Dozens of community members reached out to the Saucon Valley School Board after a member suggested establishing a Charlie Kirk Recognition Day, but a working group formed to consider the idea failed to reach a strong enough consensus to take action.
The idea, raised during board comments on Sept. 23, never gained enough support to become a formal agenda item, but board members said they appreciated the public engagement.
“I thought it was a good idea to have the working group, for sure,” said board member Bill Broun, who was a member of the group.
The board received “quite a few incredible letters from our public” regarding the proposed recognition day, Broun said, adding that he admires the “intelligence and sensitivity of the people in our community” who shared their perspective.
Board member Donald Carpenter said he received 30 to 40 emails — enough that he struggled to maintain his standard policy of responding to all emails from the public.
“Engagement is important,” Carpenter said, “and it’s a needed part of our democratic process.”
Carpenter said standard operating procedure for the board is to only consider agenda items that receive support from district administration or at least three board members and noted that the remembrance day suggestion never met that threshold.
Board member John Conte suggested that the district consider establishing a Charlie Kirk Recognition Day at the Sept. 23 board meeting, saying: “I think it’d be a good reminder for the students of what he meant to the country and to our political system.”
At that meeting, Broun also noted the strong desire among many community members to honor the slain political activist. A Sept. 22 vigil in Hellertown drew hundreds of people.
Broun and Conte were named to a working group that consisted of two board members, two community members and two teachers.
The bipartisan working group started with modest goals, Broun said during an update during Tuesday’s board meeting.
“From the very beginning, I know that there was a desire to keep whatever happened small — it would not involve any kind of intrusion on curriculum,” Broun said.
In the end, the working group struggled to agree on what action, if any, to propose.
“We could not reach any consensus apart from the idea of a Facebook post that was a kind of anodyne recognition of Charlie Kirk’s death,” Broun said.
After that fragile consensus was reached, half the working group chose to halt their participation, and efforts fell apart, Broun said.
Conte said he never intended to endorse Kirk’s political views but rather to recognize him for his support of free speech, civil discourse and nonviolence.
“Some in this community appear to have chosen to turn this remembrance of Mr. Kirk to a discussion of his political views — this was never my intention,” Conte said.
Board President Cedric Dettmar said he asked for a working group because the right to free speech is so important that it deserved discussion.
“When someone’s speech seems vile to us and completely wrong, that’s really the time when it matters, when we have to think: If I find his speech vile, maybe there’s somebody out there that would find mine vile if I spoke up,” Dettmar said, “and it’s so important that we feel free to speak when we have something important to say.”
District parent Madeline Reid was the only person who spoke during public comment at Tuesday’s meeting. After it became public that she was the one who asked the board to consider the idea of a recognition day, she said it felt important to speak up even though it was scary to do so.
Reid said her intention was for the district to take action similar to the federal government, which designated Tuesday as a National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk.
“I was hopeful that it would be honored and solidify that Saucon Valley is not an echo chamber,” Reid said, “and it has been made clear that this is not the case.”
Reid said it was heartbreaking for her to hear reports that teachers would not only refuse to discuss Kirk with their students but would refuse to show up to work.
This will be her family’s last year in Saucon Valley schools, Reid said.
“We did not go the public school route because what we wanted was for our children to be sheltered,” Reid said. “We want them challenged and exposed to every side of an argument and not just a personal belief. We want an education and a well-rounded education, and, through all of this, we now know that Saucon Valley will not offer that.”