Candidates talk book bans, district safety
Five seats are up for grabs in November election
East Penn School Board candidates shared their views on everything from book bans to school safety at a Tuesday forum hosted by the Lehigh County League of Women Voters.
Five four-year seats are up for grabs in the November election. Kris DePaolo, Shonta Ford, Jeff Jankowski, Gabrielle Klotz, Joshua Levinson and Matt Mull attended the forum at The Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit in Emmaus. Candidates Paul Barbehenn, Lawrence Huyssen, Tim Kelly and Angelic Schneider did not attend.
Ford, Jankowski, Kelly, Klotz and Levinson are on the Democratic ticket, and they are supported by the group Defend East Penn and its Valley Values PAC. Barbehenn, DePaolo, Huyssen, Mull and Schneider are on the Republican ticket, and they are supported by the PAC Your Voice on the Board.
At the forum, students from Emmaus High School’s Activism Club asked the candidates questions, including one about restricting library materials — a topic that has garnered national and statewide attention.
Candidates from both the Democratic and Republican tickets agreed library materials should be chosen by educators, not school board directors.
Levinson and Jankowski — the current school board president and vice president, respectively — pointed to the board’s recent approval of Policy 109 regarding resource material.
According to the policy, it’s district professional staff who must “provide students with a wide range of materials at varying levels of difficulty, with diversity of appeal and the presentation of different points of view.” The administration is in charge of implementing the policy.
Levinson trusts that the administration knows “best practices,” and said he is not in favor of “book bans.”
“Personal agendas have no place on a school
board,” Jankowski added.
DePaolo and Mull pushed back on claims from the Defend East Penn group and other critics that they support book bans.
“I have no desire to ban books, not at all,” DePaolo said. “I do think there should be age-appropriate books in libraries. I don’t think there should be pornographic materials inside of an elementary school library.”
DePaolo said the appropriateness of books varies when considering the age of students. What is appropriate for a high school student may not be appropriate at the elementary level, he said.
Mull similarly said he doesn’t support book bans and would encourage community input on library selections only in order to bring in more selections for diverse student groups.
Mull, along with his wife and daughter, have read nearly 60 of the American Library Association’s top 100 most banned or challenged books, he said.
Klotz said books that end up on such lists often have LGBT themes or deal with race.
“I think that’s really interesting to think about what is an appropriate book,” she said. “What do you consider appropriate versus what others consider appropriate?”
Library books should be viewed as another way for students to learn about the experiences of peers from different backgrounds, Ford added.
Another topic addressed at the forum was school safety.
Levinson said East Penn’s approach to safety can be broken down into three categories: assessing physical security of buildings, employing discipline personnel to support students, and programming efforts, such as the district’s school therapy dogs. Levinson added the district reviews its practices annually in an audit.
“Safety and security in the district is of paramount importance and is under constant scrutiny,” he said.
Klotz highlighted East Penn’s dean of students positions as a positive strategy to create a safe school climate. These staff members meet with students who have behavioral challenges at the start and end of the school day, she said.
Mull and DePaolo said safety is an area EPSD can improve upon.
After speaking with teachers and staff members on the campaign trail, Mull said educators don’t feel supported by the district. Safety issues are only addressed once the problem escalates, he said.
DePaolo believes the safety issues facing East Penn’s secondary schools are worse than those he recalls from his time as a high school student in the 1990s.
“We didn’t have teachers being threatened verbally, physically, or being assaulted when I went to school,” he said, adding the community needs to work together to “clean this up.”
Ford and Jankowski said the pandemic has caused new behavioral challenges, and mental health initiatives need to be part of holistically addressing student safety in addition to programming and secure buildings.
Ford said the district needs to ask: “What can we do to address some of the anger that we see out of our students post-COVID?”
She noted anxiety and depression are also impacting students.
Throughout the forum, candidates largely agreed on other various topics, such as good governance, the role of the school board and the benefits of technical education.
They also agreed district diversity efforts help prepare students to be working professionals and that facilities updates will be a board priority moving forward.
East Penn launched a feasibility study in 2020 and held facility inquiry team meetings last school year to discuss potential construction options to address student population growth and aging facilities. The district administration will present its research and findings at its Oct. 23 board meeting.