The Pennsylvania School Board Undoing Critical Race Theory

In districts across the country, school boards are quietly reshaping what students learn and how teachers get trained. This year, as Pennsylvania heads into a major school- board election cycle, Southern York County’s board offers a stark example of why these elections matter—and how a small group of citizens can change their schools for the better.

Southern York’s school board recently dropped culturally relevant and sustaining education (CR-SE) requirements in teacher training. CR-SE is supposed to help teachers serve students from different racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds. But the state’s CR-SE guidelines ground their approach in critical theory, requiring educators to view classroom dynamics through a lens of systemic oppression. The guidelines characterize students as either having power and privilege or as being marginalized and oppressed, based on their race or other identity groupings.

“Removal of CR-SE represents a win for teachers to no longer have to endure Marxist indoctrination rituals on implicit bias, CRT [critical race theory], microaggressions, and other woke nonsense,” board member Joe Wilson wrote in an April 2025 X post.

In 2022, the Pennsylvania Department of Education instituted mandatory CR-SE guidelines for teacher professional-development programs. The numerous new requirements included the expectations that teachers “[b]elieve and acknowledge that microaggressions are real,” “[d]isrupt harmful institutional practices, policies, and norms by advocating and engaging in efforts to rewrite policies, change practices, and raise awareness,” and “deepen their awareness of their own conscious/unconscious biases.”

In 2023, the Thomas More Society filed a suit against the Pennsylvania Department of Education on behalf of three Pennsylvania school districts, arguing that the new guidelines violated the First Amendment and state regulatory law. In a November 2024 settlement agreement, the state made the CR-SE guidelines optional rather than mandatory for Pennsylvania school districts.

That settlement didn’t mean that CR-SE programs automatically ended, however. According to Wilson, school boards must act to ensure that CR-SE isn’t used by schools within the district. “School boards have the responsibility to approve taxes, funding, curriculum, policy, professional development,” Wilson told me. “No action by the board means no change in professional development.”

Overturning the guidelines in Southern York County seemed unlikely just a few years ago. Samantha Hall, elected to the district’s board in 2021, was among the minority who opposed implementing the CR-SE framework. But in 2023, the board flipped to a conservative majority, giving opponents the leeway needed to dump CR-SE when the opportunity arose.

Challenges remain. Hall notes that it can be difficult “to balance the myriad of federal and state laws with the community’s priorities and values.” Though the state government’s CR-SE guidelines are no longer mandatory, it turns out that a handful of education statutes still require schools to demonstrate CR-SE standards in teacher induction and professional-development plans.

Immediately after the settlement, Pennsylvania issued a replacement for the CR-SE guidelines called Common Ground, which represents only a slight modification of the original standards. While schools aren’t required to use Common Ground, the guidelines offer a predictable path to receiving state approval for statutes requiring CR-SE standards.

Hall is skeptical of the replacement, stating that CR-SE and Common Ground share “nearly identical competencies.” For instance, whereas CR-SE uses the term “microaggressions,” Common Ground replaces that term with a definition that denotes much the same thing: “Recognize comments or actions that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally express a prejudiced attitude and take steps to educate oneself about the subtle, unintentional ways in which these may be used to harm and invalidate others.”

Nevertheless, Southern York has elected to go its own way and test the ambiguity of the state government’s stance. Hall says the district replaced CR-SE competencies with “Bullying and Harassment” training for teachers, which is “pending Board review of the content from the Attorney General.” The district is waiting to see if its trainings will get the state’s go ahead.

School board members set the tone for district priorities and show what’s possible for other districts across the state. But more needs to be done. Until Pennsylvania lawmakers revise the current CR-SE requirements, districts like Southern York will have to test the “latitude” of compliance. Not every school board will be willing to take that risk. Lawmakers can and should give school boards more freedom by amending state statutes to eliminate these requirements.

Still, Southern York’s willingness to lead the way shows how important school board elections can be. Given that only 5 percent to 10 percent of eligible voters typically participate in these elections, even a small group of local parents can help improve a district’s schools.

Photo: Maskot / Maskot via Getty Images