At its meeting on Aug. 15, the Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board tabled proposed amendments to Policy 203. According to its president, the board did so out of a concern for fairness and a desire to get things right. That is a remarkable distortion of the truth.

Policy 203 has an interesting history. It was adopted in 2017 and gave the school board the authority to require families to follow validly adopted laws and regulations regarding immunizations and certain disease control measures. In other words, from 2017 until 2021 the school district only had the authority to require families to comply with valid lawspassed by the state General Assembly or the U.S. Congress, even though it behaved otherwise starting in August 2020.

By 2021, just as citizens stripped Gov. Wolf of his self-claimed and oppressively-wielded emergency powers, “the state” coincidentally instructed our supposedly independent school board to adopt amendments to Policy 203 that radically expanded the school board’s authority and would require families to follow not only validly adopted laws but also things like “local guidance,” “board policy” and “board-approved health and safety plans” on matters of fundamental personal liberty like mandatory masking and vaccines. The school board dutifully obliged and unanimously adopted those amendments without any discussion.

As a matter of basic civics, however, public schools can only adopt policies that implement authority expressly granted under the governing statute. Contrary to their behavior over the last two years, school boards don’t have the authority to tell you to do whatever they want you to do. The process of adopting policies takes about two full months and the matter is on the agenda for at least six meetings (three work sessions and three board meetings), which in theory gives the board time to publicly debate things like whether the amendments are necessary and whether the district has the legal authority to enforce the policy as proposed.

Yet, over the six meetings in 2021, the school board devoted less than a minute of public discussion to Policy 203. When the policy was back on the agenda for six meetings in 2022, the board spent less than a minute discussing the scope of their authority or how much power the district should have to determine whether a parent’s religious or deeply held moral/philosophical beliefs are a valid reason to allow that parent to decide what is best for her children. They didn’t think the issue warranted a robust public discussion even though (or maybe precisely because) they used this new authority to deny many religious and moral/philosophical exemptions over the last two years.

When I discovered the shockingly broad authority the school board unlawfully gave itself, I privately demanded that the board explain what statute they believe gives them this broad authority. They never answered. I persistently reminded them that the district was acting without proper legal authority and was harming children in the process. They never responded. After the state Supreme Court reached the same conclusion in December 2021, I again asked the school board to address this matter and to allow me to speak with the district’s solicitor. They still ignored me.

After being stonewalled for two years, I took this issue to two state senators who have oversight responsibility for public schools and for the health and safety of children. In June 2022, one of those senators sent a letter to the district seeking information about the May 2021 amendments to Policy 203. In what was probably just another coincidence, that is the same month the newly proposed amendments to Policy 203 first appeared on the school board’s agenda. Yet, over the next five board meetings, not one school board member or administrator made a single public comment about the controversy over Policy 203 or publicly acknowledged the fact that a state senator was asking questions about it.

On Aug. 4, the district finally responded to the senator but did not answer a single question or provide a single record he requested. Instead, the superintendent and school board president embarrassingly claimed that the reason it took nearly two months to respond was because the letter got lost in the mail. That letter asked questions like: Where does the district believe it has the statutory authority for the 2021 amendments to Policy 203, and what did the Unionville board member mean when he said “the state” told the district it had to amend Policy 203? The district has not answered those questions (or many others) for two years — first from parents in this district and now from the chairman of the Senate Education Committee. Why is that?

Don’t take my word for it, though. If you’re curious, go to the next school board meeting and ask the district if this is true. Ask them if an email they received after the Aug. 8 work session had anything to do with their abrupt decision to “table” amendments that they would have otherwise (unanimously) adopted on Aug. 15.

Unfortunately, they will most likely refuse to publicly discuss this matter, just as they refuse to publicly discuss the misconduct by Patton middle school employees that was exposed through public records earlier this year. If you’re lucky, though, the superintendent will offer to meet with you privately, where he will most likely tell you there is really nothing to worry about. This is Unionville. Just trust them.

Chad Williams
Birmingham Township