Here is an example of the content being made available to children as young as 14 in the high school library in Cameron, Missouri. The school district and the board of education know this content is there but refuse to even require parental approval for a child to check it out. They know this content is in the hands of children but REFUSE to take any steps to protect them.
Give this a listen and then try to convince me how this is appropriate for children.
Here are the documents that will be shared with the Cameron, MO, board of education at the 17 October, 2023 board of education meeting. (We will add the link of that address after the board meeting.) These documents show I have been bringing concerns about the policy being discriminatory and indications that the school district isn’t complying with policy for more than a year. My concerns have been ignored. The board of education and Matt Robinson have ignored that they are not complying with the drug testing policy.
I will also include the link to the audio file I will mention where Robinson admits on 7 December of 2022 that he does not know which drug test is being conducted and that he is unconcerned he does not know. The video should start playing at the correct time stamp, but he makes this admission at 1 minute and 24 second mark.
Not knowing what tests are being conducted is a problem because the drug testing policy JFCI-AP1 calls for a specific test to be conducted. Approved board policy, which was adopted in 2014, requires a gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) be conducted on all non-negative urine samples. If the school district doesn’t know which tests are being done, it is impossible to ensure it is complying with this policy.
In response to parents and community members concerns about the sexually explicit adult content in books found inside the Cameron high school, the superintendent and board of education decided to send all the parents “book restriction forms”. Parents are responsible for completing the form with the book title and author of every book they do not want their children to read, and to submit it to the school librarian. The librarian will then insure that child does not check out any of those books. Sounds good, right?
Unfortunately, there is no good tool for parents to use to identify the books in the library that contain sexually explicit adult content, or any other number of concerning topics. It is the sole responsibility of the parents to know the content of more than 33,000 books in order to restrict their child from reading books each parent deems inappropriate.
At a board of education meeting in August, the board members discussed the book restriction form and suggested we use a catalog search by topic or subject to find books we don’t want our children to read. What they didn’t tell you, searching the catalog by topic or subject isn’t very effective. We use the book The Bluest Eye and the Cameron school districts online book catalog for the high school to make this point.
If you are not familiar with the content of the book The Bluest Eye, you read the concerning content on Book Looks or hear a reading of some of its passages on our Facebook page. The book tells of the molestation of a 12 year old girl from the perspective of the man who is assaulting her. It is dark, and difficult to read. With that information, we will show the subjects listed in the catalog for this book in the video below. You will see why what the district is proposing, that parents are responsible for finding the content they added to our libraries, isn’t a viable option.
There just aren’t any good tools for parents to identify the concerning books. The school district knows this, but they want to say they’ve done something. They have, they’ve passed their responsibility for these books to the parents.
This recent article from The Lion outlines a serious problem in the United States, teachers who are accused of sexual misconduct against students. Nearly 12 percent of recent high school graduates report they were subjected to sexual misconduct by coaches and teachers. We believe there is a direct correlation between teachers pushing and discussing human sexuality with students and an increase in the number of incidents of sexual misconduct against students.
According to the US Department of Education and the Office for Civil Rights(OCR) and data they shared, there are deeply troubling numbers of reported incidents from the 2017-2018 school year. And we know not all the incidents are reported. Accord to the OCR, there were 786 allegations of rape or attempted rape by teachers during that one year period. The US Department of Ed defines rape as “forced sexual intercourse–vaginal, anal, or oral.” They also found 14,152 allegations of sexual assault against students. Sexual assault is defined by the USDOE as “threatened rape, fondling, indecent liberties, or child molestation,”
So lets plug these USDOE 2017-2018 statistics into the Cameron school district. If there are 400 CHS students and the national average is 11 percent of those approximated 400 students would mean roughly 44 of them have been subjected to sexual misconduct by coaches and teachers. Those number will obviously be lower or higher based on the actual number of CHS students.
Many will say that Cameron is a small town, surely that is a big city issue and it isn’t a problem here. In April of 2023 a CHS senior addressed the Cameron board of education and talked about comments being made by teachers in that school. Jump to the 2 minute and 10 second mark in this video.
Allowing teachers to discuss sexuality with students is a gateway to actions which result in statistics like the one the USDOE reported above. Have discussions on human sexuality and gender become more or less common since 2018? Far more common. Will this result in increases in the number of incidents of sexual misconduct by coaches and teachers? I fear it will.
Missouri needs to protect our children and pass legislation to protect our children. Other states are doing this in the form of “parents right” bills. But our school board can take steps now. They can create policy which forbids teachers and staff from having those types of discussions with our children.
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 special board meeting on August 29, 2023, the Cameron, Missouri board of education voted to rescind the policy KLB AP-1, which gave the community the ability to challenge a book inside the district as inappropriate. The district no longer has any obligation to even look into the matter or even review a book which concerns a parent or member of the community. It is now entirely at the boards discretion to decide if a book concerns them enough to order the district to review it.
This board of education has not taken a single meaningful step to remove or even restrict the most sexually explicit books which we have shared with them. Their only response is to give us platitudes about “diversity” and being inclusive. What are the chances that they will take any future concerns seriously?
Of additional concern, the board amended board policy BDDH-1in March in a way which allows them to restrict any speaker from discussing any topic which has been discussed previously within the last 90 days. The board of education will only allow the community to ask their majesties if they will consider allowing us to express our concerns about one of 33,000 plus books 4 times a year. And if you are given the privilege of addressing their high court, they are not obligated to even look into your concern.
This isn’t a body which is accountable to the people.
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.
Recently a new rule went into effect in MO, Library Certification Requirement for the Protection of Minors, that was designed to help protect children from sexually explicit, obscene and age inappropriate content while empowering parents. No surprise, the Cameron school district is in direct defiance and non-compliance with this new rule. Libraries which do not comply with these rules will be ineligible to receive state funding earmarked for the purchase of books. Rules for thee, but not for me. Why wouldn’t the school district want to comply with a requirement designed to help protect minors?
There are six requirements outlined in this rule that libraries must follow in order to receive funding from the state. Those rules are :
- Libraries must create and publish a written policy describing how they consider age appropriateness when selecting materials. – No such policy exists at the Cameron school district. This is one of the many complaints of the citizens concerned about the books in our school district.
- Libraries are banned from buying materials that are “obscene,” “pornographic for minors” or “child pornography” as defined by Missouri law.
- Libraries must create and publish a policy letting parents and guardians determine what materials their child(ren) can access. Library workers are banned from giving material to children that hasn’t been approved by parents. – No such policy exists in the Cameron school district. They do offer a “restriction form” but that does not comply with this requirement. It is going to require a GOOD policy for the district to be able to comply with this one.
- No “age-inappropriate” materials will be displayed in areas of libraries primarily used for children or teens. – Under the new rule, parents have the right to challenge such displays. This is good for parents AND students. See item 6.
- Events held in the libraries must designate which age groups the events are deemed appropriate to allow parents to decide if they will allow their child(ren) to participate.
- Libraries will adopt a written policy letting parents challenge whether materials, events or displays are “age-appropriate.” Results of challenges must be published on a library’s website. – This item is big. I will write about it below.
Just last week at a special board of education meeting the board voted unanimously to rescind policy KLB-AP1. That policy partially complied with item 6. But our board of education felt it was prudent and necessary to rescind the policy which allowed parents to challenge individual books if we had any concerns about the contents.
Now the district tells us if we have concerns about a book we need to address those concerns through policy BDDH-1. You will have to request to be added to the agenda to address the board of education and ask them to consider instructing the district to review the book which concerns you. Mind you, they are under no obligation to do so. It is entirely at their discretion.
The stated goal of this library certification requirement is to protect children. Why would the district and board of education vote to rescind policy KLB-AP1 which gave parents and tax payers a process to challenge books, to try and protect our children?Why is our superintendent not complying with this new rule? Is he not aware, or is this a deliberate act?
To the parents and tax payers in the Cameron community, its time to take a stand. I encourage you to contact every member of the board of education and ask them why they choose to move away from the requirements that were put in place to help protect our children. Demand answers. And let us know how the respond.
https://www.cameron.k12.mo.us/page/board-members
Currently the Cameron school district has no policy in place which would prohibit sexually explicit material from being in our school libraries. This is true for the content that is currently in the library as well as books that can be added in the future. No policy will prevent more sexually explicit content from being added to the library.
At the special board of education meeting in August, the board directed Matt Robinson to order the review of all the books that been previously challenged under policy KLB-AP1. They knew, or should have known, the outcome of that review before they even ordered it to be conducted. No content will be removed for being sexually explicit. It will be retained because it fits the districts mission to be “diverse”.
Policy IIA is the basis, the guide, for how policy IIAC-R1 will be viewed and applied as the school district reviews the list of challenged books. Within the highlighted picture above, notice this quoted portion.
Multi-cultural, disability-aware and gender-fair concepts will be criteria for selection of materials
The people who are reviewing the challenged books will argue that the books that include issues such as LGBT, alternative sexuality, alternative genders and the other topics that concern us are all multi-cultural issues. Because All Boys Aren’t Blue is about a homosexual black man it gets 2 marks in the multi-cultural column and will likely be retained.
You will notice that the district doesn’t define multi-cultural, disability-aware or gender-fair concepts. Because the district doesn’t define it, those who are reviewing the books under this policy get to apply their own subjective definitions.
Moving on to the policy that will be used to “reconsider” the challenged books. Towards the bottom of policy IIAC-R1 you will find the section which covers reconsideration. This is the image to the right of this text. You will notice that this too is entirely subjective, it will be entirely at the discretion of each committee member to decide what they feel those subjective guidelines mean.
Look at item 5. We know the librarian likely recommends every one of the challenged books, she personally selected most of them. So no chance she will say those books aren’t recommended. But should a sexually explicit book which describes how to have anal sex be recommended by anyone at the school district? I say no. Not appropriate content for young children and no amount of context will make it OK.
What should be done?
Many of the books that are being challenged are there because board policy was not followed. Those books should be removed until they can be added in accordance with board policy. To remove only the challenged books would invite lawsuit from organizations like the ACLU for viewpoint discrimination.
Anyone who failed to follow board policy relating to this book mess should be considered as having a conflict of interest in being on that reconsideration committee. Other teachers, librarians or administrators should be appointed, as necessary.
The board of education has the ability, and obligation, to amend policy which does not comply with community standards. It is in their power to draft new policy, or alter existing policy, to protect our children from sexually explicit content. They could amend IIAC-R1 to replace sexually explicit content as well as limit the schools ability to add new books with sexually explicit content.
They could publish the list of books they hope to add to the library in advance of such purchases. This would allow the community to look into the books and make the book selection committee aware of any concerning content. That would give the community a stake in the books being bought with their tax dollars while helping to make the job easier for the selection committee.