South Western’s elected school board is making some strange decisions.
For the last two years, they’ve fixated on which bathrooms LGBTQ+ kids use. In 2023, officials in this Hanover-area district played musical chairs with school bathrooms in a misguided attempt to appease the loudest bigots among them — ending up with five different types of bathrooms.
After a low-turnout school board election in which several far-right members joined their ranks, they hired a Christian law firm, decided to begin banning books and reopened the bathroom issue. Board President Matthew Gelazela, who was elevated to his post after previously serving as the board’s most vocal bomb-thrower, pointed to Red Lion’s discriminatory policies as something to aspire to.
Now, upon the advice of that law firm — the Harrisburg-based Independence Law Center — the board approved spending $8,700 to cut windows so passersby can look into the so-called “gender-identity” student bathrooms.
Well that’s cool, I like seeing educators this involved.
It helps that I work in community ed, there are 5 people on our entire faculty, so we litteraly all do a little bit of every job there is to do at an education centre.
My payslips look hilarious because I get paid 8 different rates per week depending on what I’m actually doing, admin, custodial, teaching, etc.
But this is the style of chaotic yet whole-ass-in education that drives me. I would quickly burn out at a more structured school-based workplace.