‘Make a stand’: Liberty parents push back against suggested school book bans
Parents of students in the Liberty School District pushed back Tuesday night against a recent tide of alarmed rhetoric raised by people seeking to have some books banned from its libraries.
A group of roughly 50 parents showed up to the district’s regular school board meeting with the purpose of countering recent calls for books centered on LGBTQ issues and race to be removed from shelves. Among those speaking were a former history teacher, a school librarian, a high school senior and several parents united behind the concept that such books generally should be available to students at the high school level.
Matt Sameck, father of one student, told district leaders the books have been targeted by social media groups “notable for their anti-public school rhetoric and far-right bent.”
“I find it doubtful that these specific books were discovered by accident,” he said. “Since then those same social media groups have been looking for more material they could potentially object to mostly books by or about BIPOC and LGBTQIA authors or subjects. Many of these books have been available in the library for years.”
The group packed into the upstairs meeting room of the district’s administration building, donning newly minted blue buttons labeling them as the Liberty Parents for Public Schools. Co-organizer Beth Farr said after the meeting that the message Tuesday night was meant to stand in contrast to a meeting last month that grew heated.
“I’m very proud of our group,” said Farr, who has two children enrolled in the district. “We wanted to make a stand.”
Nationwide and in the suburbs of the Kansas City metro, parents have been showing up to school board meetings in force, arguing for their districts to ban certain books, often centered on LGBTQ issues or race, that they deemed inappropriate due to content they say is too graphic for high schoolers.
They include “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a coming-of-age essay collection by George M. Johnson, which focuses on growing up Black and queer in New Jersey, as well as “Fun Home,” a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. They were removed from the libraries at North Kansas City, Oak Park, Staley and Winnetonka high schools.
Students in the Northland have been fighting back, arguing against such censorship, gaining the support of librarians, scholars, authors and free speech advocates. They created a petition aimed at stopping area school districts from pulling books from their high school’s libraries, which had garnered more than 1,000 signatures as of Tuesday.
“The Northland Parent Association is working to remove books from school libraries that have been reported to contain inappropriate content for students, under the justification, it contains sexual or violent content,” the petition states. “However, all of the books they have targeted have a clear bias toward people of color, women, or LGBTQIA+ people.”
The Northland Parent Association, a nonprofit representing parents in Clay and Platte counties that has sued over district mask mandates, has been encouraging parents to protest the books at local school board meetings.
Liberty school district spokesman Dallas Ackerman previously told The Star that the two books had not been removed from any school libraries. But following requests, a committee has been formed to review the issue in the coming weeks.
“In Liberty Public Schools, we have a selection policy in place to guide decisions on adding reading materials at all levels,” district officials wrote in a letter to families. “Books are chosen for the library collection based on professional reviews from multiple sources. LPS considers the varied interests, abilities and maturity levels of the students served. Students choose which library books to read. Students are encouraged to exchange books that are not a good fit for them.”
In Kansas, the Goddard school district had gone further than others by pulling more than two dozen books from its library shelves.
The books included some popular novels that had traditionally been staples in some literature classes, such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood; “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison; “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky; “Fences,” a play by August Wilson that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1987; and “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.,” a historical look at how the white supremacist group took root in America.
But after receiving national backlash, including from authors and free speech advocates, the Goddard school district reversed the decision to remove the books from circulation in its libraries.
Includes reporting by The Star’s Robert A. Cronkleton and The Associated Press.
