Here is the video from the Cameron R-1 school districts board of education meeting from December 19, 2023. There are time stamps in the description for the video. There was an update in this video to the ongoing book fight.
Mrs Debbie Cox addresses the Cameron school districts board of education to talk about the sexually explicit books they are making available to students in the school libraries. Some of those books violate Missouri law and statute 573.550, prohibition against schools providing sexually explicit content to minors.
In the Cameron high school library, the process and reason behind the sexually explicit books which have been added to the school libraries makes sense when you know the players behind the scenes. Or in this instance, it is the state library association known as MASL. It is the position of this organization that children should be permitted to read any content they want to read.
Listen to this interview with the President of the Missouri Association of School Librarians (MASL) and then ask yourself, should an organization with these stated goals and opinions about parents be creating our guidelines on what content will be made available to children?
Recently a local Cameron resident, Mr Dan Landi, shared with me a book he found in the Cameron high school library. He found it with the school districts online book catalog through the school districts website. The book was the graphic novel version of Slaughterhouse Five. This was of particular interest because it contains pictures of people having sex, making it illegal for school to provide to children under Missouri statute 573.550. I confirmed the book showed as being in the online catalog through the resource Go Follett by selecting the state and appropriate school. I was able to find it in the CHS library catalog.
I found a website dedicated to the book fight in the Rockwood, MO, school district called Library Exposed. Searching their website I was able to see some of the images found in the book Slaughterhouse Five. I was able to determine why MO schools were pulling it. I will link directly to that page for the adults who want to be informed.
That got me curious, I wondered how many other books were in Cameron high school that had been pulled from Missouri schools for containing porn, as defined by Missouri statute 573.550. A quick internet search and I found an article from November of 2022 which said 300 books had been banned in Missouri because of the then newly implemented law. The article linked to a google document where there is a list of books and their authors which have been removed by various Missouri school district. A little copy and paste and I was able to see how many of those books still showed up in the Cameron high school library. To my dismay, I found 20 books in the Cameron high school library which appear other schools in Missouri determined were sexually explicit enough to remove . Twenty books which other Missouri school districts pulled from their shelves because they contained pictures which they were concerned would cause them to be in violation of Missouri law prohibiting schools from providing sexually explicit books to children.
In a previous blog entry, I discussed the graphic novel book Watchmen. I showed some of the content from that book, also found on the Library Exposed website. I include a video in that blog entry where I show the content and relevant statutes. You can find the blog post and video at Graphic novel Watchmen.
The image to the right is from a screen shot taken of the high school library catalog which shows Watchmen was in the library and was checked out to a Cameron high school student.
We obtained records from March 3, 2023 from the Cameron school district through Missouri Sunshine Law requests that show Robinson informed the board of education by email about a conversation he had with all the district librarians in August of 2022. He told the board “I sat down with all librarians in August and shared my thoughts on controversial books and shared that our day is coming, it’s only a matter of time.” That indicates he knew there were books that would concern parents and members of the community. Did they know about these books then? Why didn’t they take steps in August to avoid this issue? Has their day arrived? Hopefully it has and this means these books will finally be removed.
In April of 2023, Andi Lockridge, the attorney who sits on the Cameron board of education, asked the superintendent Matt Robinson during that months board of education meeting if any of those books, as defined by the statute she read aloud, were in the Cameron school district. He responded by shaking his head and said “no”. You can watch a recording of that board meeting that was live streamed on Citizen Observer Facebook page. The relevant portion begins around the 46 minute and 20 second mark.
Here is the current list of books which we found on the library catalog for the Cameron high school.
- Autopsies by Jeffrey Gary
- The Dark Knight series by Frank Miller
- Brazen:Rebel Ladies who rocked the world by Penelope Bagieu
- Grass by Gendry-Kim
- Himawari House by Harmony Becker
- How It All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi
- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
- Red Rising by Pierce Brown
- Salughterhouse Five graphic novel by Vonnegut
- Speak the graphic novel by Laurie Anderson
- Spinning by Tillie Walden
- The Best We Can Do by Thi Bui
- The Giver by Craig Russell
- The Sacrafice of Darkness by Roxane Gay
- Watchmen by Allen Moore
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.
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.
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
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.
In an article published by Heidi Schmidt on August 28, 2023, on the KC TV 5 website she shared the American Library Association’s top 13 most challenged books of 2022 in Missouri and Kansas. Out of curiosity I decided to check the Cameron library and see how many of those books we had here.
It didn’t take me long to find the first book. I knew this one from memory. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson is the 2nd most challenged books in Missouri and Kansas. In this picture from the personal Instagram account of the Cameron high school librarian you can see the cover of All Boys in the top right. According to Heidi, this book was challenged 86 times for the stated reason of having sexually explicit content.
Residents of Cameron who attended the August 29, 2023 special board of education meeting had the opportunity to hear Dan Landi read some of that concerning sexually explicit content. For those of you who missed it, you can watch Dan read it to the board of education.
In total, the Cameron high school library has 8 of the top 13 most challenged books of 2022. The Cameron board of education recently said our district is a leader in education in NW Missouri. I don’t think they had this particular stat in mind when the made that statement.
The other 7 of the top 13 books found in the Cameron high school library and the most state reason for being challenged are as follows.
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison – sexually explicit, sexual assault and
- Looking for Alaska by John Green – sexually explicit and LBGT content
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky – sexual abuse, sexually explicit content, LBGT content, drug use and profanity
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie – sexually explicit content and profanity
- Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez – sexually explicit content and abuse
- Crank by Ellen Hopkins – sexually explicit content and drug use
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews – sexually explicit content and profanity