Parents of students at a North Carolina High School are calling for the termination of a school librarian and an investigation into teachers endorsing age-inappropriate literature through an advocacy campaign to promote what the American Library Association (ALA) classifies as “banned books.”
The ALA group Unite Against Book Bans, which itself created the “Right to Read Day,” launched an initiative for high school students to make their own public service announcement (PSA) about why books shouldn’t be banned.
As an example, Palisades High School staff, including the school’s media coordinator Meghan Sanford, were in a TikTok video promoting various books that have been challenged for explicit content.
The winner of the PSA challenge would get to be the principal for the day. The contest was canceled after parents complained, though the books remain in the library.
School Staff Promote Explicit Material
In the promotional video for the campaign, Sanford read from “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a young adult nonfiction collection of essays detailing graphic sexual encounters between two young men. Another staff member read from “Flamer,” a graphic novel depicting the sexual encounters of a boy in middle school.In “The Bluest Eye,” another staff member’s selection, the author describes child sexual abuse in graphic detail.
These authors leave nothing to the imagination in their writing.
Initially, Hawley said her emails to the school board were bounced back to her by the district’s email server because of the profanity in the material she included.
Though the program was shut down after Hawley contacted the superintendent, books can only be removed from the library by a petition to the media advisory committee, which is made up of Sanford and the school principal, Erik Olejarczyk, Hawley said.
In an email to parents, Olejarczyk said the assignment was to “encourage exploration of a variety of reading material,” but that the competition “has proven to be a distraction in the learning environment of the school, and therefore we will not be moving forward with it.”
In her letter, Hawley asked for an investigation into why the competition was allowed and for disciplinary action to be taken against staff who participated in the TikTok video.
School Response
Nicollete Grant, the Southwest Learning Community Superintendent for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), said the staff didn’t challenge students to read specific books but asked the students to critically evaluate why some books are banned.“The analysis of the reasons why books are banned aligned with the American History class’s study of book banning during WWII,” Grant wrote in an email responding to objections to the program.
Because the TikTok video showed staff members reading specific books with an invitation to check one of them out at the school library, Hawley said this explanation is a lie, adding that there were no hashtags for WWII, only for #LGBTQIA, #banned, #explicit, #profanity, and #abuseawareness.
Hawley said Sanford pushed these books before when she attempted to hold a National Right to Read Day for transgender children, but the event was shut down after parents complained.
“If I offered one of these books to a child on the street I would go to jail,” Hawley said.
Both the school code of conduct and state law prohibits “obscene literature and exhibitions.”
Not Banning Books
Nationwide, there has been a debate over whether age-inappropriate, sexually-charged books found in taxpayer-funded school libraries need to be removed.Mainstream media platforms have framed the effort as censorship, or the banning of books.
Even in Sanford’s own presentation found in Hawley’s collection of documents, she said, “There have been record-breaking attempts to ban books in recent years throughout the U.S. Ban attempts, AKA challenges, have gone up from 500 in 2019 to over 1,500 in 2022.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this,“ Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told ABC News. ”The last two years have been exhausting, frightening, outrage-inducing.”
ALA President Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada said in a statement to ABC News that librarians sit down with parents every day to decide what children need to be reading.
“Now, many library workers face threats to their employment, their personal safety, and in some cases, threats of prosecution for providing books to youth they and their parents want to read,” Pelayo-Lozada said.
The problem with this argument, Hawley contends, is that neither she nor any parents she’s aware of are calling for the banning of books.
Efforts Compared to Third Reich
Brooke Weiss, chair of the Mecklenburg County chapter of Moms for Liberty and vice chair of the group’s North Carolina legislative committee, spoke with The Epoch Times, agreeing with Hawley’s clarification on not wanting to ban books.Comparing parents’ efforts to restrict explicit books in public schools to the Third Reich’s book banning in 1930s Germany is out of line, Weiss said.
At the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board meeting on May 9, Weiss spoke during public comment.
“There’s a difference between book banning and insisting that their child doesn’t have unfettered access to sexually explicit material in schools,” she said.
As a Jewish woman, Weiss told the board she takes “great offense.”
“Don’t ever compare me as a parent insisting on age-appropriate material to what the Third Reich did to my people in Germany,” Weiss said. “Don’t ever do that.”
Weiss’ work with Moms for Liberty advocating against school curriculums that promote critical race theory and the sexualization of children has brought her before multiple school board meetings over the last two years amid the a growing trend of age-inappropriate content surfacing in school libraries.
Frequently, she’s been told school officials weren’t aware of the books in the library, she told The Epoch Times.
Until now, she’s also thought only a few teachers were pushing the books.
‘It Will Damage Them’
Wendy Hawley’s husband, Chad Hawley, spoke at the school board meeting, and called the promotion of the books to minor students “criminal behavior.”“The books aren’t the problem,” he said. “We can’t stop these books from being written. You can’t do it; I can’t do it. But we can put a stop to the reviewers that are reviewing these books and the content that they are approving.”
Hawley proceeded to read excerpts from a book before calling for the termination of the librarian and an investigation into the staff “who are promoting this pedophilia, rape, and incest.”
Parent Kesha Drake spoke after Hawley, stating that she was shaken by his readings.
“I would never sit down with my 17-year-old son and say, ‘Let’s read this together,’” Drake said. “It is so disgusting. I’m sorry I’m so emotional right now because this right here is the worst of the worst.”
She said students can be taught about anatomy and the functions of body parts without going into explicit, sexual detail.
“It will damage them,” she said. “Pornography will damage a child. They will grow up and be just like the people that are promoting it.”
Referring to writing about explicit sexual abuse, Drake said one can just write “girl molested,” instead of taking it any further.
“A girl molested—you know where that goes,” she said. “These books are so explicit it is ridiculous. You can’t even listen to music nowadays. This is way worse than what I’ve ever heard in music. And we’re talking about high school kids that are still developing.”
Book Rating System
In a later phone interview, Weiss stressed her opposition to banning books and proposed instead a rating system like what movies, television, and video games have.“All that happens now is a book is classified as adult fiction, which tells you nothing,” Weiss said. “When you watch a movie, a rating comes on and tells you if there’s explicit content. I want books to have the same rating.”
The Epoch Times contacted the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System and the ALA for comment.
