News
Pennsylvania Teachers, Activists Concocted Bogus LGBTQ Bullying Epidemic for Political Gain, Investigation Finds
Backed by the ACLU, Democratic school-board members avenged their political loss by filing bogus civil-rights complaints, according to an extensive probe.
The protests outside Lenape Middle School carried on for four straight days last May.
Young students, some drawn by the lure of free pizza, walked out of their Pennsylvania school to wave rainbow flags and chant, “Hey hey, ho ho, transphobia has got to go” into a bullhorn.
The protesters — not just middle schoolers, but also local adult activists and high-school students — held signs that read “Protect Trans Kids.” They called for “justice” for a Lenape teacher who had been suspended, seemingly for filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on behalf of a bullied transgender student.
Protesters disrupted school. A couple of adult activists who’d helped to organize the protests drove around the school sounding their horns, and jumping curbs to evade the police.
The school’s principal received death threats and profane emails for not opposing board policies the activists disapproved of. “What the f*** is wrong with your heart? You are a vile bitter human and it should be illegal for people like you to work around children,” one read.
Last fall, the American Civil Liberties Union in Pennsylvania filed a federal discrimination complaint against the district for engaging in “illegal discrimination” and for failing to “take reasonable and necessary measures to address persistent and severe bullying and harassment of LGBTQ+ students generally, and gender non-conforming students in particular.” National Review wrote about the ACLU complaint in October.
As a result, the Office for Civil Rights launched four investigations into the district.
The accusations were clear: For years, there has been an epidemic of LGBTQ bullying in the Central Bucks School District and at Lenape Middle School in particular, and district and school leaders have done little to curb it. Lenape social studies teacher Andrew Burgess was wrongfully suspended for filing the civil-rights complaint on behalf of a transgender student. And school leaders then discriminated against LGBTQ kids who protested Burgess’s suspension and district policies around topics like gender transitions and inappropriate library books.
But a detailed and damning new investigative report released Thursday evening reveals that the narrative from the ACLU and Central Bucks activists is based on lies, and that they have intentionally painted a false picture to undermine the school board. The investigation, sanctioned by the board, was conducted by Philadelphia-based law firm, Duane Morris.
According to the firm’s report, there is no epidemic of LGBTQ bullying in Central Bucks or at Lenape Middle School, and when there are accusations of bullying, the district’s leaders promptly address them. The report states that Burgess was not, in fact, disciplined for filing a complaint on behalf of a trans student, but rather for manipulating vulnerable students, and for intentionally hiding serious bullying allegations from school leaders.
And, the investigation found, Burgess, along with some other teachers and activists, and at least one Democratic school-board member, Karen Smith, worked to “manufacture a crisis of supposed unaddressed bullying at Lenape.” They sought to launch federal civil-rights investigations, to garner negative press for the district, and then to use the federal probes and bad press to intimidate board members into changing policies the activists disapprove of.
Those policies, the report states, are matters for elected representatives. “But, having lost the November 2021 School Board election, the new minority attempted to weaponize federal investigatory resources to achieve their aims,” the report states. “In doing so, they exhibited a regrettable callousness.”
National Review has reached out to Burgess for comment.
In a sometimes-contentious special school-board meeting Thursday, LGBTQ activists and opponents of the investigation, speaking before the report was released, called the report a “million-dollar PR stunt” that was “never intended to be impartial.” It is clear, said one activist, that “there is a problem with how LGBTQ+ students in Central Bucks are treated, and how their suffering and obstacles have escalated over the last year-and-a-half or so.”
“I know you are biased against me, against students like me,” a transgender student told board members.
They also attacked the investigators, former federal prosecutors, including Bill McSwain, a former U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania and one-time Republican candidate for governor.
Board Democrats called foul, and said they were opposed to releasing the 147-page report Thursday because they didn’t have time to read it. They received a copy Thursday afternoon.
Michael Rinaldi, one of the investigators, then provided an in-depth, two-hour overview of the report, dissecting the ACLU’s allegations. Democratic board members were infuriated.
Just discussing the allegations, even without naming individual students, put students in danger, said Smith and Mariaum Mahmud, another board member. Mahmud called the presentation a “joke narrative” and “biased.” Republicans on the board said it was the truth.
“It’s not the truth. It’s your truth,” Mahmud said, insisting LGBTQ students “do not feel safe.”
But during his presentation, Rinaldi said the evidence shows “this district puts a high priority on protecting students who allegedly suffer discrimination, bullying or harassment.”
He also addressed the protests, and what the evidence they uncovered showed about them.
“Outsiders descended on Lenape Middle school to disrupt the school’s operation, in defiance of lawful police orders,” Rinaldi said. “And the ACLU was right behind them.”
A Flawed Plan
The efforts by Burgess, a union leader, and the other local activists to undermine the district and the school board were driven by politics, and started on the heels of Republicans winning control of the board with a 6–3 majority in November 2021, according to the report.
During the election, the Democratic school-board candidates campaigned generally on issues involving Covid-19 safety. The Republican candidates, on the other hand, focused more on parental rights involving mask policies and cultural issues, including growing concerns about critical race theory, sexually charged library books, and reports of schools socially transitioning students who claim to be trans without their parents’ knowledge.
After winning election, the Republican-controlled board took a series of actions that have generally been supported by conservative parents nationwide, including: requiring parent permission to change a student’s name and pronouns, allowing community members to challenge library books for inappropriate content, and prohibiting teacher advocacy on political and social issues, which includes prohibiting gay-pride flags in classrooms.
Superintendent Abe Lucabaugh said last year that the flags, “once thought to be a statement of support, are now a flashpoint for controversy and divisiveness in our school buildings.”
The firm’s report described the disputed policies as “reasonable,” and it said that none of the polices is, “on its face or in actual operation, discriminatory against LGBTQ students or employees.”
“In a democracy, these are matters for the people’s elected representatives,” the report states.
But those policies and other district efforts drew the ire of LGBTQ activists. According to the report, Burgess and other activists then engaged in efforts to “derail” the policies.
“Mr. Burgess believed that, if he brought to light widespread unaddressed bullying and harassment of LGBTQ students and convinced a federal agency to investigate such matters, the School Board would cave to the inevitable criticism and bad press — particularly if Mr. Burgess, aided by the press, could convince the public that the School District’s new policies were the actual cause of such bullying and harassment.”
“There was a flaw in this plan, however: there was no such epidemic of anti-LGBTQ bullying and harassment at Lenape Middle School or in District schools more generally.”
According to the report, to generate allegations for a federal civil-rights investigation, Burgess coaxed two students, one of them potentially suicidal, to report accusations of LGBTQ bullying only to him. A transgender student told Burgess that some classmates hit him, threw ice and food at him, threatened to rape him, “deadnamed” him, and told him the name he used was not his “real” name.
Burgess documented the allegations in a secret dossier, but he never alerted school leaders, a violation of Pennsylvania law and the school district’s policy. Even when the school’s principal, Geanine Saullo, emailed the transgender student’s teachers – expressing concern that the student may be “suffering in silence” — Burgess did not disclose the alleged bullying.
When Saullo did learn that the child’s mother had concerns, she reached out and scheduled several sessions for the student with a guidance counselor.
However, when school officials learned of Burgess’s cover-up, he told them the reason that he didn’t report the allegations was that “based on [his] 14 years of working in the District, [he] did not believe that the administration was going to do anything about this information,” according to the report. He told the child’s parent essentially the same thing.
But when questioned by investigators under oath, Burgess couldn’t identify a single instance of reported and unaddressed bullying, discrimination or harassment of an LGBTQ student in the district, which, according to the report, was a “consistent refrain during our investigation.”
“Witness after witness told us that they were unaware of any specific instances of reported and unaddressed bullying or harassment of LGBTQ students,” the report states.
That dereliction of duty, not a civil-rights complaint that Burgess filed on behalf of the transgender student, was the reason he was suspended, according to the report and a letter to Burgess from the district’s human-resources director.
“What the [School District’s] investigation has revealed to date is that a child in your school suffered multiple incidents of bullying by one or more students in your school. Not only were you aware of the situation, but you directed the child and the parents not to report the incidents to the principal, claiming that the administration would not do anything to alleviate the situation,” the HR email read. “Indeed, your actions may have been responsible for the continuation of the bullying suffered by the student.”
According to the investigation, and contrary to the ACLU complaint, Burgess was aware of his duty to report allegations of bullying, and he was well aware of how to utilize the district’s system for writing up students for violations. He wrote up students with “seeming glee” for relatively minor infractions — not closing a laptop fast enough, sharing energy drinks, the report states. In a chatroom conversation with colleagues, he joked about making it “rain” student infractions, and “going for a new PR [personal record] today.”
Yet, Burgess never wrote up any of the transgender student’s alleged bullies.
A Rally of Support
Word of Burgess’s suspension spread, but district policies prevented leaders from publicly discussing an active personnel matter. Students inevitably began filling in the blanks — Burgess, they surmised, must have been disciplined for filing the civil-rights complaint.
Burgess and local LGBTQ activists made no effort to disabuse them of the erroneous belief, and they worked together to promote and support the May protests outside the school. Burgess became something of a martyr in local and national press. Saullo, the principal, was the villain.
In January, the New York Times quoted Burgess in a piece about a record number of civil-rights complaints in the nation’s schools.
“Many educators struggle with a feeling of anxiousness and fear,” he told the Times. “I felt very privileged because I did end up having community members rally to support me.”
Regarding the civil-rights complaint he filed on the student’s behalf, Burgess said, “I was concerned that I would be complicit if I became aware of this information and allowed it to sit.”
Meanwhile, a report in Wired magazine accused Saullo, who threatened to call police on protesters who took photos and videos inside the school, of “terrorizing kids who stood up for a teacher that defended an anti #LGBTQ+ student against bullying.” Left-wing commentator Keith Olbermann took to twitter, writing “LET’S END HER CAREER.”
1) A transgender student is bullied at a suburban Philly school
2) Teacher helps kid
3) Teacher is suspended
4) Students help teacher
5) Principal Geanine Saullo of @CBLenapeMS caught on tape, threatening to call cops on kids
6) LET'S END HER CAREER.
https://t.co/LT2iw9aCR0— Keith Olbermann↙️ (@KeithOlbermann) May 12, 2022
Some of the LGBTQ students who participated in the May protests alleged that they were not allowed to come back to school after they were done protesting, and that they were victims of “discrimination” and “retaliation,” the report states. That allegation was the subject one of the federal civil-rights complaints, but the firm’s investigation found it baseless.
According to the report, Lenape Middle has a modern building-entry system with electronic logs and an intercom system, security measures that are an “unfortunate consequence of school shootings and other violence around the country.”
Student protesters were allowed back in the school, “provided they came to the secure front door of the school building,” the report states, adding that, “to have allowed students to come and go through multiple entry points would have been contrary to the sound interests of school safety and the integrity of the school day.”
Undisclosed Complaints and Poor Judgment
Burgess and outside LGBTQ activists were not alone in the “effort to manufacture a crisis of supposed unaddressed bullying at Lenape,” the report states.
A French teacher, who is the moderator of Lenape’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance club, fed allegations of LGBTQ bullying and harassment to a former Lenape assistant principal, a vocal LGBTQ activist, the report states. The former assistant principal emailed school officials about the allegations, but without specifics, including names of alleged victims and perpetrators.
According to the firm’s report, the teacher “demonstrated poor judgment in gathering information, for someone unaffiliated with the School District, about alleged bullying and harassment and then relying on that person to make a report.”
According to the investigation, Smith, one of three current Democratic Central Bucks school-board members, also was involved in efforts to subject to the district to a federal investigation. According to the report, investigators with the firm discovered a July 11, 2022, email from Smith to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Catherine Lhamon, the head of the Department of Education’s civil-rights office, complaining about Burgess’s discipline, the removal of pride flags, and a then-proposed library policy. In the email, she complained that she has been outvoted by a “majority of our school board members,” and requested “any support [the Office of Civil Rights] is able to give me in fighting these issues.”
Within weeks, the civil-rights division launched its investigations into the district, including an investigation citing the same complaints Smith had made, the report states. Smith did not disclose that she had filed a complaint against the district, even during the November meeting when board members authorized the Duane Morris law firm to investigate the allegations. Smith voted against launching the local investigation.
“I can’t approve spending what is likely to be tens of thousands of additional taxpayer funds to defend this legal action which so easily could have been avoided,” she said at the time.
“At a minimum, Ms. Smith should have been honest with the Board and the public. She was not,” the report states. “She refused to accept the results of the election and instead surreptitiously instigated a costly federal investigation of the School District, while at the same time chastising the majority members of the Board for investigating the federal allegations.”
Smith said Thursday that she never received a response to her complaint letter.
During the five-month investigation, Duane Morris investigators interviewed 45 witnesses, reviewed over 123,000 pages of documents, and reached out to LGBTQ students and their parents.
“In most of the District’s schools, LGBTQ-related bullying is virtually nonexistent,” the report states. “Where it does exist, it is not pervasive and, in any event, is swiftly and appropriately addressed.”
Investigators recommend that Burgess, who was moved to another school, be suspended without pay. “By his conduct, Mr. Burgess has demonstrated that he currently should not be entrusted with the care or education of children,” the report states.
Burgess recently filed a lawsuit against the district and the superintendent, alleging district leaders retaliated against him for supporting an LGBTQ student.
The investigators took issue with the Department of Education’s civil-rights office for failing to alert district officials about alleged bullying, and for refusing to provide them with important information, including the sources of the complaints they received. The investigators also slammed the ACLU of Pennsylvania for heavily redacting their complaint regarding allegations made by LGBTQ students, and interfering with the investigators’ efforts to interview students and parents.
The ACLU of Pennsylvania has called the investigation a “sham” and “problematic for many reasons,” including that the investigators “have an obvious bias against the trans and non-binary students who lodged the complaint.”
The @cbsdschools has released its sham investigation into our complaint that the district has created a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ students. This so-called investigation is problematic for many reasons. 🧵 1/7
— ACLU of Pennsylvania (@aclupa) April 21, 2023
Rinaldi said the allegations by the ACLU and the activists have taken a toll on district students and staff. But, he said, the evidence shows that Central Bucks staff are doing things right.
“One of the messages that unfortunately has been spread is that the district doesn’t care about allegations of bullying and harassment,” Rinaldi said. “I think the evidence we showed tonight is, that no, if you make a report, it will be handled promptly and effectively.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with a response from the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.