Bill would limit student access to ‘sexually explicit’ materials in Pennsylvania schools

HARRISBURG — Parents would have to opt in if they want to allow their children to access sexually explicit content in school curriculum material and books under legislation advancing in the state Senate.

The Senate Education Committee by a party-line vote on Wednesday sent to the full Senate a bill intended to provide guidance to school districts on an issue that has divided communities and become campaign fodder in school board races across the commonwealth.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ryan Aument, R- Lancaster County, strongly refuted opponents’ claim that the legislation was about banning any books especially ones about LGBTQ issues or written by minority authors. He said his bill requires no book to be removed from school book shelves.

“We are simply seeking to empower parents to make decisions about their own child, not anyone else’s child,” he said.

His bill defines sexually explicit as materials containing visually or visually implied depictions, of sexual conduct or simulations or written descriptions of it that are accessible to students in all grades as well as depictions of nudity accessible to kindergartners through eighth grade.

It defines sexual conduct as “acts of masturbation, sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or if the person is a female, breast.”

It would require parents to be notified if content that fits these descriptions is accessible to their child. It would give parents the opportunity to review that material and give their consent for their child to access it. If permission isn’t given, the school would be required to provide the student a non-sexually explicit alternative.

“Senate Bill 7 is an attempt to thread the needle so that parents who are concerned about sexually explicit content in schools and parents who are concerned about book bans can individually make those decisions their own children without impacting what materials other children can access,” Mr. Aument said.

Sen. Lindsey Williams, of Allegheny County, the ranking Democrat on the committee, described the legislation as an attempt to destroy public education by “telling outrageous lies about what our kids are exposed to in schools.” She insisted the legislation is a book ban and violates the First Amendment that gives students the right to review and receive information.

“I’m a firm ‘no’ today,” she said, pointing out she also opposed a similar bill in the last legislative session as well and raising concerns about the underfunding of public schools that leaves 10% of the 500 districts without a librarian assigned to a school library.

“I will be a ‘no’ for every step this committee takes toward dismantling public education,” Ms. Williams said.

At a Tuesday hearing, Ms. Williams spoke of a librarian who told her of a student who was reading a book about sexual assault, which she said under the bill would be considered sexually explicit, and shared with the librarian that what was happening to the character in the book was happening to her.

“Turned out that that child was being abused by the parents or guardians in her life and courts were able to remove her,” Ms. Williams said. “There’s a reason why some of that material exists and why opt-in harms those kids who are being abused.”

Sharon Ward, senior policy adviser at the Education Law Center, argued at the hearing the bill is unnecessary.

She said schools already have policies that rely on their trained educators and school librarians to review materials for age relevance and appropriateness with eye toward complying with what courts have deemed acceptable and students’ First Amendment rights.

“We believe Senate Bill 7 is a book ban, plain and simple, that will permit school entities to purge book collections based on the most limited view of what is appropriate and will allow a single parent or a small group of parents to determine what books are available to all children,” Ms. Ward said. “This process will not protect parents’ rights but infringe on them.”

She said some predominantly white districts have banned authors of color or books addressing the LGBTQ community, contributing to a hostile learning environment and serving as an impediment to student learning.

“The opt-out process is an approach that supports parents’ rights while limiting the impacts of individual parent preferences on other students and families,” she said.

At the committee meeting, Mr. Aument said the problem with letting parents opt their children out of viewing sexually explicit content is that librarians don’t know what books contain that type of content and it puts the onus on parent to review every book.

“Continuing to argue that parents should be left in the dark about what content is available to their child in school while simultaneously denying them any control over that content is not a workable solution,” he said.

He further pointed out that in Mr. Ward’s testimony she made it clear the bill was not a book ban but could lead to one, a difference he thought was worth noting.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Emily Zimmerman, a parent and Warwick School Board member, shared several examples of sexually explicit content available on school library shelves and displayed pictures of them on huge poster boards as she offered her testimony. She said this issue is what prompted her to run for school board.

Speaking for herself and not as a school board member, Ms. Zimmerman said, “I feel like we’re fighting for the hearts and minds of our children, the next generation of marriages in the future. I can only fathom what infiltrating a mind with this kind of content will do to the next generation of marriages.”

Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin County, agreed with her. “Public school should not be a forum for indoctrination,” he said. “Indoctrinating them with perversion is beyond the scope of reason and I do think madness is setting in here.”

Ms. Ward said the bill, as written, encourages the removal of a whole book even if just a word or phrase meets its “vague and overbroad” definition for what constitutes sexually explicit material.

“Should every district remove ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and the Bible from its shelves? Will they? Unlikely,” Ms. Ward said.

Sen. Michele Brooks, R-Mercer County, after reading aloud the bill’s definition of sexual conduct, said, “We’re not talking about Romeo and Juliet. We’re not talking about the Bible.” Moreover, she said even if that definition in the legislation would apply to these books, it would still allow students to access those books if their parents agree to it.

In written testimony provided to the committee, the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the union that represents 187,000 teachers and other education professionals, opposed the legislation for a litany of reasons.

Among others, it raises a concern about students having less access to age-appropriate literature, history, information, stories, and perspectives; about students who have parents/guardians who are active participants in their educational process; and about this bill having a chilling effect on teaching and learning such as anatomy and physiology instruction about the human body as it relates to reproductive organs and instruction on “good touch, bad touch” taught in elementary grades.