Member Newsletter
As you can see, I’ve become very interested in the crazy story of “Cool Mom” Clarice Schillinger who seems to have been both a big time anti-woke/protect the kids activist while also hosting teen keggers on the side and sometimes going off and beating the crap out of the kids. But as I’ve learned over the last few days, there’s a fascinating and, from what I can tell, wildly crooked story about the Central Bucks School Board that goes way beyond her.
First, a bit of background detail: Doylestown is the metropolis of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and some of my interest in the story is that I know the place. Between vacations and summers and random stints I probably spent the better part of 4 to 6 months there during and after college. Or, to be super precise, in Furlong, Pennsylvania, an incorporated something-or-other right next to Doylestown. Also, in yesterday’s post I said that Aarati Martino, the wife of Paul Martino, the VC who has funded a lot of school board activism in Pennsylvania, had lost her school board seat in the Dem backlash in 2023. Not so. She lost her election. She was one of the anti-wokist candidates. But she wasn’t an incumbent — just a candidate.
Now let’s get down to business and discuss the super sleazy sweetheart deal, shall we? Excellent.
As noted, conservative activists got a majority on the board in 2021, went whole hog with all their anti-LGBTQ stuff and book banning and then got walloped in 2023 in a backlash against their extreme policies. Moms for Liberty was a big part of that before they became mostly known for threesomes. But a lot happened during the brief transition between the GOP dominated school board getting voted out in early November and when they handed over the keys to the new Democratic majority in early December.
The big thing is this totally bonkers pay out. Right after the 2023 election, the outgoing board drafted a $700,000 severance agreement for the now-former school superintendent Abram Lucabaugh. This came only months after the board had renegotiated Lucabaugh’s contract with 40% raise despite the fact that his contract ran through 2026. So the board was basically hosing this guy Lucabaugh down with cash for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me. He was apparently whole hog on board with their anti-woke campaign. But even that doesn’t entirely explain the wild sums of money they dropped on this dude. The deal has already spurred a substantial amount of controversy, as you would imagine. And at least according to this article, it violates a number of Pennsylvania laws in addition to being so wildly one-sided. One part that seems pretty open and shut is that there’s a Pennsylvania law that limits the amount of a severance to no more than one year’s salary. It just sounds like after being sent packing by the voters, the board decided to give their pal the superintendent upwards of a million dollars as a going-away present.
The new Democratic majority school board immediately authorized a legal challenge to Lucabaugh’s departing cash prize after it was sworn in on December 4th. But I haven’t been able to find any more information about whether there has been any progress on the effort to get the money back since then.
Lucabaugh’s bonanza seems to have been only one of a number of questionable spending decisions during the former board’s two-year reign. There have also been a number of lawsuits spawned by their various woke-smashing policies. And at least one of those intersects with Lucabaugh’s departing cash prize.
In addition to all the money, the board let Lucabaugh keep the district-purchased laptop. Fair enough. Maybe no one wants his old laptop. But there’s more to it. The board allowed him to keep the laptop so long as he deleted all school records. Hmmmm. U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage quickly ordered Lucabaugh not to delete anything on the laptop since it likely contains information relevant to an ongoing wrongful retaliation lawsuit brought by middle school teacher Andrew Burgess.
And there’s more.
As part of their sendoff, the board included in the severance a permanent ban on Lucabaugh ever being investigated by the district for anything he did during his tenure. Apparently there are also laws against one board tying the hands of its successors like this, which you’d imagine there would be.
There are admittedly bigger stories in the country than one tied to this single school district. But it seems like a microcosm of the folks who were washed in by the anti-woke school board activism tide in 2020 and 2021. That is of course along with the Zieglers, Clarice Schillinger and so many others. It’s a very American story: a burst of activism, though activism greatly amplified by press attention and quickly folded into more conventional right-wing policy agendas, and a lot of good old fashioned corruption and sleaziness as well. As in other cases around the country, the over-the-top behavior spurred a backlash.
Tell me your local school board story: The keggers, the local Clarices, the sweetheart deals. I’m all ears.