Pennridge board member has gone too far

I’m disappointed that I have to write this letter to [Pennridge School Board] about the recent activity of Board Member, Joan Cullen. Although we should encourage diversity of opinion, and though board members are not under obligation to selfcensor their social media posts, there comes a point where we must acknowledge that a line has been crossed and action needs to be taken, for the good of the district. We’re past that point now. It’s highly disturbing to see that Joan attended the Trump rally in Washington that culminated on the storming of our Capitol building and the interruption of a sacred democratic process, and proudly posted the pictures, and then equated these sad and tragic events with this summer’s BLM protests. She should know better by now than to posit these false race-based equivalences. She also yesterday retweeted a theory that Italy and Barack Obama had something to do with stealing the election. These posts are now all over social media, again embarrassing the district and making us look like rubes.

This is merely the final straw in a long string of embarrassments. Over the past several years, Ms. Cullen has stated there is no such thing as structural racism or homophobia. She has stated we should question climate science. She has famously implied that our own students were “Marxist truants.” Just a few weeks ago State Rep Todd Polinchock publicly chastised Joan for participating in a “protest” in Harrisburg where staffers were berated and cursed at.

Joan has re-tweeted or amplified: conspiracies from far right fringe figures, holocaust deniers and anti-vaxxers such as Tommy Robinson, Prison Planet, Peter Sweden.

Disturbingly, Joan has also publicly posted that wearing masks to slow the spread of COVID is not necessary because there is “no such thing as asymptomatic spread.” We cannot trust an individual who espouses these dangerous views to be involved in overseeing curriculum.

And now Joan has Pennridge in the news again. How many times must Pennridge be subjected to this? Respectfully I ask that the board censure Ms. Cullen for posting this toxifying nonsense, or somehow publicly distance the District from the truly radical, inflammatory, and hurtful rhetoric that Ms. Cullen seems to not be able to stop broadcasting.