Emails uncovered by concerned parents in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, home of the state’s third-largest school district, reveal district leaders knew they were violating state law when they locked students out of the classroom after the 2019-2020 academic year. Years later, it’s finally coming to light.
In July 2020, an email from then-Central Bucks Superintendent John Kopicki acknowledged the legal limits to online instruction for the upcoming school year.
“Hybrid options and staggered schedule options are NOT legal as of today, absent a waiver or legislative change,” the email read. No waiver from the state house ever came, but the schools shut down anyway.
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, state lawmakers offered schools flexibility from Pennsylvania’s 180/990/900 rule, which requires students to be in the classroom for 180 days, for 990 hours in secondary school and 900 hours in elementary school. The legislature granted districts a suspension of the requirement for the remainder of the 2019-2020 academic calendar but refused to renew the waiver over the subsequent school years.
Yet the Bucks County School District continued to shut down schools throughout the next two years. Classrooms closed again and again after the 2019-2020 school year despite no legislative waiver.
A spokesman for Pennsylvania Sen. Scott Martin, who chairs the Appropriations Committee, told The Federalist schools that violated the state’s 180/990/900 rule could face a “significant financial penalty if they fail to get a waiver.”
“If there are violations of [the] 990 rule, that can influence whether
