How bad is the reading material being purveyed to public schoolchildren in America?
So bad that if you try to read it at a school board meeting, the members turn red and hush you up.
A concerned parent who attended a recent Cherokee County School Board (CCSB) meeting in Georgia read a graphic passage from a book that is required reading for some students, and was officially cut off and subsequently barred from speaking, reports georgiastarnews.com.
Michelle Brown said she came to the meeting to outline for the board the process for removing a book from the Cherokee County School District’s libraries or classrooms. She told them that this involves long wait times and, outrageously, the purchase of 20 more copies of the book at taxpayer expense for an independent committee to review.
Questionable book? First, buy a dozen and a half more copies!
Brown said that if that committee deems the book too explicit, students who are required to read it for class can still appeal its ban. This is what happened with the book Homegoing, she said.
When she began reading a passage from the book, she was promptly cut off by a school board member who chided: “Excuse me, we have children at home. It’s live streaming, and it’s really not appropriate.”
Brown quickly replied about the irony of a school board member not being able to stomach a book being provided to schoolchildren. “I would never give this to my children,” she declared. She was then declared “out of order,” and denied the remainder of her allotted time.
The Cherokee Tribune & Ledger-News reported that another individual was escorted out of the meeting by police for shouting that School Board Chair Kyla Cromer should be arrested.
“It’s unfortunate that that disruption occurred,” board member Clark Menard reportedly said in response. “You’ll probably hear that this person was removed because they disagreed with our challenge of school book policy. They were not removed for that. We understand that there are disagreements with our policy of reviewing material, we are listening to that, we are reacting to that as need be, but this person was removed because they were warned that they were disrupting the meeting.”
According to the Tribune & Ledger-News, more than a dozen books are currently being challenged by parents and reviewed by the independent committee.
