QUAKERTOWN, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — Quakertown parents packed a school board meeting Thursday night and let loose on administrators following last week’s violent arrest of five students during an anti-ICE protest.
For parents like Jessica Beumann, the arrest of five Quakertown Community High School students during the Feb. 20 student walkout amounted to the district failing them.
“When emotions are high and students care deeply about an issue, it is the school’s responsibility to anticipate the response and provide a safe, structured alternative,” she told the school board.
Beumann said the result was predictable — the school first agreed to work with student organizers on the walkout but canceled it at the last minute over an unspecified safety concern.
“Without a meaningful alternative, it was predictable that students would leave campus,” she said. “Instead of guiding their energy into a safer option, we left them to navigate it on their own.”
It led to a violent confrontation with law enforcement. Videos captured from the scene appear to show Quakertown Police Chief Scott McElree in plain clothes, seemingly holding a teenage girl in a chokehold.
“How do you put into words someone attacking a 14-year-old girl that just so happens to be colored, and has no defense against a grown man?” asked Diana Moncortes, a junior at Quakertown Community High. “How do you put a protest was ‘canceled’ instead of ‘postponed,’ giving the students another opportunity, knowing they have a right to speak?”
She said the students weren’t given enough details about what the threat was.
Parent Aarin Rumsey said the incident has become an inflection point in the community.
“This is an issue about our future and about how our community acts now,” he said, “that our students, no matter what ethnicity, no matter what cultural origin or background, that they are safe here.”
Among those calling for consequences for the officers involved were also community members supporting the officers, saying they were there to protect the kids.
Of the five students arrested, at least four have been released, according to officials.