Ep. 61 "How Parental Involvement Can Change a District" - Guest Veronica Gemma (Part 1 of 2)

ADAMS: Welcome to The State of Education with Melvin Adams. I am Melvin Adams, your host, and thank you so much for joining us. 

Our guest today is Veronica Gemma. She is a resident of York County, Pennsylvania. Veronica served on the York County school board during the time of COVID and experienced the challenges that brought to the community, the families, the school leadership.

So today, we’re going to dig into her story a little bit and see what we might be able to learn from it. So, Veronica, welcome to the studio.

GEMMA: Thank you for having me, Melvin.

ADAMS: Awesome. Well, let’s just jump right in. Why don’t we start by you telling us a little more about yourself, your background, your family. Maybe a quick glimpse into your community and kind of wrap up…why you decided to run for school board.

GEMMA: Okay, well, I was born and raised in New York, in a traditional family—Catholic family, a Catholic Irish family, and I grew up there and later left Long Island, and we moved out of state. Moved to Arizona, had our three children. I have an older son and two daughters. Twenty-four is my son and my two daughters are twenty and nineteen.

They are both in college. My twenty-year-old daughter is studying abroad right now in Italy. My youngest daughter is in college out in Utah. They were all athletes, but when we decided to leave Arizona and move back to the East, we ended up here in York County.

At that time I decided to homeschool my children. So for the next ten or so years, I homeschooled the children in classical, academic focus. And it was a roller coaster, but very worth it because I feel that I had an influence in my children’s most important developmental years.

My husband and I teamed together and we became part of this community, homeschooling and creating an environment for them to grow up in without too much outside negative influences. But they were also very involved in community, volunteering, sports. They did a lot of extra curricular with the local community theater. They did play sports with the public school sports teams, so they were very involved in the community, as well.

When they entered middle school and high school, they started showing desire to go to public school. It took us a couple of years to make the decision, but we did. And that’s when I realized what was going on in public school, so I kept a close watch on it. 

Then, after my son graduated—my daughters were in middle school: ninth grade, eighth grade—I decided to run for school board. The president at the time was a huge inspiration to me to get involved in my community. I didn’t like what I saw coming home, I didn’t like the lack of disciplines in the classroom. It was just a lot of red flags based on what I believe education should be for our children, academically—and extra curricula—I wanted to get more involved.

So I decided to run for school board, really not knowing anything about it. Once I decided that, I took the proper steps to get on the ballet. A couple of other candidates came alongside me and sort of mentored me in the process and we won! We flipped three seats, which—

ADAMS: Well, congratulations!

GEMMA: Thank you! Which was a great success, at the time.

ADAMS: Sure, sure. Excellent. Well, you know, York, Pennsylvania—I’m sort of familiar with that area. It’s kind of South-Central Pennsylvania. I would say quite conservative, a lot of Amish in that community, and near that community. Quite generally a conservative community.

So, in that community, what were some of the things you saw? Maybe let’s start with what was the makeup of the board? You said there were three of you that got on together, so how many members were on the  board, what was the general makeup of the board, do you feel like it reflected the community well?

GEMMA: Well, a school board is made up of nine voting members. Then you have the solicitor and the superintendent. At the time, parents—we weren’t engaged. We were just complacent, trusting the public school system, government schools, to basically raise their children.

Again, thankfully, I had mine home in those very important developmental years. So they even saw some red flags. 

So the school board—like I said, was made up of nine voting members—and at the time, it was just rubber stamp school board directors. Whatever the superintendent wanted, they did. They spent way too much money, they didn’t pay attention to curriculum, they were letting the rating and math scores slide. Discipline is a mess in public schools all over the country. 

At the time there were two Republicans or conservatives, if you want to say, and the rest were Democrats on that board. The most conservative was a fellow swim parent; my son swam. And he was a voice, but he was a lone voice, for the most part because the other Republican was more middle. Didn’t really fight much.

When we came in, we were able to unseat three Democrats. Then we became four to five. We didn’t have the majority yet, but the plan was, for 2019, we were going to get the majority. 

So the next election cycle, we ran five candidates, and we won. So then we became an eight to one conservative board. When it was really eight to one a Democrat board, two years prior. So it was a great success.

ADAMS: You said it was kind of rubber stamping—the previous board had basically been rubber stamping everything that was given to them by the superintendent, and others in the system.

Talk to us a little more about that. What were some of the issues that got you and others motivated to try to bring about change on the board? I guess I look at boards as, you know…why do we elect them, anyway, right? So I think it’s to provide good leadership. And good leadership provides good oversight. Talk to us about what was going on, what were the goals of the changes that you, and others, tried to accomplish?

GEMMA: Well, they were raising taxes. The main reason I wanted to get on the board was to have more insight and more oversight of curriculum. And bring in improved curriculum programs relating to reading and math. Those were my goals.

It didn’t seem like—I went to these board meetings prior to being on the board—and it didn’t seem like they ever talked about curriculum. It was all about the dollars. And then they were spending money on a new football field, they spent a million dollars on a new football field and it wasn’t necessary.

Some policy changes that were alarming to include gender identity as far as, you know, no discrimination against. Things like that. And every action meeting board members vote on the topics on the agenda and it’s—the superintendent recommends you to vote on this. The superintendent recommends you to vote on this and every time he really never got any pushback.

There were some conversations here and there, and you would think it was going in the right direction. But at the end of the day when they voted, they voted in favor of what the superintendent wanted.

ADAMS: Let me interrupt with a quick question right there. Just for our audience, a lot of times people think, okay, so why is that? What some people don’t realize is, a lot of times, there’s an attorney that is also engaged with the board. Often representing the association, the school board association, though actually supposedly working for that board.

And often that attorney is the one that says, look, you’ve got to vote this way or that way and here’s why. Was that going on as well?

GEMMA: That does go on, yes. Something I learned being on the school board is: three people run the district. The superintendent, the solicitor—who is the attorney that you’re referring to—and the board president. 

They have the most control. The administrations on the districts tell the school boards only enough, not a full picture of situations, even when it comes to discipline and reading scores. From discipline to reading scores, it’s not the full story. It’s only what they want you to know.

But there are ways around that and that’s something that I started—the path I started to go down. Especially when COVID hit.

ADAMS: Tell us more about that.

GEMMA: So we all kind of just went along with it when we first had the shutdowns. We actually thought we were going to be reopened in two weeks. Obviously, we all know, that never happened.

My daughter happened to be a senior that year, so she didn’t have a graduation or a prom. As many students didn’t have that year, for 2020. It was after a couple of months…school was out, so it was the Summer. Then we were having meetings and it was all about: okay, what do we do? Do we reopen?

I wanted to reopen along with a few other board members. We felt that remote learning was a disaster and it was tragic for our children. They fell behind—even further behind what they already were. Not to mention depression and mental illness issues started to take place.

It came to August, right before school started, that we had long-hours board meetings discussing this. The room was standing room only, with parents—most parents—wanting to open. I felt like I had a really good feel for what the community wanted based on parents contacting me, even some teachers contacting me, telling the honest truth that we need to open.

So we did. And it was predicted that we would be shut down in two weeks but that never happened. The kids had to wear masks—which they really didn’t. But they forced a mandate that was illegal. But we were open, and the kids were getting back.

It was a rough road, it really was a rough road. These children are still suffering from the aftermath of that time.

ADAMS: Okay, so you guys got the schools open and that was a decision of the board, correct?

GEMMA: Yes, it was.

ADAMS: Okay. And then, as you were going forward with that, as I understand it—as you said earlier—you were focused on curriculum issues. And perhaps, particularly, on content…book content and so forth. You know, the racial issues, the sexual orientation-type issues and so forth.

Talk to us a little bit more about what you say going on and what you tried to do about it, what the board was trying to accomplish, and kind of how that whole thing rolled.

GEMMA: Well, most of the board was trying to brush it under the rug. On top of COVID, and the mask mandate, and keeping schools open, we had a diversity committee that the school board really didn’t know much about because it was a committee that was developed by our superintendent without board approval.

Like I said, on top of COVID and keeping schools open, and the mandates, we were also dealing with the Critical Race Theory sneaking into our classrooms. Back then, in Summer of 2020, when our cities were being burned down, the diversity committee took it upon themselves, with the superintendent’s direction, to create an anti-racism curriculum to be implemented as young as kindergarten. All through K-12.

I started hearing a little bit about that, so I started sitting in the diversity committee meetings, because I wanted to be informed about what they were honestly talking about. And sure enough, it was a book list that they were creating that was focused on the Critical Race Theory, concepts of the oppressed versus the oppressor, white privilege, white saviorism. 

Which really kind of broke my heart, too, because—I had a conversation with the superintendent about it, and I said, “Why can’t we just approach this in a different way and empower all of these children to realize that they are created to do great things? And it’s the teacher’s job to help them realize their gifts and their talents starting in kindergarten. Rather than saying you are less than, you deserve this.” And that’s not something they even want to discuss.

ADAMS: Are you talking about the superintendent who didn't want to discuss it? Or was it the committee that was working on these equity issues that didn’t want to discuss it? Or it was just a conflict of ideas, fundamentally, and they didn’t want to go there?

GEMMA: It was their ideology that they didn’t want to adjust.

I think the committee—and, mind you, the committee consisted of people of all colors and teachers and parents and community members that, again, were not approved by the school board. A committee is supposed to be approved by the school board, as well as its members.

The committee probably thought I was crazy. The superintendent was battling that out with me. He basically didn’t allow the committee to join that debate, and I think that it’s so far gone, that they just do not even understand the concept of self-reliance and teaching our children self-reliance. 

It is something that they think that there’s no way that could be taught. Or it’s realistic to think that—I don’t even want to use “color of skin” because I remember back in that time I hated saying “white” and “black.” But it’s almost as if they believe that the black children cannot be taught self-reliance. 

They, instead of, we’re all created equal and we all have these opportunities, and every student that walks through these doors has the same opportunity as the next one. As long as they want to do the work and as long as they’re encouraged and inspired.