Editor’s note: This is a broad-scale overview of the debate Tuesday, based on my impressions. While I have a vision for what the B&R can become, and I am more or less a trained journalist (though not in a newsroom), I don’t have the school board expertise, the sources, or the writing time at this point to go into more depth.
A new instructional materials policy passed the Board 7-2 on Tuesday with no amendments.
While mainstream local news focused on an increase in school meal prices, the Board’s most pressing instructional matter Tuesday was its instructional materials policy. The policy governs how materials are selected (and contested) for both curricula and school libraries.
Course materials and library books have sparked controversy across the country. Democratic legislators decry “book bans” while those actual books often amount to … essentially … a form of LGBT proselytizing through pornographic texts and images. The most recent example can be found here (warning: graphic), where parents filed a police report and the teacher ultimately resigned.
You can watch the debate here, from about 2:40:00 through the end.
The revised policy is significantly different from the current policy, though most focus falls on where the first paragraph now reads that materials “not be pervasively vulgar.”
I watched the debate. Long story short, the debate appeared productive. Members recognized there is sexually explicit content that’s coming into schools that there’s a need to adjust the policy to address the current climate.
CURRENT POLICY | REVISED POLICY
Both policies are here for parents to read. At the very least, the policies show choosing instructional materials is never truly value-neutral .
Most of the debate centered around what that term “pervasively vulgar” means. While the Board recognized the term is vague, the Board’s attorney reiterated that the language does reflect an existing North Carolina education statute.
Some parents and a couple of Board members have proposed using the term “obscene” instead. The Board appeared ambivalent if not favorable to the idea. As a criminal standard, obscenity would have far more case law helping define the standard, but there ultimately wasn’t enough appetite on the Board to amend the policy Tuesday.
Of note: Board members Wing Ng and Cheryl Caufield were clearly the most concerned about the content presented or available to students.
On the other side, there’s definitely a segment of “trust the experts” on the Board, that trained librarians and teachers know what’s appropriate for children. As with other current issues, there’s no acknowledgement from these folks that “experts” may have worldviews and agendas too.
Overall, though, while the Wake Board is certainly not conservative, it’s not as overtly antagonistic to parents as, say, Durham. Christian parents have allies on the Board (particularly Ng).
Durham has a policy explicitly encouraging schools to hide students’ LGBT identities from parents. The county library website pushes teens directly to sexual identitarian content. Wake County is not there, but hiding identities from parents does happen (I have proof), apparently justified by the common practice of using students’ preferred nicknames (e.g. those who go by Mike instead of Michael).
But after watching Tuesday’s debate, I’d say the reality of the current climate does not appear lost on the Board (at least on the whole), even for those who appear to be friendly to the slander that conservatives want to “ban” books.
That said, “pervasively vulgar” remains vague and may very well allow some of the controversial content to evade the standard. I get the feeling preachy/proselytizing/grooming content that’s sexually explicit may ultimately be allowed if it doesn’t “pervade” the whole book, even the content is essentially pornographic.
Lynn Edmonds made the point that parents can just give their kids standards on what they’re allowed to check out and if the kids disobey, then leave how to handle that up to parents.
This may not be the end of the issue, though. Vice Chair Chris Heagarty wondered if a content rating system would help provide more transparency and help parents be more informed.
Whether anything comes of that idea will likely stem from how this new policy plays out once implemented. That remains to be seen.
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