Transgender rights, book banning hot topics in Lancaster County … – LNP | LancasterOnline
National political debates over social issues — in particular, the rights of LGBTQ people — drilled down to the school board level in 2022, prompting book bans and transgender student policy discussions.
As school board races take shape in 2023, many of Lancaster County’s 18 school districts will continue to grapple with vocal, divided parent groups. Expect folks motivated by their stances on hot-button social issues to throw their hats into the ring and run for school director.
Looking ahead to the next election cycle, here are five things to watch in school board races around the county.
Transgender policies
In July, Hempfield became the first school district in Pennsylvania to approve a policy requiring student athletes to compete on sports teams that align with their sex at birth, not their gender identity.
Taking their cue from Hempfield, two other districts, Conestoga Valley and Manheim Township, have begun discussing the merits of such a policy, and they likely won’t be the last.
School board candidates in the county are going to be asked where they stand on the rights of trangender students.
Pennsylvania School Boards Association guidance on this topic is far from concrete: “PSBA urges its members to work with transgender students and their families to meet the needs of individual students and provide all students with a safe and supportive school environment. It is essential that public school districts in Pennsylvania stay informed about the evolving legal landscape of students’ rights and be aware of the emerging trend, issuing from court decisions and state agency guidelines.”
School districts nationwide are looking to the federal government for guidance, but that guidance has been slow in coming.
In October, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City upheld an inclusive transgender policy put in place by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference that allows transgender girls to compete alongside other girls in high school sports. But that decision and others like it are not precedent-setting and have been counterbalanced by court losses regarding the broader rights of transgender people.
For instance, another October decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas declared two pieces of federal transgender guidance to be unlawful: one that tried to protect gender-affirming care under the Affordable Care Act, and one that extended protections for gay and transgender workers to workplace policies including dress code, preferred pronouns and choice of bathrooms.
Hempfield
Voters in this district have a lot to chew on.
The tumult caused by adopting an exclusive transgender athletics policy might be only the beginning. Some in the district, including at least one member of the Republican-dominated school board, are concerned the decision could invite lawsuits and threaten federal funding through Title IX, which protects students from discrimination based on sex in school-related programs supported by federal dollars.
A second LGBTQ-specific incident – an administrative shakeup in the wake of a drag show at the high school – ruffled feathers in 2022.
Three high school staff members were placed on administrative leave after the school’s Gay Sexuality Alliance student club held an after-school drag show in April. The drag show was in its third year, but video of the performance went viral on social media, which sparked controversy and drew national media attention.
The district has active parent groups on both sides of these issues, and results of the 2022 general election paint a picture of a district in political flux.
Hempfield moved left in November, with 53.4% of voters in East Hempfield and West Hempfield townships favoring Democrat Josh Shapiro for governor, compared with just 42.5% backing the Donald Trump-endorsed candidate, state Sen. Doug Mastriano.
When the townships chose a chief executive in 2016, those numbers were reversed, with 52.5% favoring Trump for president and 40.8% supporting Hillary Clinton.
Book banning
The American Library Association, which tracks efforts to restrict access to library materials, documented 729 attempts to censor some 1,597 books in 2021, which was the most attempts in the 20 years the association had been tracking the data.
While the number of documented attempts to restrict access to books fell to 681 in the first eight months of 2022, the number of targeted titles increased to 1,651.
Those efforts continue apace in Lancaster County, and school board candidates can expect to be asked how they feel about banning or restricting access to books.
The push to clamp down on books that contain violence, sexuality and LGBTQ themes has been spearheaded by conservative groups such as Warwick Parents for Change, a grassroots organization boasting several hundred members on social media. Leaders of the organization want to remove from public schools all books they believe “debauch and deflower” students.
Warwick, Ephrata Area and Elizabethtown Area school districts have taken steps to flag potentially objectionable content in their libraries and allow parents to restrict their children’s access to that content.
Despite multiple attempts, only one county school district has succeeded in banning a book since 2020: Eastern Lancaster County School District pulled Katie Green’s graphic novel about eating disorders, “Lighter Than My Shadow.”
Balance of power in Manheim Township
Manheim Township is one of the few places in the county where political winds have in recent years shifted power away from Republicans.
In the November general election, Manheim Township and other Lancaster suburbs bucked far-right Republican gubernatorial candidate Mastriano in favor of Shapiro, and Democratic candidates will look to harness the inertia of that left turn.
A majority of seats on the Manheim Township school board are up for reelection.
The seats of President Stephen Grosh, Vice President April Weaver and director Keith Krueger — all Republicans — and Democratic directors Janet Carroll and Joann Hentz will be contested.
Republican directors Michael Landis, Kim Romano and Erin Hoffman, and Democrat Nikki Rivera round out the nine-member board, which translates to 6-3 political advantage for the GOP.
Rivera was among the Democrats (along with ousted directors John Smith and Joyce Stephens) who flipped the school board from red to blue in 2017, in part due to their support for the Manheim Township Middle School project, which has since been completed. The board returned to Republican control in 2021.
Filing deadlines
Candidates who want to run for school board as a Republican or Democrat must file a nomination petition with the county board of elections. Attached to that petition must be a statement of financial interest, which also has to be filed with the school board secretary of the appropriate district. Candidates are required to file their paperwork between Feb. 14 and March 7, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State.
Candidates not associated with the two major parties go through the same process, but with different nomination papers and deadlines. Those papers must be filed between March 8 and Aug. 1.
For more information on becoming a candidate, visit lanc.news/Run_for_office.