Sun Sentinel Broward Edition

Conservati­ves take aim at educators

Parents broadening focus from masks to books, other issues

- By Mead Gruver

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A recent Wyoming school board meeting was again packed with opponents of mask mandates when things took an abrupt turn and a parent started reading aloud sexually explicit passages from a book available in school libraries.

“Parents like myself had no idea this stuff was here,” the parent, Shannon Ashby, told trustees of Laramie County School District No. 1 in the capital city.

The push to remove objectiona­ble books from school libraries is part of a renewed conservati­ve interest in public education as a political issue since the start of the pandemic. Parents who first packed school board meetings to express their opposition to mask mandates and other COVID-19 measures have since broadened their focus to other issues they say clash with conservati­ve values.

Such issues played a key role in last month’s Virginia governor’s election and are now poised to be in the Republican spotlight in the 2022 midterms.

“If you put pictures to the material that was read, our superinten­dent would be in jail for traffickin­g in kiddie porn,” said Darin Smith, a local attorney and former Republican congressio­nal candidate whose wife is on the school board. “I would never have known these extreme leftists that are controllin­g our school district had I not gone to voice my opposition to the masking.”

The award-winning book Ashby wants pulled from Cheyenne high school and middle schools, “Monday’s Not Coming,” by Tiffany Jackson, is a novel about the mysterious disappeara­nce of a Black teenager. Supporters

say it contains important messages about topics such as poverty, child abuse and friendship, though it does includes scenes such as a boy and a girl having sex on a teacher’s desk.

Similar disputes over public school curricula and books arose recently in Virginia, where with help from former Vice President Mike Pence they became a major issue in Republican Glenn Youngkin’s successful campaign for governor.

They’ve also been a political issue in the Carolinas and Texas while school officials in Kansas pulled almost 30 books from shelves after a complaint before returning them.

In Utah, the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union opened an investigat­ion in November after a suburban Salt Lake City district removed several books including “The Bluest

Eye,” by Toni Morrison, pending investigat­ion into a parent complaint. Other books that have been the subject of complaints in the city’s schools include titles with LGBTQ characters.

“There is a wave of wellfunded, well-organized attacks in our schools and looking to remove library books from the shelves,” Utah Education Associatio­n President Heidi Matthews said.

Library organizati­ons are pushing back, pointing out that many of the books in question depict struggles of minorities. Efforts to remove them send a message to minority youths that their views don’t matter, said Deborah Caldwell Stone, director of the American Library Associatio­n’s Office for Intellectu­al Freedom.

“For me, it’s just astonishin­g that so many groups that use ‘liberty’ in their names,

that claim that they’re all for freedom and the individual right to exercise freedom, resort so quickly to use censorship,” Stone said.

Ashby belongs to Moms for Liberty, a conservati­ve group that says it challenges “short-sighted and destructiv­e” policies in public schools.

Wyoming’s top education official questioned whether the book disputes are a fundamenta­lly conservati­ve cause.

“Labeling this as a ‘conservati­ve’ issue is a disservice to parents and their children. We should embrace parents wanting to engage with their children’s education, not label them,” Superinten­dent of Public Instructio­n Jillian Balow, a Republican, said in a statement recently.

In September, Balow joined Wyoming’s Republican legislativ­e leaders in supporting proposed state

legislatio­n to counter the teaching of “critical race theory,” which has become a catch-all term for efforts to teach that systemic racism remains a persistent problem in the U.S.

Balow noted that disputes over books aren’t new. Since the 1970s, for example, several books by children’s and young adult author Judy Blume have been banned from schools and libraries for everything from sexuality to endings people didn’t like. Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberr­y Finn” is another frequent target due to racist language.

Ashby said she first heard about the books in the Cheyenne district after tuning in to conservati­ve podcasts. She then checked an online school library book database to see which books mentioned in the podcasts were in Cheyenne.

Cheyenne school officials

haven’t begun reviewing the books Ashby opposes because nobody has filed a complaint, Superinten­dent Margaret Crespo said.

Crespo said book opponents at school board meetings represent a small fraction of the community and not those who’ve written or spoken to school officials in support, though the district has begun adjusting its policies for books, including how they are purchased and checked out.

On the night Ashby read to the board, one person spoke in favor of the mask mandate or keeping the books.

“Parents should read what their kids are reading, and if they don’t approve it, don’t let them read it. That doesn’t mean that they have the right to make that decision for every other family,” Dr. Renee Hinkle, a local obstetrici­an, said over heckling.

 ?? RICK BOWMER/AP ?? Amanda Darrow, director of youth and family programs at the Utah Pride Center, poses with books that have been the subject of complaints.
RICK BOWMER/AP Amanda Darrow, director of youth and family programs at the Utah Pride Center, poses with books that have been the subject of complaints.

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