Pennsbury School District’s current path would lead to bankruptcy
For the past three years, I have been attending the Pennsbury School Board meetings with no initial intention of running for one of the director seats. After many meetings, I began to see a pattern of half-truths and misinformation being spoken by the administration. At first, I asked many questions about the DEI program and the person in charge of it, Dr. Cherrissa Gibson, as well as many other facilities issues. The response from the board and superintendent, Dr. Thomas Smith, were not acceptable to me. So, I took it upon myself to understand exactly what DEI was and how it affects the students at Pennsbury by reading many books on the subject, from the perspectives of both sides. I found the Hoover Institution’s Thomas Sowell seemed to have all the best answers on the subject. In summary, Sowell thinks DEI is unnecessary and even harmful to students. Pennsbury, at that point, had already hired a subcontractor on DEI, Dr. Edward Fergus, for several hundred thousand dollars. I asked Smith if I could meet with Dr. Fergus and Gibson and was denied this opportunity.
This program is very divisive and dangerous and must be cancelled. We have spent millions of dollars on this failing program. They are still trying to use DEI, which will cost us millions in lost federal funding, and the taxpayers will have to make up the difference. There is a constant attempt with the current board and administrators to indoctrinate the students into a socialist way of thinking. Politics has no place in the education of our students. School officials need to get back to the fundamentals of education, instead of trying to sway the students toward a leftist agenda.
Soon after this, the school board and administration started pressing hard for the construction of a new high school and demolition of the existing buildings. They purposely kept the anticipated budget for this project below the requirements for a referendum vote by the public. Anyone who is familiar with Pennsbury and Falls Township knows they will have substantial overruns on this project. Recently, a new stadium has been constructed, at an estimated cost of $4,100,00. This project is now $21 million and still incomplete. Local officials seem to be playing games with the numbers to the point of having the entire finance staff quit. The CFO was the highest paid employee of the district, with a pay package worth $300,000 per year. The job was available to the next person in line; they also quit and went somewhere else. These were all very smart and capable professionals. Why would they all leave during the budgeting process for the unaffordable proposed school? It will bankrupt the district if it gets pushed through. The senior citizens of Falls Township, on fixed incomes, will be hardest hit. Some will have to leave their homes due to the higher taxes, over the next five years, projected at a 20-25% increase.
Recently, I went on a tour of Pennsbury’s East and West campuses. I found the buildings solid, clean, and more than adequate for teaching our students well into the future. There are a few repairs and required maintenance to bring the facilities up to par, but this work should have been done over the past five years, had the board actually allocated funds for the necessary work. I believe the Pennsbury administration has neglected these buildings to justify building a new one. We had construction completed at Pennsbury West back in the early 2000s for $40 million and we have been servicing this debt for decades without knocking down any principal. They are now talking about paying it off and soon after, bulldozing it into the ground. If you cannot afford $40 million, how are you going to pay back over $270 million plus interest?
In closing, this upcoming election will be important for the direction in which Pennsbury School District will go: one candidate offering more of the same or one with my business experience and personal history of attending Pennsbury (K-12). I have been a lifelong Falls Township resident and have no plans to ever leave. I encourage you to watch the meetings on pennsburysd.org and make your decision based on the facts, not party lines or emotions. Thank you.
Andrew Dell is a candidate for school director in Pennsbury School District.
