It’s not often that a small-town school district from Pennsylvania makes national headlines. In April, the Pennridge School Board approved a controversial contract with Vermilion Education to overhaul the district’s K-12 curricula. Like many board policies, it was approved on a 5-4 vote, despite bipartisan opposition from community members.
The Vermilion contract has put Pennridge in the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Vermilion is a one-man consulting firm run by Jordan Adams, formerly of Hillsdale College. Mr. Adams has no education degree and has neither taught in nor developed curricula for public schools. The contract itself is uncapped in scope and cost and lacks clear deliverables or limitations to Mr. Adams’ responsibilities or access to school records. It’s essentially the timeshare of consulting contracts — and the school board is using our tax dollars to fund it.
In the 2021 election, current school board majority members ran on a platform of transparency. Nothing about the Vermilion contract has been transparent. Board director Jordan Blomgren initiated discussions with Jordan Adams several months prior to the April board meeting, purportedly based on an interest in the Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum.
On the surface this might not appear unusual, but those discussions were not disclosed to other board members or even to the entire curriculum committee. They were not disclosed to teachers and administrators who continued to develop curriculum without the knowledge that their work would be discarded. They were not disclosed to parents, who, according to the campaign promises of the board majority, have the right to be involved in such decisions. They were not disclosed to our recently resigned superintendent.
One of Adams’ most highly publicized credentials is that he’s visited 200+ classrooms. That’s like claiming you’re qualified to develop medical procedures because you visited 200+ doctors’ offices. In his presentation to the school board in June, Mr. Adams suggested that 6-year-old students should learn nearly 300 years of American History in addition to Ancient World History.
Is this really the plan our tax dollars are funding?
I choose for my children to attend Pennridge because I believe in the public school system and am personally invested in its success. Jordan Adams is not invested in the success of Pennridge or any other public school.
As November approaches, do you know where the candidates stand on the Vermilion contract? Do you know whether they are personally invested in Pennridge as a public school? Do they choose Pennridge? There is no better time to find out.
April Fultz lives in Sellersville.
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