Recently an email went out to many school parents from a group called Neighbors United, a fictitious group that appears to be a front for the Tredyffrin Republican Committee and the “Conservative Women of the Main Line.” (The email listed as a return address Rosanna Hagg, Vice Chair of the Tredyffrin Township Republicans, though Ms. Hagg later denied any association with Neighbors United.)
Conservative Women of the Main Line is a hard-right group that has been extending invitations to speakers like Doug Mastriano, who attended the Jan 6 insurrection and lobbied Congress to throw out Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential vote, and Scott Presler, a prominent anti-Muslim activist. Republican candidates and TTGOP leadership have spoken approvingly of CWML and gone so far as to be photographed selfie-style with Presler. (UPDATE: when this telling photo drew unwanted attention, the TT GOP immediately deleted it from its former perch on their Facebook feed.)
The email directed readers to a series of talking points filled with misinformation about TE School District affairs.
People who read these fake talking points should know where they originate from. We’ll address these false claims in a series of posts. This is the first.
Fake talking point #1: The so-called “accounting error”: this refers to a situation in which special education invoices were not processed in a timely fashion, leading to these expenses being recognized and tabulated in a later year than they occurred. The School Board has taken numerous steps to address the issue, and the state Department of Education found no reason for further action.
Please know the following:
- The employee responsible for not processing the invoices in a timely manner no longer works for the District. This was stated publicly at the June 10, 2019 School Board meeting.
- The School Board put numerous additional safeguards in place to ensure that such a delay in processing invoices does not occur again.
- The School Board voted to go through the process of restating the financials in order to restore public confidence. There are slides of the timeline of the events presented to the public at August 26, 2019 School Board meeting. Contributors to the local blogosphere were at this meeting and asked many questions and supported the Board’s actions. These same people are now spreading “the big lie” that nothing was done.
- The issue was escalated to the PA Department of Education, which determined no further action was necessary.
- The District has received clean audits from 2 different auditing firms and the PA Auditor General. The District has maintained a AAA bond rating which only 7 of the 500 school districts (1.4%) in PA have.
- If you still have questions about this matter, ask yourself “If there were some impropriety, don’t you think there would have been an investigation from the State, and wouldn’t this have made all the papers and local news?”
