The Girl Scouts, founded in Savannah, Ga., in 1912 by philanthropist Juliette Gordon Low, held its first bake sale in 1917 to raise money for troop activities.
The booming direct cookie sales business, however, was born in Philadelphia on Nov. 12, 1932, at the Philadelphia Gas Co., then located at the intersection of Broad and Arch Streets.
That inaugural public Girl Scout cookie sale will be remembered Saturday at Center City’s PECO building, part of the Philadelphia Historic District’s weekly celebration of America’s 250th birthday. The historic district pays homage to events that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America — and often the world — with a weekly day party called a Firstival.
Artist Carol Cannon-Nesco, a top Girl Scout cookie seller as a child, celebrates the legacy of the Girl Scouts with pictures of the individual cookies.
“It was the first time the Girl Scouts sold their cookies to people outside of their immediate community,” said Amanda Harrity, director of product programs for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania.
In 1932, a Philadelphia Girl Scout told her parents that her troop needed a place to bake cookies in order to raise money for nurseries, Depression-era organizations that cared for children of working parents. The little girl’s parents, who worked at the Philadelphia Gas Co., got permission for the Scouts to bake cookies on the shiny new gas ranges in the gas company’s street-level windows.
On the afternoon of Nov. 12, the Girl Scouts baked batch upon batch of their shamrock-shaped signature shortbread cookie, the Trefoil. The sweet, buttery aroma wafted through Center City streets and passersby asked if they could buy the cookies, hot out of the test kitchen’s ovens.
The Girl Scouts agreed.
Trefoils (shortbread) and peanut butter sandwiches, also known as Do-si-dos. (Dreamstime/TNS)
“I don’t remember how many cookies we baked that day,” then 80-year-old Girl Scout Midge Mason told The Inquirer in 2001 when the state erected a historic marker at Broad and Arch, marking the sale. “I do know we baked a lot of cookies.”
The next year, the Girl Scouts were back at the Philadelphia Gas Company to raise the money needed to pay off the mortgage of its facility at Camp Indian Run in Glenmoore, Chester County. (That facility closed in the early 2000s.)
In 1934, the Philadelphia Girl Scouts hired Keebler — now Little Brownie Bakers — to bake Trefoils, selling them at 23 cents a box, making them the first Girl Scouts to sell commercially baked cookies.
Two years later, Girl Scouts all around the country began using commercial bakeries to bake cookies for their yearly fundraiser.
Today, more than 200 million boxes of cookies are sold in America at an average price of $6 a box; 3.5 million of those boxes are sold in Eastern Pennsylvania, Harrity said.
Exploremores are the new flavor of Girl Scout cookie for the 2026 sales campaign.
Seventy-five cents of every dollar from Girl Scout cookie sales are reinvested back into girl scouting, Harrity explained. In Eastern Pennsylvania, that includes maintaining 1,500 acres of property and underwriting Scouts’ camp experiences.
This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Jan. 31, 11 a.m. — 1 p.m., at the PECO Building at 2300 Market Street. The Inquirer will highlight a “first” from Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week.
Chester County residents are getting more grocery store options thanks to three independent shops.
West Chester Cooperative is working on a brick-and-mortar for its members and the public. Another co-op, the Kennett Community Grocer, is targeting a spring opening for its storefront, which will sell local produce, dairy, meats, and eggs, and will have a cafe.
Kimberton Whole Foods is also adding to its footprint, with a new store — and its largest — slated to open at Eagleview Town Center in the coming months.
Two other national chains are eyeing spots in Phoenixville, with one already under construction.
A developer wants to transform the former National Vulcanized Fiber site in Kennett Square into housing.
A developer wants to transform one of Kennett Square’s largest untouched parcels into housing, but the process would be years in the making and has some residents concerned.
Rockhopper LLC purchased the 22-acre lot at 400 W. Mulberry St. in 2009, two years after National Vulcanized Fiber shut down. It had operated there for more than a century and the site now requires extensive remediation, government agency approvals, and rezoning.
Some borough residents are concerned about the safety of building houses there given the contaminants.
The region saw its largest snowstorm in a decade over the weekend, and Chester County recorded some of the highest totals in our area, with several municipalities reporting over 10 inches of snow. East Nantmeal saw 12.8 inches, followed by Malvern (12.5), Paoli (11.2), East Coventry (10.5), and Phoenixville (10.4). Freezing temperatures are expected to remain this week, meaning the snow and ice aren’t going anywhere. Check out a map of where got the most snowfall.
The county now has an answer as to why over 75,000 independent and unaffiliated voters were left off the poll books in the November election. An independent report found that human error was to blame, and that issues were made worse by insufficient training, poor oversight, and staffing challenges. The county plans to implement many of the more than a dozen recommendations made in the report, along with several additional steps.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission is hosting a pair of public meetings tomorrow about proposed water and wastewater rate changes impacting county residents. The hearings come about two months after the PUC voted unanimously to suspend and investigate Pennsylvania American Water Company’s proposed rate hike on water and wastewater services, which would have increased a typical water customer’s bill anywhere from $2.73 per month to $27.77 and potentially increased fees for the typical wastewater customer. The public input hearings will take place at Coatesville City Hall at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m.
💡 Community News
A developer of a proposed data center along Swedesford Road in East Whiteland Township will come before the Planning Commission tonight to present changes to the plan, which calls for a more than 1.6-million-square-foot center, up from the previous 1 million square feet proposed. The developer, Charles Lyddane, has been working to build a data center in that area for several years. The commission is scheduled to meet from 7 to 9 p.m. at the township building. The meeting will also be live streamed. Find details here.
Caln Township is hosting a conditional use hearing tomorrow night for Sheetz to demolish the former Rite Aid at 3807 E. Lincoln Highway and redevelop the lot into a 6,139-square-foot convenience store with a drive-through window, six gas pumps, and 43 parking spaces. The meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the municipal building. The first Sheetz in the Philadelphia area is slated to open next month in Montgomery County.
Heads up for drivers: Work to reconstruct and widen four miles of the Pennsylvania Turnpike between the Route 29 interchange in East Whiteland Township and the Valley Forge Service Plaza in Tredyffrin Townshipwas slated to get underway this month. Plans call for widening the road from four to six lanes and replacing mainline bridges. Construction is expected to take five years. And Dutton Mill Road between Strasburg and Manley Roads in East Goshen Township will continue to be closed from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. through Friday for Peco work.
A Lincoln University woman, Fatima DeMaria, 65, has been charged with multiple counts of asylum fraud, mail fraud, and tax evasion for allegedly falsely representing herself as an immigration attorney who could help people obtain work authorizations in the U.S. DeMaria owned Immigration Matters Legal Services in Oxford and is accused of preparing fraudulent asylum forms in her clients’ names from 2021 to 2024, charging them between $6,000 and $9,000 per individual, and $12,000 to $15,000 per couple, totaling at least $1 million.
Easttown Township has been awarded nearly $1 million from the state’s Multimodal Transportation Fund for new sidewalks, ADA-compliant ramps, and crosswalks around Beaumont Elementary School and Hilltop Park.
Kennett Square-based Genesis HealthCare and its subsidiaries were officially sold last week to investment group 101 West State Street for $996 million. Once one of the largest skilled nursing providers in the U.S., Genesis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July. Genesis says it operates nearly 200 nursing centers and senior living communities in 17 states, including Highgate at Paoli Pointe in Paoli. (McKnights)
The founder of independent natural beauty store The Indie Shelf, which has locations in Malvern and Philadelphia, is helping drive the region’s clean beauty movement. Sabeen Zia came up with the storefront concept after struggling to gain traction for her makeup brand and is now using her business to showcase and support small local brands with similar missions.
Tredyffrin/Easttown School District’s Ad Hoc Redistricting Committee is meeting next Wednesday to review the district’s prior redistricting process and establish criteria for selecting the Redistricting Steering Committee members. The meeting comes in advance of the opening of Bear Hill Elementary School, which is slated for August 2027. The committee has also been reviewing parameters for new attendance boundaries across all six elementary schools.
In other news, TESD’s school board recently selected Henry Zink to fill a vacancy on the board during a special meeting earlier this month.
Oxford Area School District’s Advisory Council is hosting a guidance plan meeting to begin shaping goals for each school from 2026 through 2029. The meeting will be held next Wednesday at the district administration building from 8:30 to 10 a.m.
Due to Monday’s snow day, Coatesville Area School District has planned a make-up day for April 6, which was slated to be the last day of spring recess.
🍽️ On our Plate
A new pizza joint opened yesterday in Phoenixville, taking over the former New Haven Deli space at 1442 Charlestown Rd. Matthew’s Pizza’s menu includes pizzas, hoagies, cheesesteaks, burgers, and wraps.
Bored Trading Cafe is hosting a grand opening for its West Chester location on Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. Located at 139 W. Gay St., the cafe will serve coffee and other specialty drinks, baked goods, burgers, salads, and all-day breakfast.
And in Coatesville, Andrea’s Jazz Cafe is gearing up to open on Feb. 17. Andrea’s will offer live music and other entertainment, in addition to dining.
🎳 Things to Do
❄️ Frozen: There’s hardly a more appropriate movie to watch this week than the beloved animated Disney film. ⏰ Friday, Jan. 30, 6-8 p.m. 💵 Free 📍 The Creamery, Kennett Square
🎥The Princess Bride: For those looking to catch a cult classic, the 1987 film will be screened seven times over the weekend. ⏰ Friday, Jan. 30-Sunday, Feb. 1, times vary 💵 $10-$15 📍 The Colonial Theatre, Phoenixville
🍷 Wine and Chocolate Tasting: Taste five wines paired with chocolates during this guided one-hour event. There are additional tastings on Saturdays and Sundays in February. ⏰ Sunday, Feb. 1, noon-5 p.m. 💵 $40 📍 Chaddsford Winery
The home has a covered porch and a patio with a pergola.
This four-bedroom, two-and-half-bathroom Devon Colonial’s recent updates include a new roof, fresh paint, and refinished hardwood floors. The first floor features a living room with a wood-burning fireplace, a dining room, also with a fireplace, a kitchen with granite countertops and high-end appliances, and a family room with a gas fireplace. All four bedrooms, including the primary suite, are on the second floor. Other features include a large patio with a pergola. There’s an open house Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m.
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This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
Parts of Chester County saw more than a foot of snow, with the heavy snowfall delaying trash collections, closing municipal offices, and shuttering school buildings countywide Monday.
East Nantmeal saw some of the highest snow totals in the county — and the entire Philadelphia region —with 12.8 inches blanketing the township as of Monday morning, according to the National Weather Service. Malvern wasn’t far behind, with 12.5 inches. East Goshen racked up the lowest total reported in Chester County, sitting around 8. Chester County municipalities saw some of the highest snowfalls in the collar counties, and outdid Philadelphia, which topped out at 9.3 inches.
Mostof the region received between six and 12 inches by Sunday evening.
But even with the gradient of difference in Chesco, it was enough to close all school districts’ buildings in the county Monday. Some districts instituted flexible remote learning schedules. Others gravitated toward a traditional snow day.
“Students are officially expected to enjoy this winter wonderland — and take a well-deserved breather at the midpoint of our school year,” Kennett Consolidated School District wrote in a post on its website.
The districts hadn’t yet made their calls by noon Monday about returning to school for the rest of the week, but several said flexible instruction may be implemented if road conditions don’t improve.
As municipalities continue to plow streets, many are still calling for no street parking, with several offering free parking in borough lots or parking garages. Municipal meetings are also being rescheduled as residents continue to dig out.
Meanwhile, across the county, residents should expect their trash and recycling collection to follow a different schedule this week.
Here’s a look at the trash collection delays municipalities have advertised online:
Avondale: Trash pickup moved to Tuesday.
Caln: Shifted by one day through the week, beginning Tuesday for Monday customers.
Kennett Square: Trash pickup moved to Wednesday.
East Brandywine: Trash pickup moved to Wednesday.
East Bradford: Trash pickup moved to Saturday.
East Caln: Trash pickup canceled this week.
East Fallowfield: Trash pickup moved to Saturday.
East Goshen: Shifted by one day through the week, beginning Tuesday for Monday customers.
Easttown: Trash pickup moved to Tuesday.
Elverson: Trash pickup moved to Wednesday.
Sadsbury: Shifted by one day through the week
Spring City: Trash and recycling delayed until Tuesday and Wednesday.
Upper Uwchlan: Trash and recycling for Monday will be delayed until at least Tuesday, but the township may have further updates.
Uwchlan: Trash pickup moved to Wednesday.
West Chester: Shifted by one day through the week.
West Goshen: No collection Monday; the township will provide updates on collection for Tuesday.
West Whiteland: Trash pickup moved to Wednesday.
Westtown: Shifted by one day through the week, beginning Tuesday for Monday customers and Friday for Thursday customers.
One of Kennett Square’s last remaining sizable undeveloped parcels could get hundreds of townhomes and apartments — once contamination cleanup of a former industrial site passes muster.
But even with the OK from state and federal environmental officials, it would be years — and require more sign-offs at the municipal level — before the developer eyeing a residential complex at the former National Vulcanized Fiber site could break ground.
And the site’s owners face headwinds beyond the governmental approval, as some borough residents worry that the site is not safe for homes.
Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, agencies that have to ultimately green-light the land as safe for people to live on, sought to assuage those concerns Tuesday during a town hall that explained the processes for cleanup and the standards the developer would have to meet for any homes to be built.
It was the latest update regarding a proposed residential complex that would feature 246 townhomes and 48 apartments, located at the 22-acre lot on 400 W. Mulberry St., not far from the historic district of the borough, on a plot of land that has languished for almost 20 years.
It’s one of the largest untouched parcels in the borough, making up at least 10% of Kennett Square, which is one square mile. Developers project the residential complex would increase the population of the 7,000-person borough by 15%.
The site, which housed National Vulcanized Fiber from the late 1890suntil it shut down in 2007, was purchased by its current owner in 2009 and has been the subject of cleanup efforts for more than a decade after the land was found to be contaminated with so-calledforever chemicals.
“It feels like the cart was put before the horse for the public,” one resident, Sarah Hardin, said during Tuesday’s meeting. “I think it’s the fact that we’re all feeling like this was guns a-blazing forward, and we would like to know that all the proper environmental steps are taken.”
The former National Vulcanized Fiber in Kennett Square on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. Once an industrial site, the property’s current owner is seeking to eventually turn it into a residential development. But first, the property has to be decontaminated that satisfy state and federal requirements.
What’s the history of the site?
For more than 100 years, National Vulcanized Fiber ran operations on the property, creating a slew of products with vulcanized fiber — a durable, flexible, lightweight plastic-like material that was used to make anything from trash cans to computer circuit boards.
Production of those items led to contamination of the site; polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were identified in the 1980s, after contamination spread into Red Clay Creek. That prompted the EPA to become involved, said Amanda Michel, the agency’s PCB coordinator for the region.
The chemicals are probable carcinogens, linked to liver and breast cancer, melanoma, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The chemical is also associated with birth defects, developmental delays, and immune system dysfunction.
Remediation began after the chemicals were found in the 1980s, and NVF folded in 2007. Rockhopper LLC purchased the property two years later and began cleaning the site, eyeing future residential development.
Along with the federal cleanup, in 2010 the owners began a voluntary state cleanup process — which is aimed at redeveloping contaminated, vacant, and unused parcels into productive uses — to target the other chemicals found on the site.
In both cases, the owners have to demonstrate, through sample testing, that contamination has been lowered to a threshold acceptable for human health or that they have the proper barriers in place to prevent exposure.
“Until that happens, there will not be a residential occupant at this property,” said Jonathan Spergel, an environmental lawyer representing Rockhopper.
What is the developer proposing?
Under the proposed development, the property would have 104 stacked and 38 unstacked townhomes, along with 48 one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments. The owners said the project would comprise affordable and market-value units. A proposed rezoning ordinance would require15% of the homes to be affordable.
That component was critical forKennett Square officials, Mayor MattFetick said in an interview last week.
“It’s our best opportunity to have an affordable component,” he said.
Alongside those homes, the property would have roughly 732 parking spaces, and 50 would be added to Mulberry Street.
To offset feared bottlenecks, the property’s proposed plan would have five driveways todistribute traffic flow.
The site’s developers estimate that the property would bring in $382,000 for the borough and more than $830,000 for the school district each year.
Another portion of the site serves as a baseball field at the high school, and no further development is planned there, the property’s owners said in 2024.
The project is helmed by Rockhopper LLC, which is led by two development firms, Delaware Valley Development Corp. and Catalyst City. They brought in Lennar, a home-building company, in 2021. Lennar has done at least two similar projects, remediating industrial lots in Phoenixville and in Bridgeport for residential use, a representative said previously.
What are residents’ concerns?
On Tuesday, residents shared stories of loved ones who lived near the site who have been diagnosed with cancer. They worried that the developer could skew data to move the project forward. They wondered why there had been no urgency to clean it up before.
Officials said the developer has to work with an independent environmental professional and their agencies had been on site throughout the cleanup process.
Corey Barber, who lived near the site for 20 years and moved out of the area after her cancer diagnosis in 2021, worried what construction on the site would bring.
“People are going to believe that they’re going to get cancer from the dust kicking up,” she said.
Charla Watson, who lives right by the property, said there was distrust because the community has not seen the work the developer says is happening.
“It’s just been a wasteland,” she said. “Everything looks the same the day they moved out of there.”
What comes next?
The developer is going through two processes simultaneously. As it cleans up the property to get the necessary state and federal approvals for residential development, it is also working at the municipal level for the land to be rezoned so it can build the residences.
The borough is advertising a change to the ordinance that would rezone the land.
If the ordinance is approved, the developer could formally start developing the land — which would come with at least another year of planning and meetings.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
From national chains to homegrown operations, as Chester County continues to grow, so too do the grocery store offerings.
Here’s a look at some of the stores opening around the county.
Kimberton Whole Foods expanding
This spring, locally owned Kimberton Whole Foods will open its largest location in the county in Eagleview Town Center. Construction began in 2024, roughly 20 years after the location in Kimberton Village opened at a former hardware store.
“We look forward to serving Eagleview and the surrounding communities with healthy, locally sourced grocery options in a customer-focused environment,” Ezra Brett, chief operations officer for Kimberton Whole Foods, said in a statement.
The new 14,000-square-foot facility will continue the store’s offerings of organic produce, grass-fed meats, specialty cheese, grab-and-go meals, and more.
The store will join the growing Eagleview Town Center, which offersrestaurants, salons and spas, professional offices, daycares, and more.
West Chester Cooperative slated for opening
West Chester is slated to get a brick-and-mortar member-owned grocery this year, with West Chester Cooperative at 204 W. Market St.
The cooperative kicked off more than a decade ago, formed by a group of borough residents who wanted sustainable, local alternatives to chain grocery stores.
Over the next 10 years, the group launched outreach efforts, opened a pop-up market, and did curbside pickup and limited in-store shopping hours. In 2022, it reached 500 member-owners.
The grocery will be open to all shoppers, but member-owners will receive select benefits.
Kennett Square is also getting its own cooperative grocery store
West Chester isn’t the only municipality in Chesco getting a different model of grocery store. Also nearly a decade in the works, Kennett Square’s Kennett Community Grocer is expected to open this spring at 625 E. Cypress St.
Renovations began in 2025, and the store will offer locally grown produce; dairy, eggs, and meat from county farms; local baked goods and prepared foods; pantry staples from local producers; and a cafe for community members. It will also hold educational and other events led by healthcare professionals and farmers.
“It felt like doing this was to highlight for everyone that we have this precious land that’s quite beautiful, that is very bountiful with products, not just mushrooms, but meat, dairy, produce, fruit, vegetables,” saidEdie Burkey, president of the nonprofit board leading the grocer. “We felt that bringing people together for the common cause of supporting the land that we’re very, very proud to be part of was a good thing.”
Farmers will get a free cup of coffee at the cafe, which will sell locally roasted coffee, and local teas and honey. The store hopes to partner with the high school’s culinary students for an internship program. Products that don’t sell will be donated to organizations like Philabundance’s Mighty Writers, Children’s Advocacy Centers of Pennsylvania, and others, Burkey said.
“We all eat, and to create a community around eating — things that are grown around here — and protecting the land so that maybe farmers don’t sell their land to developers, you’re just creating a sense of community in and around an activity that is so vital to every part of your day, every day of the year,” Burkey said.
Other national chains coming to the county
Meanwhile, bigger chains are also looking to call the county home. Phoenixville could see two national stores coming in the coming months.
Construction for an Aldi, an international discount supermarket, began over the summer at 297 Schuylkill Road.
Meanwhile, Sprouts Farmers Market, the Arizona-based organic and natural grocery store, is also eyeing a location in Phoenixville. Most of the grocer’s local footprint is within Philadelphia, but a Phoenixville location would broaden the store’s reach further west.
The Phoenixville location is proposed at 808 Valley Forge Road, where the former Royal Bank used to sit. It would operate 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, next to an indoor self-storage facility.
Philadelphia is expected to see its most significant winter storm in years this weekend, with nearly a foot of snow and ice expected from a formidable low-pressure system sweeping across the eastern United States.
Official National Weather Service forecasts say six to 18 inches of snow is possible across most of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia as the storm pushes through the region Saturday night to early Monday morning. More than 21 states are expected to experience at least moderate impacts from the storm, the weather service said.
Forecasters said that mixing with sleet and freezing rain could hold down overall snow totals across Philadelphia and South Jersey, but the storm is likely to hinder if not halt most travel on Sunday, regardless.
The National Weather Service puts out forecasts for every few square miles of land in the United States four times a day through a system called the National Digital Forecast Database.
The maps below display that data. Use it to find how much snow is expected anywhere in the eastern United States. It will show the most recent forecast for the next three days.
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A considerable amount of freezing rain and sleet may also fall during the storm, leading to icing concerns. The map below displays the forecast for ice accumulation, or accretion, over the next three days.
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Pennsylvania’s Department of Health did not cite Chester County Hospital for any safety violations between December 2024 and November of last year.
The West Chester-based hospital is part of Penn Medicine.
Here’s a look at the publicly available details:
Feb. 6, 2025: Inspectors came to investigate a complaint but found the hospital was in compliance. Complaint details are not made public when inspectors determine it was unfounded.
May 5: Inspectors visited for a special monitoring survey and found the hospital was in compliance.
July 25: Inspectors came to investigate a complaint but found the hospital was in compliance.
Independent and unaffiliated voters were left off Chester County’s poll books in November’s election due to human error exacerbated by insufficient training, poor oversight and staffing challenges in the county office, an independent firm has concluded.
In November, more than 12,000 Chester County voters were forced to vote by provisional ballot after the county included just registered Democrats and Republicans in the poll books for the general election. Every voter who wanted towas able to cast a ballot, county officials said, but it resulted in a chaotic scene and the county had to issue an unusually high number of provisional ballots — which require more steps to cast and count.
On Thursday, the county released a 24-page report from a West Chester law firm detailing how the county failed to include more than 75,000 registered voters in its general election poll books, and evaluating the state and county’s response as it scrambled to ensure those voters could cast ballots.
“Importantly, our investigation found no evidence of intentional wrongdoing, misconduct, or bad faith on the part of any of the employees who generated the Poll Books. The error was inadvertent and occurred in the course of performing assigned duties under significant time constraints,” the report, prepared by Fleck, Eckert, Klein and McGarry LLC, said.
“Though the initial selection constituted a human error, the investigation found that the error occurred within a system lacking in: (i) sufficient safeguards, (ii) training, (iii) sufficient supervision, and; (iv) verification controls,” investigators added.
What’s next in Chester County?
The firm’s report detailed more than a dozen recommended steps for the county and Department of State to take to prevent future errors.
In an action plan released Thursday, Chester County officials said they intend to abide by the vast majority of those recommendations, as well as additional steps identified by the county’s Chief Experience Officer.
Chester County Chief Executive Officer David Byerman said in a statement that the recommendations would be completed within a year, with the most critical steps coming ahead of May’s primary election.
The action plan included improved training and more strenuous review processes, reevaluation of Voter Services staff levels and pay, and a review of human resources policies in the department. It did not include personnel changes within its Voter Services Department.
The 25-person department has faced unusually high turnover among staff in recent years, losing 29 employees to resignations, firings and transfers since the current director, Karen Barsoum, took over in 2021.
Barsoum has faced allegations of fostering a toxic work environment, which Thursday’s report acknowledged. However, the firm concluded that those complaints were not connected to the poll book error and said in its report that employees directly connected to the poll book blunder spoke positively about department management.
“Moreover, the various causes of the Poll Book issue that we have identified do not appear to have any causal nexus with the types of concerns raised,” the report said.
How did the error happen?
According to the report, two employees inadvertently chose the wrong selection of Chester County voters when they used the statewide voter roll software to create November’s poll books. Those employees, the report said, were inexperienced and had never been formally trained on the system they were using. While the employees had a copy of written training materials from the Department of State, the report noted that they worked with “little direct supervision” for their level of experience.
After the wrong set of voters were chosen — leaving off third party and unaffiliated voters — the report said no one in the department checked the books until a poll worker noticed the problem shortly before polls opened on Election Day.
The report noted the department’s high turnover, which it said could be the result of the high-pressure environment of election-related work and Chester County’s low pay compared to surrounding counties. That turnover, the report said, created “increased operational risk” which contributed to the error.
Following the incident, the county said it will review staffing and pay levels for the office as well as its human resources policies.
“We know that working in elections is an extremely difficult job – one that involves long hours and many personal sacrifices,” Byerman said. “We are truly grateful for the commitment and dedication of the staff in Voter Services, and want to ensure that we are doing everything we can to provide the resources, tools, and support they need to be successful in their roles.”
The department, the county’s action plan said, will also establish additional approval checks for poll books and other procedures that impact all Chester County voters.
County officials also said they intend to improve training for the department, including working with the Pennsylvania Department of State to implement formal training on the state’s voter roll system.
“The Department always stands ready to assist counties with training of employees on the [Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors] system and other aspects of election administration and is happy to engage Chester further to improve its training process,” the Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement.
The agency added that its ongoing effort to modernize the statewide voter roll system will include checks and alerts for unusual poll book configurations once completed.
Chester County is scheduled to hold a public meeting Tuesday evening to present its plan to the public. If the forecasted winter storm closes county offices that day, the meeting will be postponed to Feb. 3.
As Joshua Weikert shared ground rules for quizzes in his early morning international relations class, he sought to put his students at ease.
“I don’t want you stressing out about these,” he said Tuesday, as the new semester got underway at Immaculata University in Chester County.“I myself was a terrible student.”
Weikert, 47, of Collegeville, may not have been a star student, but he sure knows a lot.
The politics and public policy professor will compete onJeopardy! 2026 Tournament of Championsat 7 p.m. Friday on ABC, having won six games when he was on the show in March.
Joshua Weikert teaches a class in international relations at Immaculata University.
Over a couple weeks, Jeopardy! shows will feature him vying against 20 other champions, including Allegra Kuney, a doctoral student at Rutgers University’s New Brunswick campus, and Matt Massie, a Philadelphia lawyer who moved to the area in 2024, who also will appear on Friday’s show.
Friday’s match is a quarter-final, and if Weikert wins, he’ll advance to the semifinals. (Kuney won her quarter-final Tuesday.)
Weikert won about $103,000 when he competed last year, 10% of which he donated to a memorial scholarship fund named for his late friend, Jarrad Weikel, a Phoenixville man who died unexpectedly at age 40 in 2022. The winner of the champions tournament —which will conclude sometime in early February — will take home a grand prize of a quarter million.
Weikert will watch the show Friday among family and friends — including his fellow contestant Massie — at Troubles End Brewing in Collegeville, which named one of its beers after him. It’s an English Bitter, one of Weikert’s favorites, called “Who is Josh?”
At Immaculata, a Catholic college where Weikert has taught since 2016, students and staff are stoked. A campus watch party is planned, President Barbara Lettiere said.
His appearance last year, she said, has put a welcome spotlight on the school and brought an outpouring of enthusiasm from alumni. On tours, some prospective students and their parents who spot Weikert have recognized him, she said.
“I never knew that this show was as watched as it appears to be,” she said. “Win or lose, Immaculata wins.”
Student Ben Divens talks about his Jeopardy-star professor Joshua Weikert.
Ben Divens, 19, said it’s “jaw-dropping” and “surreal” to know his teacher will compete in the Jeopardy! champion tournament.
“I knew from the first time I met him he was a super, super smart person,” said Divens, a prelaw major from Souderton.
“He’s guided us so much in our major already,” added Bailey Kassis, 18, a political science major from Fort Washington.
“He’s guided us so much in our major already,” student Bailey Kassis said about her professor Joshua Weikert.
An early gamer
Weikert said he has watched Jeopardy! ever since he can remember, probably since 1984 when he was 6, and it came back on the air with Alex Trebek as host. He grew up just outside of Gettysburg in a family that loved to play games, he said.
“We took them very seriously, which is to say that they didn’t just let the kids win,” he said of his parents, both of whom had accounting degrees. “We were destroyed routinely in the games we played.”
About his performance as a student, he said he often skipped his homework.
“Just give me an exam,” he said, describing his attitude at the time. “I’ll pass it.”
He got his bachelor’s degree in international relations from West Chester University, master’s degrees from Villanova and Immaculata, and his doctorate from Temple. He also attended the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, where he studied modern standard Arabic while serving in the U.S. Army.
Joshua Weikert sets expectations for students as a new semester gets underway at Immaculata University.
In addition to teaching, he also works as a policy adviser to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives under state Rep. Joe Webster, a Democrat serving part of Montgomery County. He vets legislators’ ideas and offers ideas of his own.
“The only thing they’ve ever told me no on was [when] I tried to abolish the Pennsylvania Senate,” he said.
So many bills pass one body, then die in the other, he explained. If there were one legislative body where all House and Senate members served, that might be different, he said.
Weikert’s office walls are lined with framed newspaper front pages highlighting major events: “Nixon Resigns,” “Nazis Surrender,” “Man Walks on Moon,” “Kennedy Shot to Death.”
“Every once in a while, I just get up and read one of the stories,” he said.
He got them from his mother-in-law’s basement and put them up after his wife told him his office needed some decor.
Weikert’s status as a Jeopardy! champion makes clear he’s a fast thinker. He’s also a fast talker.
“I don’t really drink caffeine. I just talk this fast,” he told his students.
His wife, he told the class, tells him to slow down.
“Keep up,” he tells her, he said.
The road to Jeopardy
Since his mid-20s, Weikert has been trying to get on Jeopardy!. Years ago, he got a call from the game show, but he put the caller on hold to get to a quiet place. They hung up.
“I was like, well, I guess I missed that opportunity,” he said.
But he kept trying and started taking the online tests, which typically draw 200,000 participants annually. In 2024, he got an email, inviting him to take the test again — and then again under Zoom surveillance.
Next came a virtual audition and practice game in August 2024. That earned him a place in a pool of about 3,000 people, of whom a few hundred eventually became contestants.
Weikert got the call last January and was invited to fly to California the next month to compete.
In reality, his varied interests and life path had already prepared him for the show. He reads a lot. He’s a fan of historical fiction, pop culture, and movies. His work as a public policy scholar helps, too.
But to try and up his game, he read plots of Shakespeare plays and a book on great operas. He flipped through lists of presidents and vice presidents. His wife, Barbara, a Norristown School District middle school music teacher, read questions to him from old Jeopardy! shows. He knew about 80% of the answers, he said.
That, however, didn’t stop him from having panic dreams of being on stage and knowing nothing.
The toughest category for him, he said, is popular music. Movies, history, and politics are his strongest.
But the hardest questions, he said, are the ones with four or five strong possible answers.
“Getting a Jeopardy! answer right is more about knowing what it’s not than what it is,” he said.
Ultimately, he said, it’s impossible to really study for the game show.
“The odds that something you study would come up is almost zero,” he said.
It was an intense experience on stage last March, but the staff put contestants at ease, he said. Host Ken Jennings, formerly one of the show’s most successful contestants, told them, according to Weikert: “I promise you something today is going to be a win for you, so just relax and have fun.”
He has a hard time remembering his winning answers. He readily recalls his dumbest, he said.
The answer was “sacred cow.” He uttered “holy cow.”
“Even as it was coming out of my mouth, I knew it was wrong,” he said.
He’s proud that he only froze on one answer involving lyrics from the B-52’s “Love Shack,” he said.
There was less pressure competing in the championship match last month, given he was already a winner, he said. But it was harder in that the contestants were the best of the best.
“During the regular season, it’s a little under a quarter of a second between when you can start to buzz in and when the buzz actually comes,” he said. “In the tournament of champions, that drops to 0.08 seconds.”
This time, he also prepped by reading children’s books on topics such as basic cell biology, a tip he got from another contestant.
“It’s the simplest language they can use to convey the information,” he said.
He also read the book, Timelines of Everything: From Woolly Mammoths to World Wars.
He most enjoyed the camaraderie among contestants, he said. When filming was over, they hung out in a bar and — watched Jeopardy!.
The U.S. Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into the Great Valley School District in Chester County for a policy allowing transgender girls to participate in girls’ sports teams.
The probe — one of 18 investigations announced last week into transgender sports policies in K-12 districts and colleges nationally — comes after President Donald Trump threatened last year to strip federal funding from schools that recognize transgender students.
“Time and again, the Trump Administration has made its position clear: violations of women’s rights, dignity, and fairness are unacceptable,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement. “We will leave no stone unturned in these investigations to uphold women’s right to equal access in education programs — a fight that started over half a century ago and is far from finished.”
District officials said at a school board meeting Tuesday that they’re cooperating with the investigation and working with lawyers to prepare a response.
Numerous Philadelphia-area school districts have policies allowing transgender students to play on sports teams aligned with their gender identities, including Philadelphia. But Great Valley appears to be the first on the administration’s radar.
Great Valley was one of the first Pennsylvania school districts to pass a policy supporting the rights of transgender students in 2016 — seeking to provide those students “equal opportunity to achieve their maximum potential,” including by participating in sports “in a manner that is consistent with their consistently asserted gender identity.”
It was unclear whether any transgender girls currently play sports at Great Valley. A district spokesperson provided a statement Wednesday saying the district was “committed to serving all students in our community with dignity and respect” but declined to comment further.
After declaring the country would “recognize two sexes, male and female,” Trump issued an executive order in February seeking to end the participation of transgender women in women’s sports.
The president invoked Title IX, the landmark civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in programs that receive federal funding.
But how that law applies to transgender students and their rights has been hotly debated. The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard two cases challenging laws in West Virginia and Idaho requiring that participation on sports teams for girls be based on “biological sex.”
In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, the Human Relations Act specifies that discrimination based on gender identity is a form of prohibited sex-based discrimination.
Courts have also protected the rights of transgender students. In 2018, judges in the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against students in the Boyertown Area School District who said their privacy rights were violated by sharing bathrooms with transgender students.
Last year, a U.S. District Court judge in Philadelphia rejected a lawsuit from a Quakertown student who said her equal protection rights were violated by having to race against a transgender female student in the Colonial School District.
Great Valley “takes its obligations under Title IX and all federal civil rights laws seriously,” the district’s school board president, Rachel Gallegos, said at a board meeting Tuesday. “We also take our responsibility to comply with the legal rulings from federal courts in this jurisdiction and to provide the protections afforded our students by Pennsylvania statutes just as seriously.”
Much of the Trump administration’s focus on transgender issues to date has been at the collegiate level. The NCAA last year announced it would ban transgender women from competing, and the University of Pennsylvania struck a deal with the administration over the past participation of transgender athlete Lia Thomas on its women’s swim team.
The Great Valley investigation appears to have been triggered by a former school board president, Bruce Chambers, who filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights last March, objecting to the policy.
Chambers, who served on the board from 2009 to 2012, said Wednesday that OCR notified him last week that his complaint was under investigation, the same day it made its public announcement.
The district’s policy “discriminates against girls, because the trans people can use whatever bathroom they want, use whatever locker room they want … join any team they want, or activity,” Chambers said. He said he “gave the board three chances” before filing the OCR complaint.
If the board rescinds the policy, “that will solve the whole thing,” Chambers said.
Kristina Moon, senior attorney with the Education Law Center, a Philadelphia-based group that advocates for transgender students, said the Trump administration appears to be trying “to intimidate school districts” into complying with its policy goals.
Moon pointed to a recent OCR investigation into gender neutral bathrooms that was criticized by Denver Public Schools, which said the office didn’t independently verify claims and “issued conclusions using an approach that departs from established investigative practice.”
“If they actually cared about protecting girls … they would not have dismantled the Department of Education and Office for Civil Rights,” Moon said.
In a letter this week to the Great Valley board, the LGBT Equality Alliance of Chester County said there was “no clear federal law or Supreme Court ruling that makes inclusive policies for transgender students unlawful.”
“Great Valley’s current policy reflects a reasonable, lawful approach that protects students from discrimination, aligns with local and state civil rights standards, and has been reviewed with legal counsel,” the alliance said in the letter. “Supporting students’ dignity and safety is not political. It is consistent with our legal obligations and the district’s duty of care to all students.”
Two residents who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting also urged the board to maintain the policy.
“I understand there is a need for all students and not just a minority to feel safe, but I feel assured the board can and will handle all concerns from parents and students with great care,” Christi Largent said. “I look forward to seeing the board stand up for all the students.”
