At the May 2025 school board meeting the Cameron, MO board of eduction appeared to dismiss the concerns of local resident Heath Gilbert when he asserted the school district is violating the 1st Amendment protections for freedom of speech. Gilbert asserts the deviations from district policy requiring residents to make their home address and cell number a public record as a condition of addressing the board both compel and chill free speech.
In what could be described as a violation of their oath of office to the constitutions of Missouri and the United States, the entire board of education appear to have dismissed those concerns and showed support for the efforts by the district and Superintendent Matt Robinson. What are those new requirements and how do they violate the 1st Amendment?
The cause of this claim for 1st Amendment violations revolves around a “form” the district requires everyone to complete as a condition of being able to exercise ones right to address the board during a public meeting. We will discuss the form next.
Details about the districts “form”
When a member of the public makes the required request to address the board of eduction they are provided with a link to an online form. The school district requires this form to be completed as a condition of being granted permission to speak to the board. Failing to complete any portion of this form will result in a denial to address the school board.
The district requires residents provide their name, email address, cell phone number and home address before asking for details on what you want to discuss. They also require you to offer a solution to the stated issue.
Failure to complete any portion of the form, or to complete it accurately, will result in a denial of being added to the agenda to address the board.
Is the “form” part of school policy?
Absolutely not. The board policy and requirements for being added to the agenda to address the board are outlined in policy C-140-P. There is no mention of “form” in that policy or any requirement to make one’s name, address and phone number a public record as a condition of addressing the board.
The policy does require everyone to meet with the superintendent as a condition of addressing the board, but Superintendent Matt Robinson refuses to hold those meetings. The board ignores staff not following board policy and refuses to instruct him to follow policy and hold those meetings, as required in current policy.
Cameron schools compel speech of residents
As of December 2024, the Cameron school district began to compel anyone wishing to address the board to make their home address and cell phone numbers a public record as a condition of speaking to the board. Because of the Missouri sunshine law, any addresses, phone numbers or other information submitted to the district as a condition of speaking to the board becomes a public record.
The school district is required by law to make that personal information submitted via the “form” available to anyone who requests it. The school district and board of education are comfortable with making your personal information available to public. Requiring one to speak or telling them what they must say is compelled speech and a clear 1st Amendment violation.
Can public schools or governmental bodies compel speech?
Absolutely not. The Cameron school district and board of education are governmental bodies subject to compelled speech restrictions. Fortunately there are several Supreme Court cases where they have weighed in and offered opinions on compelled speech. Examples of these opinions include the infamous cake baker Jack Phillips out of Colorado. He was sued multiple times for refusing to bake various cakes which violated his religious belief. To force him to bake a cake would be compelled speech.
You can read examples of Supreme Court cases describing the dangers of compelled speech in this article by Neal Hardin. Compelled speech is dangerous and a violation of the 1st Amendment.
How is the Cameron school district chilling speech?
The same form and the requirement to disclose personal information can cause someone to not address the board out of fear of reprisal or retaliation. The Cameron school districts requirement to make personal information a public record can cause someone to not exercise their freedom of speech out of fear of reprisal or retaliation. That is chilled speech.
Here is a real life example. At the December 2023 school board meeting the book topic was on the school board meeting agenda here in Cameron. Concerned members of the public spoke against the books and their sexually explicit adult content being made available to children. Three school staff members addressed the board in favor of those books. One teacher referred to the efforts of the men who were leading the opposition of those books as a circus, implying they are clowns. She used strong language implying that racism, bigotry and misandry were the root causes of any issues with the books. Would she still be willing to call out those men and book review committee and once again make those same accusations knowing they could obtain her home address and cell phone number?
Or is it more likely that this teacher would be concerned one of those men would contact her on her cell phone or show up at her front door after implying they were clowns. Would she be willing to use the same language as she had previously back in December, or would she be compelled to use softer language or not mention them at all? The intellectually honest answer is anyone would likely soften their statements to the Cameron school board or choose not to address them at all out of concern of harassment or threats by someone who doesn’t like what they said.
This is what chilling speech looks like. And your Cameron R-1 schools board of education supports the actions of the district which compels speech, chills speech and does not align with school policy. They ban members of the public for not following policy but ignore and excuse when staff do the same.
What is the cause of these new restrictions on free speech?
We can only speculate as neither the district or board of education have explained the deviation from policy. To put it simply, they want to control what information is shared with the community at these board meetings about the school. This is an attempt to control or limit what is said.
A quick look at the new Rules of Decorum for the district and you will see that the district has granted itself the right to terminate the designated public forum time allotted for a member of the public if they bring up something that is not on their form. See the seconded bulleted item in number 2 of the Decorum Rules document.
To further speculate, I would guess it stems from the November 2024 board meeting where resident Heath Gilbert used the veil of body worn cameras to bring up alleged incidents of sexual assault of students at the elementary school and on a school bus. You can see that video below.
Final closing statement statement
Each Cameron school district board member swore an oath to the constitutions of the state of Missouri and these United States. The new requirement that forces residents, teachers and students to make their phone numbers and home address a public record is compelling speech. This practice can and has chilled speech because residents don’t want to make that information a public record. Chilled and compelled speech are both clear violations of the 1st Amendment. For the board members to support these blatant violations is also a clear violation of their oaths of office. How can we trust the actions and words of these board members if they don’t take one of our nations most sacred oaths seriously?
Please consider peacefully contacting your elected school board members and urge them to honor their oaths and stop this madness. The email address for the board can be found on their webpage or you can email the entire board directly at boardofeducation@cameronschools.org
In a recent post on Facebook by Cameron R-1 School board candidate Michael Barlow responds to questions asked by the local Cameron Newspapers. One of the questions asked of all the school board candidates relates to the 2 year battle over sexually explicit books in the Cameron R-1 public school libraries.
The response from Mr. Barlow highlights one of the issues we have been vocal about over the past 2 years. I have no doubt Mr Barlow believes those things, but his belief is based on a lack of information from the Cameron R-1 schools. There is a serious lack of transparency in the school district and the community simply doesn’t know the reality of our book fight with the school.
In his statement, which you can read in its entirety HERE, Michael said the following about how he believes the book issue will be handled moving forward.
“A legitimate concern has been brought forward about content in books. My belief is this will continue to be identified, addressed, and corrected by the school district.” – Michael Barlow for Cameron School Board
What the Cameron community doesn’t know, the school superintendent knew 6 months before we found and went public with the first book challenges these books were there. The district knew, had the opportunity to quietly remove them, and did nothing. Matt Robinson, school superintendent, ignored the issue and waited for parents or the community to figure it out. How do we know this? Public records obtained through a Missouri Sunshine Law request.
The following image was 
obtained through a public records request. This email was sent by Matt Robinson to the entire boards of education. Go to the last paragraph and read the last two sentences. Matt Robinson told the board of education “I sat down with all librarians in August and shared by thoughts on controversial books and shared our day is coming, it’s only a matter of time. Well, our day arrived last Thursday.” – Cameron R-1 school superintendent
The Cameron R-1 School district knew we had abhorrent and deviant sexually explicit books in our school libraries. They also knew they had books with content that was of concern and would likely be challenged. Children were checking out and reading these books while the problem was ignored. Instead of being proactive and getting ahead of the issue, they did nothing and waited for these sexually explicit books to be discovered by someone else. They knew these books were in our libraries and chose to do NOTHING.
The Cameron community largely believes the school district is addressing the book issue. Because of a lack of transparency by the school district and the board of education the community doesn’t know the truth of the matter. Every step taken by the Cameron school district relating to the sexually explicit and other adult content in these books has been reactive.
The following is a bulleted list of things I do not believe the community knows about the book issue, the Cameron R-1 school district and the board of education.
- The school district has no plan for the district to identify any other remaining books with adult content. They are relying on parents and the community to find them.
- Despite relying on the community to identify books with adult content, the district and board refuse to allow the community access to the libraries to inspect books. Parents are not allowed to see the books being provided to their children.
- The Cameron school district and board of education have ignored every one of our questions about the educational value or curriculum objective of these books.
- The school and board president have ignored every request for a community engagement meeting to talk about the book issue. They do NOT want to be on the record talking about this.
- The “book review committee” meets in secret and keeps no records of any kind.
- The procedure used by the book review committee to determine if a book needs to be restricted is also secret. They refuse to provide any documents.
- The reason a book has been restricted by the book review committee is also a secret. The school will not tell the community what content is on those restricted books.
- Once a book has been restricted, the school doesn’t share any information with parents that would empower us to determine if we want our children to read these books. They have used tax payer resources to pay employees to review these books. Why not document the process and inform the public?
- there is no policy that allows a parent or tax payer to challenge a book. Most every other Missouri school has that policy.
- unlike every other school in our area, Cameron has no policy that would allow a member of the community to challenge a decision by the book review committee and ask the school board to take a vote and make the final decision.
- Cameron did have both of those policies in place but rescinded them both when I challenged the decisions of the first book review committees.
- Cameron does not have a policy that covers the selection of library books. It is entirely at the discretion of the librarian. This is likely why we have so many inappropriate books in Cameron.
- In two years, the Cameron school district and board of education have NEVER addressed the community or publicly talked about what kind of books are appropriate for our district.
- The only public responses by the board of education is to cite “diversity”. Do they truly believe that “diversity” requires we provide abhorrent content to children?
- The Cameron school board doesn’t like the book issue, so they changed policy and limit us to discussing books once every 3 months. Even with new information relevant to the book topic, the board refuses.
One of our constant concerns about the Cameron school district and the board of education is that we do not feel they are listening to us. We have been saying consistently for some time that they are ignoring us. On Tuesday night two of the board members, Pam and Staci, proved it.
In this video clip you will hear a portion of the address that Paula Allen made to the board. She referred to the April board meeting when a student told the board about sexual comments being made by teachers. Pam and Staci both asked about this teacher and when he left the school district. Had the looked into the complaint of sexual harassment of students by teachers back in April, wouldn’t the know the answer to this question? Shouldn’t they know?
This clearly indicates to me this board of education does not take our concerns seriously. It appears they dismissed Kassidy Wilcox entirely. This is why parents and students say that when they come to the district with concerns and problems that we feel ignored and dismissed. Because they are ignoring and dismissing us.
We often times hear from folks that we are exaggerating about the book issue at the Cameron school district, that the books are not as bad as we imply. We also have people shocked and appalled when they hear one of us read from one of these books. We are going to provide a list of those books which you’re able to view online through the Book Looks website below. You can check our work and confirm they’re in the library with another website, Go Follett. Just select your state, your district and the school.
The following list is from the Cameron high school. These books contain adult sexually explicit content.
- All Boys Aren’t Blue by Johnson – LINK
- The Bluest Eye by Morrison – LINK
- A Court of Thorns and Roses by Maas – LINK
- Crank by Hopkins – LINK
- Eleanor and Park by Rowell – LINK
- Fade by McMann – LINK
- The Freedom Writers Diary by The Freedom Writers Erin Gruwell – LINK
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood – LINK
- The You I’ve Never Known by Hopkins – LINK
- YOLO by Myracle – LINK
- Juliet Takes a Breath by Rivera – LINK
- The Kite Runner by Hosseini – LINK
- Like a Love Story by Nazemian- LINK
- Looking for Alaska: a Novel by Green – LINK
- Lucky by Sebold – LINK
- The Lovely Bones by Sebold – LINK
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Andrews – LINK
- Nineteen Minutes by Picoult – LINK
- Out of Darkness by Perez – LINK
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Chbosky – LINK
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut – LINK
- Sold by McCormick – LINK
- Speak by Anderson – LINK
- Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Maguire – LINK
- The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Foley – LINK
- A Child Called IT by David Pelzer – LINK
- How beautiful the ordinary by Michael Cart – LINK
- Ask the Passengers by A.S. King – LINK
- All the Things We Do In the Dark by Saundra Mitchell – LINK
- Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott – LINK
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Foer – LINK
- The DUFF by Kody Keplinger – LINK
- Crown of Midnight: A throne of glass by Maas – LINK
- Throne of Glass by Maas – LINK
- Smoke by Hopkins – LINK
- Burned by Hopkins – LINK
- Crank by Hopkins – LINK
- Fallout by Hopkins – LINK
- Glass by Hopkins – LINK
- Identical by Hopkins – LINK
- Impulse by Hopkins – LINK
- Rumble by Hopkins – LINK
- Tilt by Hopkins – LINK
- Traffick by Hopkins – LINK
- Ttfn by Myracle – LINK
- L8r, G8r by Myracle –LINK
- Shine by Myracle – LINK
- TTYL by Myracle- LINK
- The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis – LINK
- Heroine Mindy McGinnis – LINK
- Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher – LINK
- Beloved by Toni Morrison – LINK
- The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas – LINK
- Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender – LINK
- Friday by Robert Heinlein – LINK
- Go Ask Alice by Anonymous – LINK
- Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson – LINK
- How It All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi – LINK
- I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson – LINK
- A Stolen Life by Dugard – LINK
- The Glass Castle by Walls –
- The Poet X by Acevedo – LINK
At the conclusion of the September 19, 2023 board of education meeting, Pam Ice, president of the board of education in Cameron, Missouri, read a prepared statement to the public who were in attendance. I believe some of the information she provided is inaccurate. I have inserted my response into that original video. That compilation is shared in the video below.
I believe this is yet another calculated delay tactic by the Cameron school district to try and buy time. This policy, like the last one they used to review the sexually explicit books, does not include a solution to the problem. This policy does not give the district the ability to restrict content that is vulgar or sexually explicit.
The district has no policy in place that will prevent additional sexually explicit, vulgar and inappropriate content from being added to our libraries. They do not have any plan, or apparent desire, to start a process of finding additional concerning content that hasn’t yet been identified. Why are the members of the public responsible for finding the inappropriate content the school added?
This shouldn’t be so difficult.
In a previous blog entry titled Cameron school district likely ineligible for state funds to purchase books under new rule to protect children, we speculated the Cameron school district wasn’t complying with this new rule. In the interest of getting the truth of the matter, we submitted a sunshine law request seeking the records that would show the truth. We were right. The Cameron R-1 school district is not in compliance.
You can see the sunshine law request above that was made to request records that would have shown the Cameron school district attempting to comply with this new rule to qualify for state funds designated specifically to purchase library books.
In this next image you can see the response from the Cameron school district to that records request. When Ms Walker says “The district does not have any records responsive to this request.” that is our indication that they didn’t submit that paperwork by the deadline date. Had they submitted the paperwork there would be a record.
Does that mean the school district won’t add more books to the library?
The Cameron school district will still add lots of books to the Cameron school libraries, they will just use funds other than those provided by the secretary of state to pay for them. By using funds the school already has they can avoid those pesky restrictions on providing vulgar and sexually explicit books to our children.
This is unfortunate for two reasons. The most obvious is that in order to qualify for those state funds that can only be used to buy books, the Cameron school district would have to take steps to protect our children from vulgar and sexually explicit content. That would be the win that we are seeking.
The second reason, if those book purchases are bought with funds that the school already has it prevents those book purchase funds from being used for other necessities within the district. If we can obtain funds from the state specifically to buy books we could stretch the budget further to see to more needs of our students.
Can anything be done since they aren’t complying?
I had the same question, and I have to admit I may be wrong here. But my understanding is this isn’t a law, so there is no way to force compliance. If the Cameron school district doesn’t wish to comply with the requirements to receive those funds they are ineligible to receive them. They are not required to received those funds.
Our fight will continue
This new rule would have been an easy solution for the Cameron school district and board of education to protect our children from inappropriate content. It is more than a little disappointing they elected to ignore it and not comply.
Our fight to remove the adult content from the school district is far from over. We are committed to bringing change and protecting our children. If you are willing to help, either in the eye of the public or from the shadows, please let us know.