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

Co-directed by and , the series zeroes in on the many battles surrounding the Central Bucks School District and its tumultuous board. May and producer began talking in late 2021 about making a film on the nation’s political fracturing, determined to avoid taking sides or 鈥減reaching to the choir,鈥� said May. They searched an ordinary-seeming place that illustrated the divide and found it in Bucks County, Pa. 鈥淲e thought that perhaps the school board wars and the school board campaign itself could be the underbelly motor of how we tell the story,鈥� 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 .

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 鈥� actually, Vanessa鈥檚 father, , 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鈥� friendship seems bulletproof 鈥� it鈥檚 often the only safe space in the entire series 鈥� 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 鈥� one documentary subject calls it 鈥渁 purple county in a purple state.鈥� 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 the district after the ACLU of Pennsylvania complained that it had created a 鈥渉ostile鈥� 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.聽

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

The series centers largely around the 2023 school board race, which becomes a referendum on the public鈥檚 ability to endure more confrontation and chaos. But the results don鈥檛 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鈥檒l also provide lesson plans for schools. 

鈥淭he idea here is take what we’ve done, let this be the beginning, and try to duplicate it in your own community,鈥� said co-director Robert May. 鈥淯se 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.鈥� 

Ahead of the series premier, May sat down with 社区黑料鈥檚 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 鈥� 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鈥檚 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 鈥� 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 鈥� there’s no rosy ending, it’s not all wrapped up in a bow by any means 鈥� 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 鈥�

Oh yes.

鈥� 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 鈥� 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, 鈥淲ell, how are we going to present that?鈥� 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 鈥� we all do 鈥� 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 鈥� 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.

Public school librarians in Ohio are raising alarms about book bans and funding cuts.

School librarians have been navigating challenges in their work as long as they鈥檝e been among the stacks in their local districts.

Proposed legislation to filter the reading choices students can make has brought concern, and budget reductions make some worry about the future of public school librarians as a mainstay in schools.

鈥淩ight now, a lot of administrators and school boards look at having school librarians as a luxury,鈥� said Gayle Schmuhl, president of the Ohio Educational Library Media Association. 鈥淚 think a lot of school librarians (in Ohio) are just hoping to stay employed.鈥�

Schmuhl said many members of the association were wondering about the future of their jobs with cuts to public school funding in Ohio and debate over property taxes that go to education.

Cuts to state public education has been talked about for decades, especially after multiple Ohio Supreme Court decisions that said .

In 2022, a model called the Fair School Funding Plan came about with bipartisan sponsorship, and was passed in what some saw as a new era for Ohio. The plan was to fund schools based on actual need from school district to school district.

The model almost made it through the six-year phase-in as planned, but Ohio Republican lawmakers abandoned it in the last operating budget.

While the most recent state operating budget included a $226 million increase in school funding, the Fair School Funding Plan model to maintain its initial calculations and keep up with inflation.

Lawmakers, however, increased private school voucher

Courtney Johnson was a school librarian in Columbus for 10 years, and seeing funding plans decrease for public schools played a part in her move back to teaching English.

She worried that though the funding priorities for schools hadn鈥檛 been spelled out, the cuts might mean she鈥檇 be splitting her time as the librarian in multiple district buildings.

鈥淚鈥檓 a person who likes to have roots in a place and go to my 鈥榳ork home鈥� every day,鈥� Johnson told the Capital Journal.

Johnson said returning to the classroom also means following an entire class through their year-long experience, and still means helping kids with reading and writing, two things that are among the passions that brought her to the profession.

鈥淓very kid has a story, even if they don鈥檛 trust that they do at first, and I love making space for them to tell their stories,鈥� Johnson said.

As a librarian, she saw the importance of parents reading to their kids, students receiving the context of other subjects in school for 鈥渇ull background knowledge鈥� to help them decode the words they鈥檙e reading, and encouraging the connection between kids and books.

鈥淲e鈥檝e known this, that when kids see themselves represented in books, they feel more connected to the books, they鈥檙e going to like reading better,鈥� Johnson said. 鈥淟ikewise, kids can see how other people live in books, and develop empathy that way.鈥�

Part of the job of the modern school librarian is discussing material with parents that they may find objectionable enough to demand it be taken off the shelves.

Sharon Hawkes, a retired librarian who is also part of the group Right to Read Ohio, decided to survey school librarians, with the help of the Ohio Educational Library Media Association鈥檚 member list.

Of those who participated in Hawkes鈥� study, 56% 鈥渆xperienced censorship incidents鈥� between 2021 and 2025.

While she only received responses from 32 school librarians, about 10% of the total school librarians in the state, she said the experiences were still indicative of a challenge in Ohio.

鈥淲e鈥檙e getting some clues about what鈥檚 going on,鈥� Hawkes said, noting that because there鈥檚 no standard survey system in each state to study censorship in libraries, the count made by organizations like the American Library Association may be less than the actual amount happening across the country.

The American Library Association reported 98 attempts to censor 355 books in Ohio from 2021 to 2024, and last year, there were seven attempts to censor 129 books, according to the ALA.

Schmuhl agreed that the study was representative of the experience she鈥檇 heard of in the state.

鈥淚 did see that school librarians in our areas were being proactive and trying to have good communication within their school districts (about attempts to ban books),鈥� Schmuhl said.

In Hawkes鈥� study, of the 16 censorship requests in Ohio between 2021 and 2024, eleven were 鈥渃hallenges without removals,鈥� while eight resulted in a book ban of some kind, and three involved 鈥渞elocations of books or other materials.鈥�

According to the researcher, librarians use 鈥渙bjective criteria鈥� in decisions about what materials are age-appropriate and relevant for the school libraries. Their training qualifies them to decide on the inventory, and to deal with challenges from parents, where the majority of material challenges came from in the study.

The majority of school librarians who responded to Hawkes鈥� survey had between 11 and 15 years of experience as the director or manager of their current library, and more than 62% had a Master鈥檚 degree in Library Science.

鈥淢ore than anything, I wanted people to understand that parents do have the right to guide what their children read and when they read it 鈥� they can approach their librarians about it,鈥� Hawkes said. 鈥淲hat they can鈥檛 do is ban books for other people鈥檚 children.鈥�

For Johnson, moving back to English doesn鈥檛 mean she鈥檒l avoid the topic of censorship.

鈥淚 think I鈥檓 going to deal with that in public schools under what we have going on right now, no matter what my position is,鈥� she said.

The legislature approved one measure to compel public libraries to relocate 鈥渋nappropriate鈥� materials out of the sight of minors, but 聽as 鈥渘ot workable.鈥�

Another bill still in consideration by the legislature would order that go to public libraries and schools to create protections to prevent 鈥渋nappropriate鈥� content from making it to kids鈥� eyes.

Opponents of the materials have said the bill could have unintended consequences, removing materials that are educational as well.

Johnson鈥檚 classroom goals include helping kids maintain reading to 鈥済et them ready for this really difficult world that we鈥檙e navigating,鈥� and bring the parents in as part of it.

鈥淲e need to work together as parents and school communities to make sure kids are achieving literacy, and we know that having access to books at home, and at school, at their fingertips, is just the beginning of it,鈥� she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

In the last two years, have passed laws or policies limiting if or how race and gender are discussed in the schools. The details of these restrictions vary, but most are . Kentucky law, for example, states that tying racial disparities to slavery is 鈥渄estructive to the unification of our nation.鈥� Tennessee prohibits public schools from promoting notions of unconscious bias. 

When RAND U.S. teachers about these policies last spring, one in four reported that such limitations have influenced their curriculum choices and instructional practices. Replying to a follow-up question asking for more detail, many described veering away from any discussion of race and gender, regardless of whether a topic was specifically banned by law. 

鈥淭he past two years have made me nervous about teaching Frederick Douglass because I don鈥檛 think the people in my community know the difference between teaching [Black] history and teaching critical race theory,鈥� one teacher told us. Another teacher wrote this: 鈥淲hile it was never explicitly stated by my district not to discuss gender or race-related topics in the classroom, I know that my district would not have my back should I choose to add instruction on these important issues.鈥� 

For students of color, the psychological phenomenon to be concerned about is called identity threat. This is defined as feelings of fear and danger that can arise from the of one鈥檚 group through stereotypes, marginalization or discrimination.

Stanford social psychologist Claude Steele has studied identity threat for decades. In he undertook with colleagues, college students watched videos advertising a STEM leadership conference: one version had three times as many men as women, while the other showed gender parity. Sensors attached to the viewers’ wrists captured significantly faster heart rates, blood pressure and sweating among female students who viewed the video with fewer women, while men鈥檚 physiological reactions were the same in both cases. The women also reported less desire to attend the leadership conference than the men. led by Columbia psychology professor Valerie Purdie-Vaughns found similar heightened anxiety among African American professionals after viewing recruiting materials from various corporate workplace settings showing predominantly white people.

When a school eliminates courses, lessons or books featuring women and people of color, it sends a similar message of identity threat. Ruby Bridges鈥� 鈥�,鈥� Angie Thomas鈥� 鈥�” and Ashley Hope Per茅z鈥檚 鈥�,” all stories about students of color, were banned in public schools across the U.S. this year. Girls and children of color could take this as a cue that they aren鈥檛 valued or don鈥檛 belong in school 鈥� and that can create stress that harms their ability to learn. 

The most direct way to mitigate identity threat, of course, is to integrate learning material that sends messages to students of color that they matter. of at-risk ninth-graders in San Francisco, for example, showed that taking an ethnic studies course increased attendance by 21 percentage points, grade-point average by 1.4 points and credits earned by 23. That, however, is exactly the type of course that could generate the negative attention many schools and teachers wish to avoid in this turbulent moment.

Although race and gender bans are leaving many teachers uncertain about what is safe to teach, their hands are not completely tied. There are other ways to support students of color and offset identity threat.

have demonstrated that specific classroom interventions 鈥� invoking high standards, prompting students to reflect on their own core values and helping them develop optimism in the face of adversity 鈥� can give children experiencing identity threat the encouragement they need to succeed at school and beyond. The effects of these interventions include a greater sense of belonging, improved and .

Self-affirming activities, like asking students to choose their most important values from a list and explain why they are essential, can by 12 percentage points among students who complete this exercise three to four times in one year. In one , African American college freshmen were given narratives that portrayed social adversity as common but transient and short-lived, and they were then asked to write an essay鈥攁nd then make a video鈥攖hat considered their own experiences alongside those narratives. The experiment raised participants’ grade point averages, relative to a control group, and cut the achievement gap in half.  

By conveying to girls and students of color that they are individually capable of overcoming adversity 鈥� and that who they are matters 鈥� educators might soften the blow of public laws and policies that send the opposite message.