Beth Ann Rosica began writing letters to Governor Tom Wolf in April of 2020, just a couple of weeks after schools and businesses were forcibly closed across Pennsylvania in the early days of the COVID outbreak. She could never imagine those letters would turn into activism that would ultimately lead to one of the single greatest citizen victories in the country.
By the spring of 2021, most Americans knew what COVID was, how it was spread, and who was vulnerable. People were suffering COVID fatigue from the endless and ineffective mandates, but none more so than kids in states like Pennsylvania where most had been relegated to Zoom classroom sessions with their teachers and classmates since the previous spring of 2020.
The long-term effects of those disastrous policy decisions are still not fully understood. Substance abuse, depression, failing grades, and even suicide became the norm. Some estimate child development was stunted by years.
Beth Ann Rosica and fellow parents in her community formed a political action committee called “Back to School PA.” She, along with civic leaders and small business owners successfully campaigned for two state constitutional amendments which Pennsylvania citizens ultimately passed in the Spring of 2021 terminating the governor’s endless “emergency” edicts in favor of a twenty-one-day limit on all future emergencies. Any extended emergency beyond twenty-one days would have to be voted on and adopted by the state legislature.
Chalk up the first win for the people of the Keystone State.
Schools had gotten the message voters were angry and grudgingly allowed students to return to class, but not without continued cleaving to obnoxious and unscientific masking and social distancing both inside and outside which became more complicated and unworkably toxic than staying home in some ways.
When a new school year was to start in the late summer of 2021, Pennsylvania’s acting Secretary of Health Allison Beam declared children must return to school for yet another year behind masks, using “emergency” authority over the state’s schools to justify it.
Schools complied, but Beam’s order was quickly challenged in court. Amazingly, by December of 2021 the highly partisan, Democrat Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down the emergency mask order citing that new, aforementioned constitutional provision passed by citizens earlier in the year. In short, Beth Ann and the people of Pennsylvania won a second time.
Most schools immediately went to a “mask-optional” arrangement as kids returned to class after their holiday break in 2022. But in the left-leaning southeastern region of Pennsylvania, specifically Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs – school boards thumbed their noses at parents and the Supreme Court and continued with forced masking for everyone.
Rosica sprung into action. Using the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling as her justification and repeated attempts to petition her school board to make masking optional, Rosica and a friend began to read up on their school districts’ policies for removing recalcitrant school board members who fail to do their jobs.
Armed with only armchair legal research and her convictions, Rosica petitioned a county judge to take action against her local school board. The judge ruled in Rosica’s favor. He believed she’d made a credible case for which the school board should be made to explain. The judge served the school board notice it had twenty days to give their response to Rosica’s petition for removal of five pro-mask board members.
What happened next is stunning. Nothing. You read right. The board didn’t respond.
Call it arrogance. Call it hubris. Likely all of the above, the West Chester Pennsylvania School Board and their attorneys at law firm Wisler Pearlstine literally ignored the petition and offered no response to the judge after his request for one within a twenty-day window. I’ve been told by legal scholars judges don’t like being ignored.
With that, Rosica once again took to Google to research next steps and learned she had all she needed to ask the judge to take “declaratory action” against the board immediately. Once again, Judge William Mahon agreed with Rosica and this week ordered all five Democrat members of the West Chester Pennsylvania School Board “removed from office” immediately.
A third, decisive knock-out win for Pennsylvania citizens.
Speaking with Rosica in an interview today, I asked her if this stunning development is indicative of a bureaucratic culture that just doesn’t feel they have to answer to those who elect them and if this ruling feels satisfying after two-plus years of abuse.
“Elected officials all across the country from school board members up to our governor do not listen to the people,” said Rosica. “I have no idea what will happen next, but at this moment I’m happy to declare victory and celebrate.”
Parents all across the country should celebrate with Beth Ann Rosica today, too. “Consent of the governed” is still a concept with teeth in a representative republic. One concerned mom with a computer just defeated five school board members and returned the community’s schools to the taxpayers.
Our nation may be on life support, but Beth Ann Rosica proved it still has a pulse.
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