Resisting the "Let's Move On" Pivot

the school board would prefer that you not bother them

We don’t learn. We bounce from crisis to crisis because we never try to figure out why the crisis happens, and why our responses deepen the harm instead of mitigating it. Self-inflicted error arises and gradually sinks away, leaving damage in its wake, and we move on to the next one.

For example.

In December of 2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that officials in that state had implemented mask mandates that they had no legal authority to impose. The decision in Corman v. Beam is not written in stirring language, and makes no bold declarations about truth, freedom, and the American way; it’s a workmanlike examination of statutory language, quite dull to read. Test me on that characterization, if you want. But the court concluded, importantly, that the mandate had been invalid ab initio — not from the moment the court struck it down, but rather from the moment it was issued. Mask mandates had never been enforceable in Pennsylvania.

In an affluent, deep blue community in the Philadelphia suburbs, a lawyer and parent named Chad Williams took the ruling as vindication. With four children in the local schools, he’d been telling school officials — clearly and often — that they had no legal authority to require masks on campus. To say that they hadn’t listened would be an understatement.

In August of 2020, during a Zoom meeting to decide on in-person school for the soon-to-begin school year, the nine-member Unionville-Chadds Ford school board muted Williams when he asked about the legal basis for the choice.

Repeating the performance, school board members cut the microphones and walked out of one of their own subsequent meetings, in August of 2021, to avoid listening to Williams when he didn’t stop speaking at the three-minute mark during their public comment session. Other parents concerned about forced masking for children received a similarly warm reception. The school board voted unanimously that same night to again impose a mask mandate on their campuses for the new school year.

For Williams, the repeated experience was a shock. He was an experienced lawyer, a parent, an established member of the community, and a volunteer coach at the high school — and he couldn’t get anyone to listen to a reasonable question. He asked his school board to explain the legal basis for a new policy, and "the school board president just cut me off." Officials were acting in lockstep, without apparent authority, and refusing to explain their choices. “They just wouldn’t answer,” Williams says. Many of us have had this experience.

The school district finally dropped its mask mandate in March of 2022, after the decision from the state Supreme Court. And that was the end — except for one thing. A formal policy of the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, Policy 906, establishes “a fair and impartial method” for the examination of parent complaints. You can find that policy here, in the section labeled “Community.” The policy is detailed and unambiguous, and starts requiring written reports after the failure of early and informal stages of resolution:

Third Level - If a satisfactory solution is not achieved by discussion with the building principal or immediate supervisor, a conference shall be scheduled with the Superintendent or designee. The principal or supervisor shall provide to the Superintendent or designee a report that includes the specific nature of the complaint, brief statement of relevant facts, how the complainant has been affected adversely, the action requested, and the reasons why such action should be taken or not taken.

Fourth Level - Should the matter not be resolved by the Superintendent or designee or is beyond his/her authority and requires Board action, the Superintendent or designee shall provide the Board with a complete report.

Final Level - After reviewing all information relative to the complaint, the Board shall provide the complainant with its written decision and may grant a hearing before the Board or a committee of the Board.

Williams used Policy 906 to ask the school board to think about what it had done, conducting an independent review of its policy decisions during the pandemic. Why had school officials implemented policies they had no legal authority to impose? Why had they refused to discuss or address parent questions? Why had they stonewalled requests for documents and information — not only from parents, but from a state senator who took an interest in the matter? Williams asked for an apology and “changes in oversight” to prevent a recurrence of unlawful and unexplained policy decisions, using formal school district policy that requires the district to act on complaints.

They haven’t bothered. The Unionville-Chadds Ford School District continues to ignore Williams, not responding to his complaints or opening the inquiry their own policy requires them to pursue. He’s had one sort-of response: In an exchange over the handling of the complaint, the district’s lawyers, at a private law firm, threatened him with legal action — a threat they so far haven’t made good. But from school district officials, the only response to three years of questions is unbroken silence.

In a political conflict with a small-town school board, the social costs start to add up. Other parents have thanked Williams for speaking up, about lockdowns and remote schooling as well as forced masking — in some cases adding that they couldn’t, so they were glad he did. Constantly barraged with messages about fear and danger, many children descended into depression and anxiety, and some parents were glad to see critics of bad policy speaking out. But he’s also heard another sentiment, common to small and affluent communities, about being disruptive and asking too many questions. Facing ostracism and labeling in his own town, Williams had people calling his law firm to demand that they fire him. He’s at a different firm, now, and still demanding that the school district answer his questions. They still won’t.

"We're supposed to be able to redress our grievances,” Williams says, “and there's a process we're supposed to have to do that." But it doesn’t work, unless the people who run the process feel like it. His remedy would be to sue the school district, but then he’d burn his own time and money — and the district would use his tax money to defend themselves against him. "I'm so disillusioned by our system now,” he says.

Chad Williams fights on. He’s written local op-ed pieces, and he’s brought some degree of national attention to a school district that won’t follow its own policies about accountability and transparency. He shouldn’t have to.

But we all shouldn’t have to. The unanimity is always telling: Every member of the school board agreed to impose unlawful mask mandates, and every school official remains silent in the aftermath of that failure. We keep seeing this response at every level of government — ask the Department of Defense what they learned from twenty years in Afghanistan — and we keep watching institutions stagger from failure to failure without learning anything, or trying to learn anything.

How do we break that habit?