If you want to understand what has happened to school board meetings in America, there’s a PBS series worth an evening of your time. “Bucks County, USA” is a five-part documentary from filmmakers Barry Levinson and Robert May. They spent four years filming in a Pennsylvania county that is about as politically balanced as a place can be. In 2024, Donald Trump carried it by just 291 votes.
But the series isn’t really about presidential politics. It’s about schools. The filmmakers follow a community, centered on Central Bucks School District, that split open during the pandemic. Arguments over masks and virtual learning turned into fights over Pride flags and library books, and school board meetings became the arena where those fights played out.
Anyone who has run a board meeting in the last five years will recognize the footage. Some meetings got so tense that parents were removed by security. Early in the series, residents list the names they’ve been called by their own neighbors, and it’s hard to hear. Former friends become political rivals. Neighbors stop speaking to each other.
The storytellers, though, are two 14-year-old best friends whose parents disagree on almost every political issue. They watch the adults around them fight over what is supposedly best for kids like them.
That’s the first lesson for school leaders: the students are watching. Every heated public comment period and every viral clip from a board meeting teaches children something about how grownups handle disagreement. When your meetings turn into combat, the lesson they learn has nothing to do with the policy on the agenda.
The second lesson is quieter, and it’s the hopeful part. The series also follows two teachers with opposing political views who became friends while working through the conflict. Robert May has said that talking across differences with humanity takes constant effort. That’s worth keeping in mind. Bridging divides doesn’t happen with one well-crafted statement. It happens over time, through relationships, and usually away from the microphone.
The third lesson may be the most telling. A planned local screening hosted by WHYY and Bucks County Community College was canceled, and the cancellation itself made headlines. A film about division in Bucks County ended up causing more division there. If even a conversation about polarization can set off controversy, school leaders can’t assume any topic is safe. They need to plan for that.
So what does this mean for you? It means treating your board meetings as a communications strategy and not just a legal requirement. Set clear expectations for civil conduct before tensions rise, not in the middle of a heated session. Create other ways for people to be heard, such as listening sessions, small-group conversations, and one-on-one meetings, so the public comment microphone isn’t the only outlet. And as a leader, model the behavior you’re asking for, even when someone has just called you something terrible.
The midterm elections may be behind us, but these Buck County moments aren’t going away. The documentary doesn’t offer a neat solution. What it does show is what’s at stake, and who is watching.
The series is available for a limited time. Watch it here.
