Kutztown School Board approves controversial parental consent form for ‘Gender Queer’

Kutztown School Board approved a parental permission consent form for students to check out the book “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe from the Kutztown High School library.

Board members Caecilia Holt, Al Darion, Michael Hess and Dennis Ritter opposed the form, saying that they were against singling out a particular book. Darion pointed out that no one has checked out the book from the school library.

Beginning during the pubic comment at the May 16 meeting, the board discussed the controversial book and the consent form at great length prior to the 5-4 vote.

One parent against the form, Robyn Underwood of Kutztown does not believe “banning the book in general and requiring permission is a good idea.” She encouraged the board to turn the idea around.

“Rather, if parents would like to manage their own children and leave my children out of it, they’re welcome to do so,” Underwood said.

Ritter motioned for the creation of administrative regulations regarding the availability of library resources and the creation of a form that allows parents to identify library resources that their child or children under 18 years of age shall not access.

“I think (this) gets to the intent without singling out a particular volume or resource,” said Ritter.

Ritter said approving a consent form for one book would lead to creating permission forms for all kinds of resources for one reason or another in the future. His motion covers all resources and parents would have an opportunity to control their children’s access to materials, while eliminating separate permission forms for each resource, he said.

“You can do parental lockouts on phones and computers. It seems only fair that we should do that with other resources as well,” said Ritter.

“Are we regularly providing lewd and obscene images to our students?” questioned James Koch.

“I’ve read the book. I’m sorry. I’d characterize it differently than you do,” said Ritter.

Koch questioned if the district would provide parents with the entire library resource list and how the librarian would manage student access to books every time a student checks out a book. The permission form for one book seems to be the easiest solution, he said.

Ritter said administrative regulations would identify how that’s going to happen and broaden the form to other resources.

“We already have procedures for families to exempt their children from instructional materials, which has not created a problem to provide those children with other materials or activities,” said Holt. “I feel it’s manageable for that reason. I also feel that there are a lot of families who are comfortable trusting the professionals who do the selections and don’t feel a need to exempt their child from any of the materials. They are happy to have their children experience the positive themes that they can glean from books and not singling out any particular book, this book or any other one that might be a bad fit for a certain family. This takes care of the whole issue at once and then every family has the choice.”

Holt said parents can view the online catalogue and determine what is not a good fit for their family.

“The book was selected by the American Library Association who has recently outed themselves as a Marxist organization,” said Koch, also referring to what community member Dan Wismer of Greenwich Township said earlier during public comment of his raised concerns that the ALA is being used to support and decide curriculum for schools.

“Neither the recently elected president nor the American Library Association is employed by this school district,” Holt said.

“But you’re using their recommendation to approve this book or any other book,” Koch responded.

“I think the trained librarians have been doing this for a long time and have the resources and their professional experience and judgement to develop collections that fit a wide variety of students in our district,” Holt said.

One of the problems that Darion sees is that the high school has students ages 13 to 19.

“I find it kind of ironic that in Pennsylvania the age of 16 is the age of consent so a 16-year-old can consent to have sex but needs parental permission to read about it,” said Darion. “Sounds a little inconsistent to me on a practical basis.”

Darion noted that youth struggling with their identity will have the most difficulty going to a parent to request permission.

While against requiring parental permission, Darion can easily support the right of a parent to prohibit the ability of their child to check out the book because of the great diversity in maturity level at the high school.

After Ritter’s motion failed to pass with Koch, Jeremiah Light, Michelle Batz, Erin Engel and Randy Burch voting against it, discussions continued on creating a permission form for “Gender Queer.”

“So now that we’re talking about singling out a particular title, a particular book that is clearly about a traditionally marginalized group who are underrepresented in literature, signifying to those students and their families that their experience does not matter to us, (being) exclusionary to people in our school district,” Holt said. “I do not believe that serves our students at all.”

Holt has read the book and would have been pleased if her own children had read the book as high school students.

“This book has positive themes regarding consensual intimate relationships, which is something that high school students struggle with, supportive family dynamics, and medical self-advocacy,” said Holt. “I absolutely cannot support banning a particular title for those reasons.”

“It’s not a ban; it’s a parental consent,” said Burch.

“It’s singling out a book to not allow people to access it,” said Holt. “That makes it a ban.”

“As a practical matter, it’s going to do that,” said Darion. “The only reason it’s probably not going to be very effective is that the availability for that book will be in lots of places. I find it disturbing that as an educational institution we have singled this out. That’s why I will be opposing this.”

“In our digital resources though, we restrict what resources students have access to,” said Batz. “There are other avenues for students to obtain it. It’s just within the school district we have certain standards with regards to digital content, would we not carry that over to other materials?”

“One of the reasons that we have that is because it’s tied to the federal erate (Schools and Libraries Program that provides discounts to obtain affordable telecommunications and internet access), so we could choose not to utilize e-rate and we wouldn’t have to agree to that,” said Holt. “It’s not really an inconsistency of approach; it’s so we can take advantage of the erate. We have to have that wording in there.”

Ritter believes that by accepting the motion on this particular book, the district will create “paperwork galore” for librarians.

Holt said it also opens up the opportunity for other books to be requested as requiring a parental permission consent form.

“There were plenty of books that I was not necessarily thrilled for my children to read but because they were curated by professionals and they were reading, we could discuss and could grow that way as a family,” said Holt.

Engel said it sounds like the district is re-evaluating its book selection process and the district wouldn’t be in this position moving forward.

“No book is right for every single family,” said Holt. “And it won’t be regardless of how our selection process is. But every family can determine which books they don’t think work for their family individually and without infringing on the rights of other families.”

“First of all, I’d like to say, we’re not banning books,” said Light. “Stop saying we’re banning books. We’re not banning any books. What we are doing is asking for parental consent to take this book out. That’s no different than asking for parental consent for a child to go on a field trip.”

“I agree with your assessment of the book being useful to many students in our school district is accurate,” said student representative Cooper Dunn. “The themes in it are themes that should be examined but some of the content of the book is something not appropriate for audiences that are under the age of 18 in my opinion.”