‘Bucks County, USA’ Sees School Board Fights As Reflection of a Nation Divided

Over the past few years, a suburban Philadelphia school district has become a flashpoint for nearly every fault line in America’s school culture wars, with a lawsuit and federal civil rights investigation alleging discrimination against LGBTQ students and a library book-review policy quietly shaped by a Christian nationalist advocacy group. School board meetings have regularly dissolved into shouting matches, physical altercations and vicious online pile-ons as national fights over COVID-era school closures, book bans and DEI broke out in the digital public square.

A new five-part documentary, Bucks County, USA, trains its lens on those fights as a way to understand the broader forces pulling American communities apart.

Co-directed by Barry Levinson and Robert May, the series zeroes in on the many battles surrounding the Central Bucks School District and its tumultuous board. May and producer Jason Sosnoff began talking in late 2021 about making a film on the nation’s political fracturing, determined to avoid taking sides or “preaching to the choir,” said May. They searched an ordinary-seeming place that illustrated the divide and found it in Bucks County, Pa. “We thought that perhaps the school board wars and the school board campaign itself could be the underbelly motor of how we tell the story,” he said. The film soon grew into a five-part series that was screened this week for locals and premieres nationally on Sept. 20 on PBS’s streaming service.

Filmed over four years, it follows more than a dozen key players who live out political polarization in real life. Foremost among them: two best friends, Vanessa Martino and Evi Casey, who are 14 when filming begins. Their parents hold bitterly opposing political views — actually, Vanessa’s father, Paul Martino, is a Republican activist and businessman who in 2023 bankrolls a slate of GOP school board candidates that includes his wife, Aarthi.

Yet the girls’ friendship seems bulletproof — it’s often the only safe space in the entire series — offering a different perspective that helps explore how community-level political conflict affects families and friendships.

The series frames Bucks County, a prosperous area north of Philly, as a kind of political bellwether — one documentary subject calls it “a purple county in a purple state.” The filmmakers say they want to offer an impartial community portrait that goes beyond politics, even in a deeply divided community.

Located in a key swing state, the district seems a perfect place to explore polarization. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights began investigating the district after the ACLU of Pennsylvania complained that it had created a “hostile” learning environment for LGBTQ students. In 2023, a middle school teacher sued the district, alleging he was suspended and involuntarily transferred to a different school in retaliation for advocating on behalf of LGBTQ+ students. 

The same year, members of the board reportedly tried to hide their ties to a conservative Christian law firm that reviewed a proposed library book review policy. It’s the legal arm of the statewide branch of the national organization Family Research Council, an anti-LGBTQ group. The book ban took effect in early 2023, but was later withdrawn.

The series centers largely around the 2023 school board race, which becomes a referendum on the public’s ability to endure more confrontation and chaos. But the results don’t necessarily calm the chaos, and community members most often find that the best way to broker compromise is through small-group and one-on-one conversations.

The series producers are hoping Bucks County, USA can help extend those conversations throughout the nation: The public TV station WETA is distributing discussion guides for the series that will allow communities to create their own viewing events and roundtables. It’ll also provide lesson plans for schools. 

“The idea here is take what we’ve done, let this be the beginning, and try to duplicate it in your own community,” said co-director Robert May. “Use the series to turn your thinking in a little bit of a different direction, and less worry about what’s happening on the national front. Let’s first worry about the strengths of our communities and bridge that divide that’s been so deep. And once we have communities stronger, I think we can be stronger across the country, frankly, as a nation.” 

Ahead of the series premier, May sat down with The 74’s Greg Toppo for a wide-ranging conversation about political polarization, the perils of social media and how the series could help change the conversation around our deep divisions. 

Their conversation is edited for length and clarity.

I wanted to start with something Lela Casey, Evi’s mom, says early on about her home: “We’re a purple county in a purple state. We’re kind of divided between Republicans and Democrats, so we’re not peaceful. We’re always going to have some challenge.” As I was watching this documentary, I kept thinking of that line from Casablanca: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, she walks into mine.” 

Robert May: [Laughs] 

Of all the towns in America in 2022, why Bucks County? Is it that purpleness, that challenge? Something else? What attracted you to this place?

My producing partner, Jason Sosnoff, who also is Barry Levinson’s producing partner — we all were talking about wanting to do a project about the polarization and division in the country. We actually started talking in late 2021, and we wanted to put together something that would be non-biased, where we could talk to each side and just hear their points of view because no one was listening to anyone. Everyone was just spewing, and we wanted this to be different. 

I like to think we don’t take a side. We’re not those sorts of filmmakers where we’re shoving something in, preaching to the choir. We didn’t want to do that. We thought we would go to one place in the country that is viewed as an idyllic place to be, low-key but sort of a microcosm of the political division. Then we heard The New York Times’s Daily podcast about school board wars in Bucks County, and that gave us an idea in two ways: First we thought that when you’re telling a story like ours, about political division, if it’s just about political division, it could be anything. But we wanted to know what the air, the narrative skeleton would be like. What would the motor be for telling that story? And we thought that perhaps the school board wars and the school board campaign itself could be the underbelly motor of how we tell the story, so that everything would surround that. We thought that a lot of the national discussion was coming right into the school board rooms, and that that might be interesting.

Who is this documentary for? What’s the audience, and how are you hoping to change their minds?

We’re all angry right now — whether you’re on the right or you’re the left, we’re angry. And what do we do about it? How do we talk about politics? Well first, if the film can demonstrate that people from opposite sides can come together and talk and still not necessarily agree — there’s no rosy ending, it’s not all wrapped up in a bow by any means — but there’s a level of respect that wasn’t there in the beginning. And I believe that the strength in our communities and our country can be improved by people seeing, “Oh, well, if they can do it, I could do it. I could reach out to a family member that I haven’t talked to in God knows how long. I can reach out to a neighbor that I haven’t spoken with. I can reach out to somebody that I never spoke with, but I thought they were from the other side, so I never wanted to speak to them.” And maybe they can actually find some comfort and joy and pride and be able to say, “I did that. I can talk to someone, I can listen generously, I can share my point of view, and I can replicate what they say, so they know I heard them.” 

Your idea of listening respectfully really comes across very powerfully. I love what retired teacher Kitty Semisch says early on: “Both sides have to stop reading about each other, and engage with each other.” It made me think about how an uncredited character in this documentary is social media …

Oh yes.

… and what a corrosive role it has. There must have been a lot of conversations about that that didn’t actually make it into the film. Can you talk a little bit about how you handled that?

When we first started structuring the film, it was only going to be adults. We were going to talk to adults, and then when we realized, well, they go to the school boards and they’re all arguing over their children, and they all are saying sort of the same thing: They are concerned about the education of their children, the safety of their children, their children getting educated in a way that they will have a prosperous life. They all want that. But they were coming at it from different directions, and they were bringing all the national issues right into the school board meeting.

When they would leave the meeting, they would jump on social media and attack each other. Some people would come to the meetings and attack. Some people would just do it on social media. Some people would do it both ways, and no one could let it go. By the way, the kids are watching all of this, which is why we wanted to start talking with students — which is why there was that student roundtable. It’s how we got to Evi and Vanessa, who were best friends with different political views, and their parents really don’t like each other. Their parents were going after each other right and left. 

In fact, in the broadcast version of this, some of the social media is blurred. We’re doing a pre-release screening in Bucks County [on Sept. 15], and we’re playing it back for the whole community, and that will be the uncensored version. But the blurs will say a lot even in the broadcast version, because you’ll see what’s not there. And it’s astonishing what people were saying about one another. We saw that social media was another character, as you put it, then we had to determine, “Well, how are we going to present that?” because there are many ways to do it. So we did it in two ways. We had the icon of every person, what they say, and then the scatter text is [social media] conversation from the community. The scatter text was the community’s craziness: This is what everybody’s saying and the actual social media attacks then were handled as they were back and forth, back and forth.

I wanted to talk about Vanessa and Evi. To me, one of the most powerful moments was near the end when Vanessa, who really hasn’t said a whole lot of substance until now, is talking about politics. She says, “I kind of hate it. It makes me feel depressed.” I thought that was really moving, considering that her parents are these movers and shakers who bankroll a lot of what happens in the community. I mean, she seems to speak for all of us, honestly.

Yes, she does.

What did you think of that moment?

I feel so lucky — we all do — that we were able to spend four years with those two girls, and really everyone that’s in the series. But the adults were all adults. They’re who they are. They were already grown up. But to spend so much time with Evi and Vanessa and the other students as well was remarkable — because we saw them grow before our eyes. We saw them become more articulate. Vanessa is a self-proclaimed introvert, and Evi is a self-proclaimed extrovert. It shows how two opposites can get along, and so over the course of time, Vanessa became much more open. As a matter of fact, her parents have said she’s just become a blossomed person as a result of participating in the project because she has gained confidence, and because we all had such respect for her. So seeing her grow like that and share what her concerns were and what her thoughts were was remarkable.

To me, what she said about being depressed by politics just felt like a rebuke of everything the adults were at each other’s throats about. And I think it took a lot of bravery for her to say that. 

I completely agree. She’s someone that observes. She’s a good listener too. That’s her reaction to everything she’s seen. There’s this whole piece: The kids are watching, so be careful. What will your story be, adults? Because kids are watching you.

And there was another moment too with Vanna deArmond, the third-grade teacher. I remember listening to her talk very near the beginning, and it was very clear to me that she was just reacting to a lot of trauma in her life. And I thought, “O.K., why are you visiting this on everybody?” Then at the very end, she basically says, “Listen, I gotta admit: I had a lot of trauma, and it affected what I said and what I did.” I thought that was another powerful moment. 

Vanna, in the community, was viewed as this right-winger who had no regard for anybody else. But the thing is, back to your first question, is that when you see someone like Vanna, be careful of the judgment you make because you don’t know what their life was like. When Vanna allows us to go there with what her life was like, we have a better understanding for her as an adult today. 

And the thing is: Look, we all have some level of dysfunction within our families, within us. We’ve all had traumas of some sort, and I feel like when we say we haven’t and we can’t give grace for anyone who has, then we’re lacking something society really needs, especially right now. One of the things that we’re trying to encourage people to do is to watch the entire series before making judgments, because there’s a buildup of all of these little pieces that will come together in the end for thoughtful consideration. And that’s one of them.