A Pennsylvania school board that banned books, pride flags and transgender athletes dropped a last-minute point in their final meeting before leaving office, hastily awarding a $700,000 exit package to the superintendent who supported their agenda.

But the Democratic majority that swept the conservative Moms For Liberty out of office hopes to block the unusual, what they say are illegal, payouts and bring calm to the Central Bucks School District, whose affluent suburbs and rural farms near Philadelphia have been in turmoil since 2020 due to infighting. pandemic.

People are really tired of the embarrassing meetings and the vitriol. They are tired of our district being in the news for the wrong reasons. And students are aware of what’s going on, especially our LGBTQ+ students and their friends and allies, said Karen Smith, a Democrat who won a third term on the board.

The district, which has about 17,000 students in 23 schools, has spent $1.5 million on legal and public relations costs over the past two years amid competing lawsuits, discrimination complaints and investigations, including a pending lawsuit over the suspension of a teacher at an LGBTQ+ supportive high school. and other marginalized students.

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The jostling and spending appear likely to continue as Democrats, who won a 6-3 majority in the Nov. 7 election, prepare to challenge the resignation package for Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh, which was only added to the agenda the night before November 14 was added.

Meanwhile, several voters in the quaint town of Chalfont filed a petition in court Monday to challenge the school board’s election results, alleging unspecified fraud or errors.

Student Lily Freeman, an outspoken critic of the board’s policies on LGBTQ+ issues, described the districts’ spending priorities. She called the severance package a bad deal for both students and taxpayers.

It’s kind of like a slap in the face, the Central Bucks East High School senior said. Teachers are struggling, and there are a lot of students who are struggling.”

“There are so many resources out there that we could spend that money on,” she said, noting that her school desperately needs better Wi-Fi.

Neither Lucabaugh, who skipped the closing meeting, nor outgoing board chairman Dana Hunter responded to a call for comment. The school board’s attorney, Jeffrey P. Garton, said he was not involved in the severance deal.

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I did not prepare it or provide legal advice on its contents, Garton said in an email.

Some of the new Democrats tried to warn the outgoing administration that the payout violates a 2012 state law intended to curtail the golden parachutes given to school superintendents, including one that exceeds $900,000. The law now severely limits pay to one year’s salary, along with limited payments for unused sick leave and other benefits.

The specific circumstances in this case are even more egregious. The board gave Dr. Lucabaugh a 40 percent salary increase (to $315,000) in late July of this year, making him the second-highest paid school district superintendent in Pennsylvania, and is now using that raise less than four months later, to calculate a severance package, attorney Brendan Flynn, who represents them, wrote in a letter distributed to the board before the vote.

Lucabaugh’s package includes more than $300,000 for unused sick, vacation, administrative and personal time during his 18 years in various roles with the district; $50,000 for signing the deal; and health insurance for his family through June.

The package also includes a stunning ban on any district investigation into his tenure and an agreement that he can keep his district-issued laptop as long as he erases it from school records.

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U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage ignored that last provision Friday when he ordered Lucabaugh, a defendant in high school teacher Andrew Burges’ retaliation lawsuit against the district, to preserve documents that could serve as evidence in the case.

It’s hard to imagine a lawyer drafting that contract, said Witold Vic Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which is representing Burgess. No attorney would think that a school board could protect an employee from any form of legal action or criminal investigation.

Freeman, the high school senior, declined to revisit the threats and sense of danger she says she and her family endured when she joined the board over the past two years. However, her powerful public comments at last week’s meeting, posted to TikTok, have racked up thousands of views and comments.

It was never about protecting children. It was about removing people like me from Central Bucks, she told the board last week when it voted to let students play on sports teams based on their gender assignment at birth. You keep making policy after policy that prevents people like me from just living our lives.”

On Monday, Freeman said she is hopeful that tensions will ease under the new administration: I feel like we won’t have to worry about a lot of these things if our needs are met.