Democrats who swept Moms For Liberty off school board fight superintendent’s $700,000 exit deal

PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania school board that banned books, Pride flags and transgender athletes dropped a last-minute item in their final meeting before leaving office, hastily awarding a $700,000 exit package to the superintendent who supported their agenda.

But the Democratic majority that swept the conservative Moms For Liberty from office hopes to block the unusual — they say illegal — payout and bring calm to the Central Bucks School District, whose affluent suburbs and rural farms near Philadelphia have been in turmoil since then due to infighting. the 2020 pandemic.

“People are really tired of the embarrassing meetings and the vitriol. They are tired of our district being in the news for the wrong reasons. And … students are aware of what’s going on, especially our LGBTQ students and their friends and allies,” said Karen Smith, a Democrat who won a third term on the board.

The district, which has about 17,000 students in 23 schools, has spent $1.5 million on legal and public relations costs over the past two years amid competing lawsuits, discrimination complaints and investigations, including a pending lawsuit over the suspension of a teacher at an LGBTQ supportive high school. and other marginalized students.

The jostling — and spending — appears likely to continue as Democrats, who won a 6-3 majority in the Nov. 7 election, prepare to challenge the severance package for Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh, which was only introduced the night before. agenda of November 14 was added.

Meanwhile, several voters in the quaint town of Chalfont filed a petition in court Monday to challenge the school board’s election tallies, claiming unspecified “fraud or error.”

Student Lily Freeman, an outspoken critic of the board’s policies on LGBTQ issues, criticized the district’s spending priorities. She called the severance package a bad deal for both students and taxpayers.

“It’s kind of a slap in the face,” the Central Bucks East High School senior said. “Teachers are struggling, and there are a lot of students who are struggling.”

“There are so many resources out there that we could spend that money on,” she said, noting that her school desperately needs better Wi-Fi.

Neither Lucabaugh, who skipped the closing meeting, nor outgoing board chairman Dana Hunter responded to a call for comment. The school board’s attorney, Jeffrey P. Garton, said he was not involved in the severance deal.

“I did not prepare it or provide legal advice on its contents,” Garton said in an email.

Some of the new Democrats tried to warn the outgoing administration that the payout violates a 2012 state law intended to curtail the golden parachutes given to school superintendents, including one that exceeds $900,000. The law now limits severance pay to one year’s salary, along with limited payments for unused sick leave and other benefits.

“The specific circumstances in this case are even more egregious. The board gave Dr. Lucabaugh a 40 percent salary increase (to $315,000) in late July of this year, making him the second-highest paid school district superintendent in Pennsylvania, and is now using that increase, less than four months later, to calculate a severance payment. payment,” attorney Brendan Flynn, who represents them, wrote in a letter distributed to the board before the vote.

Lucabaugh’s package includes more than $300,000 for unused sick, vacation, administrative and personal time during his 18 years in various roles with the district; $50,000 for signing the deal; and health insurance for his family through June.

The package also includes a confusing ban on any district investigation into his tenure and an agreement that he can keep his district-issued laptop as long as he erases it from school records.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage ignored that last provision Friday when he ordered Lucabaugh, a defendant in high school teacher Andrew Burgess’ retaliation lawsuit against the district, to preserve documents that could serve as evidence in the case.

“It’s hard to imagine that a lawyer drafted that contract,” said Witold “Vic” Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which is representing Burgess. “No lawyer would think that a school board could protect an employee from any form of legal action or criminal investigation.”

Freeman, the high school senior, declined to revisit the threats and sense of danger she says she and her family endured when she joined the board over the past two years. However, her powerful public comments at last week’s meeting, posted to TikTok, have racked up thousands of views and comments.

“It was never about protecting children. It was about removing people like me from Central Bucks,” she told the board last week when it voted to let students play on sports teams based on their gender assignment at birth. “You continue to make policy after policy and prevent people like me from living our lives.”

On Monday, Freeman said she is hopeful tensions will ease under the new administration: “I feel like we won’t have to worry about a lot of these things if our needs are met.”