I'm done being gaslighted: Why I decided to speak out

As you may have read on my intro page, I have a long history of being involved in CASD. Very little of my involvement has taken place in the public eye. I've attended board meetings for years, provided feedback at board "work sessions" (committee meetings in today's environment), emailed and spoken personally to board members, and even gathered data and provided analysis to help the board members make decisions. The board members and I did not always agree on everything, but my input was considered and valued by many board members while I've been involved.

When Dr. Taschner arrived in 2014, I read the articles about her tenure at Susquehanna Township with some concern. But I attended her town hall meetings and saw a good and caring person who seemed excited about coming to CASD and helping move our district forward after the challenges presented under Como's tenure. I was 100% on board with giving her a chance to be successful, and thought she was going to put her best effort forward. She talked about putting teachers and students at a critical part of the feedback loop of school improvement, saying, "I'm interested in what teachers have to say because the two most important people in the district are students and teachers...and the rest of us are support for those two people."

Early on, when problems began, some people in the community wanted to run to the media as a first step. I discouraged this and instead followed proper channels - talking to principals, district administrators, the superintendent, and sometimes even the board members. Over time, I began to realize this was an effective way to be heard, but it was NOT an effective way to enact change.

When the board added an approval item to the agenda to renew the superintendent's contract for 5 years, several months before required, I spoke to the board president -possibly close to three hours if my recollection is correct. I talked about the negative appearance of adding this to the agenda without first going through the normal process (reviewing and discussing at committee and then approving at a full board meeting two weeks later). I encouraged the board to consider a three-year renewal instead of five. Despite supposedly respecting my knowledge and opinion, and being willing to discuss the topic with me at length, the board president kept the agenda and voted in favor of the 5-year renewal without adequate opportunity for the pubic and/ or staff to weigh in.

When Cathy VanVooren resigned in August of 2016, somewhat publicly, sending an email to share her concerns, Dr. Taschner mischaracterized her words in the press. While Mrs. VanVooren had noted her reasons for leaving as follows, "the current political climate and the tension that exists in the relationship between the administration and many members of the School Board have led me to this decision," Dr. Taschner said in the press that the board Mrs. VanVooren was referring to had been voted out the prior November.

This defied logic, and in fact was immediately rejected when I spoke to Mrs. VanVooren about her departure. I said so in a comment on the Daily Local News website, prompting a personal phone call from a board member, telling me that I was wrong and urging me to delete or retract my comment. This board member believed, because of an exit interview they were told about with Mrs. VanVooren, that Dr. Taschner had correctly characterized her departure. Even when I urged this board member to speak to Mrs. VanVooren and shared my understanding that Principals were unhappy and frustrated, the board member stuck to their original beliefs and took no further action.

When a parent came to the Reeceville PTA in 2016 with serious concerns about building conditions, evidence of a possible mold problem, and copies of health department reports that showed the district had failed inspection multiple times, I encouraged intermediate steps. I thought it would be best if the district shared the building issues with the public, rather than it coming from parents. This parent had already engaged with Dr. Taschner at length and was frustrated that nothing had been done and her child continued to struggle with health problems.

 After the close of the PTA meeting, parents in attendance agreed to jointly write a "concerned parent" letter to Dr. Taschner, urging her to notify the Reeceville parents and staff of the building issues and how they would be addressed. We sent the letter and gave her 7 days to distribute a communication. After these days went by with no communication, we were told she would have it out by end of day on Friday. Friday came and went with no communication. So on November 12, I posted the open letter on social media, as did others.

On Monday, the district followed up with its own communication, stating that mold was re-mediated before school started and the roof did not leak. The documents we had in hand proved that mold was not re-mediated, but to confirm, I requested a Right to Know for the work agreement with Johnson Controls, the group that supposedly did the remediation. The response back was that this document did not exist. Despite our proof, Dr. Taschner's message to the public was that the problem didn't exist, or had been handled appropriately. And it was only after our post to social media that her promised letter to the parents was released.

In 2018, a good friend told me her son was involved in a research project on CPM and wanted to present his findings to the school board. I gave her, and him, some advice and direction, and attended the meeting with interest to hear the speeches he and other students prepared. Following their thoughtful and careful analysis and articulate presentations, I watched to see how the board and district would react.

What I heard about was shocking. Teachers were investigated for their potential role in the student speeches, and some students were left in tears thinking they had brought trouble on their teachers. Math teachers were asked to submit lesson plans for the last three days of school and were observed because, as one administrator put it, "when kids say teachers aren't teaching, we need to investigate." I was there for the student speeches (the intermediate school administrators were not in attendance that evening), and the speeches were about the CPM curriculum. I spoke to the intermediate high school principal, where these students attended, and made sure he understood the context of their remarks. I followed up with an email to the board members. One of them wrote me back implying that I was mistaken when I heard the interpretation noted above - that teachers weren't teaching. However, this was the exact characterization I heard first hand from an administrator, and that this same board member was reported as sharing with others (despite telling me it was incorrect).

During this same school year, I served on the district's Charter Commission as a parent representative. Our team was charged with identifying and investigating the reasons that parents pull their children from the district and enroll them in charter schools. As someone who had done extensive analysis on enrollment data, I was excited to serve in this capacity. Our first two meetings, led by building principals and Jason Palaia, were extremely effective. Parent voices were heard and recorded, and we identified discipline and special education as the two main reasons that parents leave. We then dug deep to identify root cause for these two issues. The notes from the first session were distributed to the committee, but we never saw the notes from the second session.

After that session, multiple "Directors" started attending the meetings (including Dr. Donahue), and guided the committee towards planning a Charter School Summit - essentially a publicity event to try to attract students to the district. None of the focus was on identifying root cause, and several sessions even involved presentations trying to tell us that our ideas were wrong - including on from the Director of Special Education on Inclusion. This is only one frustrating experience where I tried to make change from the inside by serving on committees only to find the agenda of those inside the district was being moved forward regardless of feedback from the community.

A vocal minority of people ask "why are you so negative?" and criticize our team and myself for posting negative information on social media. I'd like to set the record straight. We are posting the truth, and the reason we are posting the truth is because there is literally no other way to get the truth acknowledged and dealt with. I've wasted too many years bringing things through proper channels and being dismissed, ignored, or contradicted even when the evidence is supporting what I am saying. By making that evidence public, it becomes much harder for Dr. Taschner and her staff to sweep these issues under the rug.

I can't tell you how many messages, emails, and personal conversations I've had since we started the blog from people who are grateful - grateful their stories are being heard, grateful that someone is finally bringing their truth to light, and hopeful that the truth will finally lead to change. Pretending that everything in the district is positive is not the answer - that's toxic positivity. The best way forward is to acknowledge what isn't working so that we can change and fix problems as a way to move forward to a better tomorrow. If the people leading this district want to continue to sweep problems under the rug and give lip service to engagement and feedback from the community, then I would offer that it's time for them to move on. There is too much good in Coatesville to have the things that are hurting us continue to hold us back. Let's bring our truth into the light and let it lead us to a brighter tomorrow.

Written By: Liz Muirhead