates already serve on the school board as president and vice president, which is a huge advantage toward ensuring continuity of policy and action.
Most importantly, a Defend East Penn majority would continue to take reasoned consensus-based positions on such issues as banning books, discussing age-appropriate sexuality, commonsense bathrooms, and teaching balanced history by making sure that district policies conform to federal and state school law, as well as simultaneously acknowledging the sensibilities of most East Penn residents. I would characterize the slate as advocating a proactive, local board posture based on envisioning the needs of the future.
A Your Voice majority board would likely open the door to bringing divisive national issues into our schools — censorship, countering diversity, religion and manufactured history. It would polarize residents into adversarial constituencies arguing over inherently divisive single issues. Moreover, this would certainly distract the board with national level issues at the expense of critically important local issues.
The extremist groups supporting Your Voice on the Board advocate ultra-conservative curriculum manipulation, censorship, and countering diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Interestingly, Your Voice on the Board, Moms for Liberty, and REEPE have small public profiles. Lehigh County MFL’s Facebook group is private, while REEPE has no page or website.
We might ask what are Your Voice, Moms for Liberty and REEPE hiding? Go to the Your Voice on the Board and the Defend East Penn websites to see the difference. Notice that other than a place to sign up to help, the Your Voice website has no “contact us” menu, thereby insulating its candidates from interaction with residents.
Residents can easily connect with the Defend East Penn candidates using the contact links provided for their individual websites and on Facebook. The Your Voice page hasn’t had a post by any of their candidates since May 18. By contrast, the Defend East Penn candidates have all made repeated, independent posts since then sharing their views with the community.
Finally, consider the remarkable fact that the Defend East Penn slate endorses Democrats and Republicans. When was the last time you saw that? With that said, don’t be confused by labels.
Due to the results of the primary, the general election ballot is going to show Defend East Penn candidates as all Democrats and Your Voice candidates as all Republicans.
I want a pragmatic, nonpartisan, proactive school board. I do not want a culture war-driven, partisan, reactive school board.
I support the Defend East Penn slate of school board candidates — Levinson, Ford, Jankowski, Kelly and Klotz. I hope that you will too and that you will join me in voting for them Nov. 7.
Edward J. Erickson of Macungie is a retired professor of military history from the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia.
The East Penn school board election presents two very different slates of candidates, as is the case in some other districts as culture wars spill over into local races.
