Cumberland Valley leaders contradict school board bosses: Pancholy’s ‘assembly should have been allowed’
CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — In a rarely-seen act of solidarity with their subordinates and contradicting their bosses, the Cumberland Valley School District’s superintendent and nine other top leaders told school-level administrators, teachers and staff the assembly canceled earlier this week “should have been allowed.”
Mark Blanchard, the superintendent, and a group of assistant superintendents and district-level directors of technology, curriculum, legal affairs, human resources, student services and special education left no doubt — in a letter signed by all of them Thursday and seen by abc27 News — about their feelings.
“The purpose of this letter is to express to you directly the disappointment felt by the district’s cabinet-level administration in the board’s decision to introduce and subsequently approve unanimously a motion on April 15, 2024, to cancel the visit of Mr. Maulik Pancholy to Mountain View Middle School on May 22, 2024,” the 10 leaders said.
They said the move “had significant ramifications for our school community, especially for our students and staff who are members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
“While the issue of ‘political activism’ was cited, statements made publicly by individual board members identified Mr. Pancholy’s sexual identity as a factor, an identity shared by many members of our school community,” the leaders wrote. “In doing so, Mr. Pancholy’s personhood was reduced to a single aspect, and his ability to communicate a message of anti-bullying and hate was discredited.”
Earlier Thursday, Pancholy spoke for the first time about the controversy, saying he “wonder[ed] why a school board is so afraid of” his message. Pancholy, who is Asian-American and gay, has written two fiction books and is writing a third based loosely on his personal experiences of being bullied as a child.
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“While we are in the midst of a challenging season, we are confident that our continued efforts can and will enable us to work through this together,” the letter from the district administrators concluded.
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