No Evidence Of LGBTQ+ Discrimination: Central Bucks Investigation

DOYLESTOWN, PA — A $1 million independent internal investigation has found no evidence of discrimination or widespread bullying of LGBTQ+ students in the Central Bucks School District.

On Thursday evening, the school board voted 5-3 to release a 147 page report conducted by the Philadelphia-based law firm of Duane Morris, which was retained by the district last fall to investigate allegations of wrongdoing leveled against the district in four complaints sent to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for investigation.

“In this report you will see actual sourced documents and contemporaneous communication. You will be able to see for yourself what people did and said. You’ll be able to understand the data for yourself and draw your own conclusions,” said lead investigator Michael Rinaldi.

The investigation was led by Rinaldi and his partner Bill McSwain, both former federal prosecutors. They were joined by partner Mary Hansen, a former assistant director of enforcement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to Rinaldi, investigators conducted 45 interviews, including employees from each of the district’s 23 schools, parents, LGBTQ+ students and members of the community, and reviewed more than 123,000 pages of documents and electronic records, including correspondence, disciplinary records, policies and procedures, video recordings and photographs, notes and social media.

“The school district's only instruction to us was to investigate and to document the facts,” he said. "The school district did not put any limits on our investigation nor say that any witnesses or documents were off limits."

The investigation focused on four complaints filed against the district through the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR):

• The School District improperly suspended Andrew Burgess, a middle school teacher in the district, in retaliation for his having filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and for having provided a transgender student with information about the OCR.
• The School District engaged in sex discrimination and retaliation by allegedly not permitting LGBTQ students at Lenape Middle School who engaged in “walk-outs” in May 2022 — to protest Mr. Burgess’s May 6, 2022 suspension — to reenter the school building after they had walked out.
• The School District failed to respond appropriately to bullying and harassment of students based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
• The School District discriminated against employees and students on the basis of sex as a result of certain policies adopted by the School District. At issue are policies prohibiting teacher advocacy on partisan, political, and social policy issues and requiring neutrality in the classroom; requiring parent or guardian permission for student name changes; mandating age-appropriateness for library books and classroom materials; and providing that the once-a-year elementary school Human Growth and Development Class be conducted in separate sessions for boys and girls.

Rinaldi said the investigation revealed that the school district did not engage in impermissible retaliation against Mr. Burgess, noting that the district wasn't even aware of the complaint when it suspended him from his job. Rather, his suspension was justified, Rinaldi said.

Based on a series of emails between Burgess, students, teachers and administrators, an investigation by Duane Morris and his own admission to investigators, Rinaldi said the investigation found that Burgess documented incidents of bullying and harassment in a four page dossier that he kept from the administration cataloguing, in graphic detail, the alleged physical assaults, slurs, and threats a student had reported to him.

"The evidence and circumstances suggest that Mr. Burgess believed that, if he brought to light supposed widespread unaddressed bullying and harassment of LGBTQ students and convinced a federal agency to investigate such matters, the School Board would cave to the inevitable criticism and bad press — particularly if Mr. Burgess, aided by the press, could convince the public that the School District’s new policies were the actual cause of such bullying and harassment," according to the investigation.

“By his conduct, Mr. Burgess has demonstrated that he currently should not be entrusted with the care or education of children," says the report. "We also find troubling the participation of OCR employees in Mr. Burgess’s conduct. Upon learning of allegations of abuse that had not been reported to the School District administration, OCR should have immediately contacted the School District administration with the information contained in the dossier.”

The investigation also found that contrary to the ACLU’s claim that district administrators were unresponsive to complaints, Lenape’s principal and vice principals handled issues immediately and in many cases went above and beyond.

The investigation also found that the administration of Lenape Middle School acted appropriately in denying students who had participated in the May 2022 walk-outs the ability to come and go through any building door they chose.

“Lenape Middle School employs a modern building entry system, complete with electronic locks and an intercom system. Such security measures are an unfortunate consequence of school shootings and other violence around the country,” said investigators. “Particularly at a time of tension, including when the school’s principal is being subjected to death threats, the Lenape administration acted appropriately in maintaining well-established school safety protocols, none of which constitutes illegal discrimination or retaliation.”

The investigation also looked into the LGBTQ+ bullying allegations leveled against the district by the ACLU.

“Not unlike most (or all) school districts, some bullying occurs in the Central Bucks School District. We found, however, that such incidents are not widespread and that they were promptly addressed by school district personnel,” the investigation revealed. “Moreover, very little of
any alleged bullying targets LGBTQ+ students, a fact confirmed by all of the data we collected and interviews we conducted, including the interview under oath of Mr. Burgess.

“The school district has well-designed and well-implemented formal and informal processes to address alleged bullying, all of which is in compliance with Pennsylvania and federal law.”

Finally, the investigators looked into the allegations that recently adopted policies were targeting the district's LGBTQ+ population.

“None of the policies adopted by the school district referenced in the September 23, 2022, OCR complaint letter is, on its face or in actual operation, discriminatory against LGBTQ+ students or employees,” the investigation found. “Rather, these are reasonable policy choices, made
by the superintendent and the board of school directors, who are empowered by state law to make such decisions, and supported by well-established legal precedents."

Those policies prohibit teacher advocacy on partisan, political, and social policy issues and require neutrality in the classroom; require parent or guardian permission for student name changes; mandate age-appropriateness for library books and classroom materials; and provide that the once-a-year elementary school Human Growth and Development class be conducted in separate sessions for boys and girls.

To read the entire report, CLICK HERE

Patch will be taking a deeper dive into the report. Watch for future stories coming soon.