Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include a paragraph on East Penn School Board President Charles Ballard's reasons for dismissing the motion before the school board last night. The original version did not provide that information.
This will not be the last the East Penn Board of School Directors hears of controversial Emmaus High School suggested summer reading selections “Prep” and “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”
The board was expected to vote last night on a motion to eliminate Tom Wolfe’s “Acid Test,” which is on the 10th grade summer reading list, and “Prep,” a 9th-grade selection written by Curtis Sittenfeld, as summer reading options. However, Board President Charles Ballard dismissed the motion for procedural reasons without giving the board a chance to discuss it.
The two books became the topic of conversation in East Penn after the board’s Sept. 10 meeting, when two parents came before the board to complain about the “pornographic” nature of the works. At that meeting, School Director Julian Stolz made a motion that the board remove the books from the suggested summer reading list.
In a nutshell, Ballard said that the board has an official policy for addressing curriculum challenges, known as Policy 109, and the board needed to follow that procedure in evaluating the summer reading books. Since Stolz’s motion did not originate with a Policy 109 challenge, Ballard said, he was dismissing that motion as “improper” and “null and void.”
The main thrust of a lenghty statement by Ballard is that his reason for dismissing the motion stems from a desire to protect East Penn from potential legal action for violating its own procedure. He cited a past Supreme Court ruling in a case in which a school board removed a book from the summer reading list in his explanation. In that case, the Supreme Court set up a three-pronged test for boards to use in pulling a book.
But last night will not be the last time the board will be faced with a decision on the two summer reading books, Ballard said. Just before Monday night’s board meeting, the school district received a written challenge to both "Prep" and "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," in accordance with Policy 109, which will spark an official committee review of the works and a recommendation to the board.
Once the board has that committee recommendation in hand, it can then make a ruling on the challenge, Ballard explained.
Would be much better for him to ask for a motion to table the motion until the committee does it's work, Then everyone could agree with that and have a unifying 9-0 vote, and everyone should walk away happy for now. A procedure like this would establish that there is a recognized process for selecting and culling matrials used in the school, which is important for several reasons. Most important, it establishes that if this book is eliminated after reconsideration, it's not a book banning - rather it's a selection of what should or should not be in the assignment. Second, it reaffirms the 109 policy and lets that procedure to go forward. Finally, it establishes that the school board can still over-rule the committee if commuinity standards suggest that committee's reccomendation doesn't reflect them. An opportunity wasted by Mr. Ballard - he didn't need to bully his way through this one.
The motion at the school board meeting was made a seconded. Ballard could have politley asked it to be withdrawn or tabled.
2. Supreme Court decisions require that the Board procedures to review 'controversial material' be 'facially unbiased'. You can't have a motion hanging out there to remove the material and say you are conducting a 'facially unbiased' review. 3. If someone wanted the community to remain united, they would not have had the challenge to the material made via a public meeting. 4. It is not and never will be bullying to require people to follow the rules, particularly someone who has run for public office. Being called to account for your actions is part of holding public office. Calling such action bullying is just trying to hide behind a false front, hardly the action you would expect from people continuously calling for 'transparency' from everyone else.
With regards to #3, you can't expect parents to be so politically sophisticated. They had a problem and were looking for a solution.
The book synopsis provides a minimal metric for evaluation. Book Ratings don't exist due to censorship issues, however some websites, like CommonSenseMedia.org, do provide book ratings and age-appropriate guidelines. Unfortunately, that site does not have ratings for Prep or EKAAT. There is nothing stopping us from creating our own community-based Book Review and Rating system. That way hard-working parents who may not have time to pre-read every book can, at minimum, reference a website that employs a basic, if imperfect, rating system, that is maintained by their friends, neighbors, teachers and students. This site provides a basic model for a rating system: http://novelbookratings.com/ratingReviewSystem.php I may not always agree with my neighbors and their opinions, but I do respect them and I'm always interested to hear what they have to say.