District Prepares for Coronavirus, Parents Deplore Book Removals

SRS parent Michael Raffaele presents Wallingford-Swarthmore School Board members with free copies of two of the three books temporarily removed from a fifth-grade classroom in February.

Approximately 50 people attended Monday night’s Wallingford-Swarthmore School Board meeting. That in itself is news. Ordinarily only a handful of people — if that — attend the meetings.

But these are not ordinary times.

As if to highlight that, board president David Grande emended usual procedure to open the meeting with a statement. Over the past week, he said, the community had been dealing with a number of challenges — coronavirus, field trip anxieties, questions about sleep and school start times, and concerns over what the district is doing around diversity and inclusion. Many people had been in touch with the board about these and other issues, Grande said. “I want to make sure everyone knows that we receive your messages and read each and every one of them.”

Tough Call on Field Trips

Perhaps the most immediate issue facing the board is whether to cancel a series of upcoming student field trips due to concerns about the COVID-19 outbreak. The trips in question include the biennial Strath Haven High School marching band trip to Orlando, Florida, scheduled for March 21-24, which involves 238 students and numerous staff and chaperones. Other upcoming trips include a Strath Haven Middle School exchange to Germany in May, involving 17 students, and a Nether Providence Elementary School fifth grade trip to Williamsburg, also in May, involving approximately 100 students.

The board decided to postpone its decision until a special meeting on Thursday evening, March 12, at 7 p.m. They hope to hear from more members of the community before making a final decision. Thus far, they have heard from only a handful of families, mostly urging that the trips be cancelled. “This is one of those decisions where we’re going to have people upset no matter what,” said board member Damon Orsetti.

The board invited the public to email them at board@wssd.org.

Perspectives and Planning: COVID-19

Dr. Carolyn Cannuscio, a social epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, addressed the board via teleconference to offer her view on the new coronavirus outbreak and what steps people and institutions — like schools — should take. 

Cannuscio explained that, because so little is known about the virus, the best way to protect people is to use public health strategies like social distancing. This includes avoiding large gatherings and limiting travel. She suggested people focus on three elements: protecting their own families, protecting vulnerable populations in their own communities (like the sick and elderly), and avoiding infecting other communities. “Travel in particular presents a real challenge,” she said.

In order to prevent our health care system from being overwhelmed, Cannuscio stressed, “It’s important to try to act early and change our behavior now.”

WSSD Superintendent Lisa Palmer said she was in daily communication with Delaware County officials, other school district superintendents, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and others to evaluate the quickly changing situation. As of the Monday school board meeting, the decision had been made to keep schools open. Palmer emphasized that the few confirmed local cases of COVID-19 came from direct contact with individuals infected elsewhere, rather than from so-called community spread. She acknowledged that could change at any time. “I remain committed to sending information out to parents,” she said.

Passionate Pleas for Inclusion

Personal stories of teasing and discrimination, emotional calls for care and inclusion, and statistics about depression and suicidal thinking among LGBTQ+ kids filled the library at Strath Haven Middle School during the public comment section of the meeting. Most of the audience had come to express concern about books on LGBTQ+ subjects having been temporarily removed from a fifth grade classroom at Swarthmore Rutledge School. 

In late February, the parent of a child in that classroom complained about the presence of a children’s novel — “George,” by Alex Gino, about a transgender girl — in the classroom library. The administration then removed the book, along with two others with LGBTQ characters, from the classroom, although copies remained available in the school library. This led to calls from other parents for the books’ return, an explanation for their removal, and a pledge to do better by LGBTQ+ kids and families in the school. 

On March 4, Principal Angela Tuck wrote an email to the SRS community stating that the school “fully embraces the identities of our student body.” She offered some explanation as to why the books were removed: “Our students are at different levels of readiness as well as of maturity.” In addition, she wrote, the school’s goal is “not to take away the parents’ right to say when their child is developmentally ready.”

This response drew the ire of some parents who wrote, in an open letter to the community, “The censoring of LGBTQ+ books from our children’s classroom as ‘mature’ … because of their LGBTQ+ content alone, stigmatizes LGBTQ+ youth and their families.” 

The books were returned after three weeks. Director of Secondary Education Denise Citarelli Jones reviewed them and determined they were “acceptable novels for the fifth grade classroom,” according to an email she wrote to one of the concerned parents, Michael Raffaele. She reported that new procedures are being designed for acquiring classroom library novels in the future. “These procedures will have many steps involved, including an appeal process with a group representing diverse perspectives, so that we do not have one person making a decision on acceptable . . . materials.”

Many parents, however, worried that removing the books at all had caused harm. They also had unanswered questions about the new procedures, including how transparent they will be and who will implement them.

At the Monday night meeting, elementary school students, lesbian mothers, a transgender high school student, and others took turns stepping to the microphone to tell the board about their experiences.

Jill Fenton, the mother of a student at SRS, asked, “What good does it do to have books in the library or classroom that embrace gender diversity, gender nonconformity, gender fluidity or sexual orientation when a young girl, whose appearance doesn’t match some bogus stereotype of femininity, gets teased every day for looking ‘like a boy’ — and often within earshot of her teacher, who misses an opportunity for a teachable moment?”

Melissa Kennedy, the mother of a transgender son at the Strath Haven Middle School, said of the books’ subject matter: “These are not ‘mature’ themes. These are books about people like my son, who started questioning his gender at around the age of four or five.”

Two SRS fifth graders, Amelia Gallo and Nate Mitchell, jointly read a statement which said, “[We] feel strongly about keeping these books. One reason is that some of [our] best friends who go to SRS are part of the LGBTQ+ community.”

After everyone who wanted to speak had an opportunity, board president Grande thanked them. He especially recognized the children for “having the courage to go to the podium.” He said the board was looking at the issue seriously and that he hoped to soon hold a meeting focused on the topic.

School and Sleep: Options Narrow

The focus topic for the board meeting was a report from Strath Haven Middle School Assistant Principal Steve Krall about the work of the district’s task force on sleep and school start times. In the wake of an October 2019 report on sleep deprivation in adolescents, issued by the Pennsylvania’s Joint State Government Commission, the task force was charged with examining various ideas for implementing a later start at Strath Haven High School. The work has not been easy.

The task force has tried to balance the desire to keep block scheduling at the high school, needs of student athletes, the importance of the music program, coordination with vocational education, bus schedules, state requirements for minimum instructional minutes, and more. Of 46 initial ideas, Krall reported, none was workable. Eventually the task force realized that transportation is key to the solution, which means shifting the start times of the middle and elementary schools too. 

The task force then developed three proposals, all with benefits and challenges. In two of the scenarios, elementary school start times are moved significantly earlier. Two scenarios have middle school start times moving later along with high school start times. All scenarios require more buses, which means more money.

A fourth option would be to leave school schedules as they are.

Krall said the next step was to gather community input. Information about the task force’s work can be found at swat.ink/sleep-and-school. Comments can be emailed to schoolstarttime@wssd.org.

No changes would be made until the 2021-22 school year. 

View this or any other school board meeting. 

A special school board meeting to discuss possible field trip cancellations will be held Thursday, March 12, at 7 p.m., in the Strath Haven Middle School library.

The next regularly scheduled meeting will be Monday, March 23, at 7 p.m., in the Strath Haven Middle School library.