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.
Update on our previous post about the “Book Tasting” event from the Cameron Missouri high school. We have obtained clarification from the district and a copy of the documents seen in picture from the Cameron R-1 schools Facebook page. We will share that clarification and the 43 page document we received.
Today we received an email that documented a Missouri Sunshine law response that was forwarded to us. A concerned tax payer had request a copy of the document seen in the districts Facebook post about the “book tasting” event. The school district has fulfilled that records request and provided a clarifying statement. You can see the documents in the following image on the flat surface under the monitor.
According to the statement in the email response Mr Landi received, that document seen in the photo was apparently unrelated to the book tasting event and wasn’t intended specifically for the book tasting even. Here is the districts statement.
The following link will allow you to download the 43 page PDF provided by the Cameron R-1 school distinct.
Looking at this document and all of its pages, I am left with the two different gut feelings. First, this material lacks any warnings to the type of adult content found in these restricted books. Second, it seems this document is intended to get children interested in reading the adult content that superintendent Matt Robinson personally determined needed to be restricted to all students except those who are 18 years old. Is the school district truly spending tax payer resources to encourage children to read sexually explicit adult content?
It is interesting that the school district chose to use school district staff and resources to create this “unfettered review” for students. Despite being asked to do so for almost 2 years, the district refuses to create a similar document for parents. We want something that outlines the content in these books that caused the superintendent to restrict them. I believe it is reasonable for the Cameron R-1 school district to provide parents with a resource like this 43 page PDF that would allow us to make an informed decision about allowing our children to read these books.
Currently the Cameron R-1 school district doesn’t provide parents with anything that explains why a specific book has been restricted by the district. Even the Destiny Discover service parents can use doesn’t describe the content in these books. Superintendent Matt Robinson determined these books needed to be restricted, doesn’t the school district owe it to the parents to tell us why?
In a previous blog post titled “Reents-Dickkut says students can “view” restricted books” we covered what appears to be an intentional run around of the parents wishes. Restricted books were provided to the class without at least one parents approval. Dickkut appears to have admitted as much in her email response to a concerned parent.
Considering those two books, Speak and Hate U Give, were among the 43 pages in this document, I do not believe the district can claim this was an accident. The cover of each pages specifically states “These books require a parent signed Full Access Agreement” on every page. That is pretty clear to me. Here are those two books as seen in this document.
The Cameron R-1 school district has spent two years ignoring our questions about these books. Of course, I have more questions after inspecting this document. Who created this document and why? Was it created by direction of school administrators? Which one? Or is this dimply the act of one person and another attempt to indoctrinate our children and circumvent the will of parents.
I will close out this post by sharing an Instagram post from an account appearing to belong to the high school librarian. They are recording an unboxing video as the appear to promote a series of different LBTQAlphabetSoup books. Several of those books seen in this video have been restricted or outright removed because of their adult content.
Did you catch her mention of “diversity” as she discussed these books with a student? Notice her hashtags on that post in the description under the video? Yes, we have DEI in the Cameron R-1 school district.
On February 6, the Cameron, MO high school shared out a post on it’s Facebook Page highlighting a “book tasting” event held by ELA teacher Jennifer Reents-Dickkut for her sophomore level Language Arts class. One local parent noticed that among the images posted by the Cameron school district were 3 titles that had been restricted by the school superintendent, Matt Robinson. These books were restricted because of the adult content they contained and were not to be given to under age children without express permission from a parent through a form provided by the district.
Here is the original post on the Cameron R-1 High Schools Facebook page. Three different “restricted” titles are visible in the included photos for this post
In a strange turn of events, we received an email that was forwarded by a parent who had a child in that class. That parents child was given the restricted book The Hate U Give without the parents consent. This parent emailed Mrs Dickkut to ask why their child was given a restricted book without consent. The following screenshot was taken from the bizarre response which seems to suggest that superintendent Robinson’s restriction on books is only for reading, viewing them is acceptable. See the blue highlighted portion in the image below.
“There is a policy to read books with permission, but nothing on the form about viewing them. ” – Jennifer Reents-Dickkut
Yes, Mrs Dickkut appears to defend her actions by suggesting that school restrictions that prohibit her from providing restricted books to children without parental written approval doesn’t apply to just “viewing”.
Considering the 2 year long fight in Cameron over all of these explicit books with adult content, it doesn’t seem reasonable that this was a mistake or a misunderstanding of policy. Dickkut was at the same board meetings as me when the superintendent and board discussed these restricted books and how they were to be handled. It was very clear. Restricted books were to be segregated in a library closet and not to be given to students under the age of 18 without first getting parental approval on a book restriction form. There was ZERO discussion about any differences between reading and viewing.
In a story we shared yesterday, you can see Mrs. Dickkut admitted to this parent that she told the students in advance that there were restricted books being used in the book tasting. This struck me as odd, because we were told by the Cameron school district and our board of education that access to restricted books would be controlled and only students with parental consent would be provided a restricted book. This appears to be a deliberate act by an activist teacher to disobey her administrators and board of education.
Graphic novel Watchmen violates MO statute 573.550, is available for children to read in Cameron, MO
The graphic novel book Watchmen has been removed from Missouri school districts for being in violation of MO revised statute 573.550 which prohibits schools from providing porn to minors. These books were pulled from schools back in 2022. Not in Cameron. This book is currently checked out and in the hands of a child in the Cameron school district at the time of this post and the video below.
You can confirm the book is currently in the Cameron school district for yourself, don’t take our word for it. In March of 2023 Dan Landi shared instructions on how concerned parents and citizens can look for themselves. I will like to his blog and that post, DON’T LOOK ETHEL!
In April of 2023, Andi Lockridge, the attorney who sits on the Cameron board of education, read aloud during the board meeting the complete revised statute 573.550 to make clear how the state defines pornography. Lockridge asked the superintendent Matt Robinson if any of those books, as defined by the statute she read, were in the Cameron school district. He said no. The video of the board meeting can be found on the Citizen Observer Facebook page. Lockridge begins around the 46 minute and 20 second mark.
This book Watchmen, despite being pulled by numerous Missouri school districts for violating law, doesn’t violate any district policy. There are no policies in place which would allow them to remove content like this, or to prevent something like it from being added. Currently the Cameron school district has two very vague and subjective policies for the selection and reconsideration of books. Those policies are IIAC and IIAC-R1. Those policies are so vague that the outcome of the reconsideration process will be dependent on the beliefs of those who are involved. Shouldn’t this be an objective process with clearly defined guidelines?
There is no policy in Cameron which currently allows parents or concerned tax payers to challenge a book, despite the majority of other Missouri schools having such a policy. The only option currently for Cameron residents to challenge this pornographic book is to address the board during the next school board meeting. Unfortunately the school board president Pam Ice has placed a ban on book discussions until the December 2023 board meeting.
It is time that the Cameron school district and the board of education stop ignoring this problem and take it seriously. They keep placing hurdles in the way and take no steps to make any meaningful change. They need to pass or change district policy that will protect our children, give citizens and parents a meaningful role in the education of our children.