001fuller here jenny hagstrom here carrie pavisage here joanna vazquez drexler i'm here and nancy kufkov here thank you let's stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we're here to discuss the uh instructional materials challenge and we're going to have a statement from dr thiele and then we're going to have the reception of visitors the first reception the only reception [Music] [Applause] all right uh i've prepared a statement for the board the board obviously has received all of the materials in advance has received copies of the book in advance all of the resources and materials are also linked from board docs and are available to the public
002the only item on our agenda tonight is the is board action on the instructional materials challenge for the library resource titled genderqueer the board has been fully briefed on this topic i would like to provide a summary of what is transpired and what the board is being asked to vote on tonight for the benefit of our community members in november of 2021 15 parents challenged district 99 about the inclusion of the book genderqueer by me in our school libraries the initial concerned parents met with the school principals and librarians on november 23rd 2021 after listening to the objections as well as why the title was selected to be included in our collection the principles determined that the book does does appeal to an audience within the schools and the principles determined that the book i'm
003sorry and that it should remain in our collection the principles also shared that students have the choice to check this book out or not those who do and find it distasteful can return it and hopefully select another book to read the objection process continued in february of 2022 a curriculum reconsideration committee was formed also known as an ad hoc committee it included volunteer representative parent leaders from booster and parent organizations they had not previously weighed in on this resource the committee's charge was to review the book and to make a written recommendation to me the superintendent at the committee's one meeting that was held on march 16 2022 the concerned parents and district librarians presented to the committee separately the committee deliberated and recommended not removing the book from the collection their recommendation is a
004public doc document and is included online in tonight's board materials the decision of the committee aligns with my recommendation to the board which can be found in full with tonight's board materials i believe genderqueer belongs in our libraries i strongly agree with the key tenets of the committee's recommendation district their their tenants are as follows district 99 libraries should continue to be safe spaces for students to develop and champion beliefs of all individuals and to elevate students and readers of all levels through text or graphic novels alike students and or parents may opt out of individual titles at district 99 libraries at any time just by contacting the librarians the intent of the book is not to cause sexual excitement nor does the book include any child pornography or pornography of any kind this material
005does not meet the criteria of pornography as the images are not presented with the intent to show a sexual act to encourage a sexual act or to be lewd but instead they illustrate one moment in the author's sometimes difficult personal journey the book meets the educational and social emotional benefits connected to the collection development guidelines the equity vision of district 99 and the district 99 statement of values and their overarching themes of belonging and empathy just as the ad hoc committee recommends i also recommend that the board take no removal action of gender genderqueer from the district 99 libraries tonight under action per administrative regulation 6.260 a r1 the board may choose to do one of three things one accept the committee's report two reject the report or three modify the educational use of the
006challenge material if the decision of the board is to remove or limit the use of the materials in question it shall not be construed as criticism of the faculty involved in the original selection or use of the material if the material remains in the collection it can be a challenge again however it's one year following board action would be the earliest however once again my recommendation is to accept the recommendation of the ad hoc committee and to take no removal action of genderqueer from the district 99 libraries and that's what appears as the action item for this evening i'll now take any questions from the board after which there'll be a 30 minute up to a 30 minute perception of visitors then the agenda calls for board action following the reception of visitors and after
007that that is our only item adjournment take any questions from board members not so much a question is i please just because a lot of people i think have a lot of the letters that have come in have misrepresented something that i just so people are clear about the selection criteria for the committee oh of the ad hoc committee yeah sure so uh the the administrative regulation that we follow provides no or in the past providing no guidance for how we select that committee most of the time this these kinds of matters are resolved before we reach that that point the administrative regulation i'm following was originally written in 1975 and was all in reviewed again in 2015 before i was superintendent before this matter came forward so together with the principles we had to
008try to figure out a fair way to form this ad hoc committee so what we did was we reached out to parent leaders in our parents and booster organizations that was about 30 parents that are actively involved in athletic boosters fine art boosters parent clubs and the like those 30 parents all receive that and none of them could have reached out to me on this matter before this right one way or the other right um so i emailed those 30 parent leaders and said that we have we have a request to form this committee to review this resource uh i don't believe i named what the resource was i just said that we have a challenge the actual letter that went to those parents is available in the materials that are online from those 30
009parent leaders seven volunteered to participate in part of the process and all seven participated i had no idea what organizations they were involved in i had no idea you know how they were going to rule on this it's just we believe as an administration that these are parents that are actively already actively involved in organizations in our schools are already giving of their time for the betterment of our students and our in many of them are in positions that are either selected elected by other parents so we felt that that was a good group of parents to reach out to and ask if they'd be willing to give up their time for an instructional materials challenge thank you any other questions or clarifications no i appreciate the work that's been done to review all this
010um yeah a lot of notes have come in about dr feely stacking the the committee and he certainly did not so let's be clear about that all right okay should we move on to the reception of visitors all right we have five comment slips um so we'll be able to get to all of them within the 30 minutes that are designated it's the way that reception of visitors works it's a three-minute opportunity to address the board we listen the board and the administration listens there's there's no dialogue back and forth all right so uh and the first person up is bobby arms and that will be followed by i think this is don de clean so bobby hello my name is bobby and i'm just going to start right off and say that i've read
011the book something that it did do was the book honestly bored me a little bit but something that i did not do was making something that i'm not at no point was there any rhetorical attempt to persuade me to induce these struggles in myself that weren't already there to begin with in other words i felt the very same before and after thank you reading it i also think banning books is something that is universally wrong i think that banning book symbolizes a fear of the ideas that the book represents it also promotes an overcast of ideology conjured by the few and blocking the free thinking skies of the many in other words to ban this book is to say we think the children are too weak to be able to stand steadfast on their own
012opinions values and identity it's similar to saying the child will buy every product of every advertisement they see just because they like all the jingles and that they lack the ability to decide and act on what they want and don't want i think that students are enough will to decide for themselves how they feel about this book it's a great resource for those who are feeling similarly the author but for those who feel even different about even indifferent about their gender it will not and does not try to influence them in any way if you are for banning this book then i implore you to read it you will see how harmless this memoir really is if you refuse to read it then how can you advocate to ban something you don't fully understand if
013you find yourself following a shepherd-led bandwagon then please split from the herd and at the very least understand why you feel the way you do and lastly i just want to add that banning the book will only add more interest to it by virtue of it being on a banned book list thank you thank you thank you our next speaker is don de clean followed by eileen breiner good evening my name is don mclean donors will resident for about 28 years and thank you for allowing me to speak the enrollment in public schools is going down a little bit now a lot of that has to do with covid some of it has to do with crt teaching and sex education homeschooling has increased from 5.4 percent in the spring of 2020 to 11.1 percent
014in the fall of 21. it's more than double at the church we attend the uh there's a christian school attached we've seen the 25 increase in enrollment last fall not sure what's going to happen this fall might be even greater um yeah i don't think there's much argument that genderqueer is going to be in the libraries of these two high schools my only suggestion is that also in addition to that book maybe you would consider installing or presenting a book called a child is born it continues to break astonishing new ground and bringing to life the miracle of conception pregnancy and birth and deep inside a woman's body a miracle occurs a woman's egg and sperm from a man meet and a new human being is created through unique photographs the author leonard nielsen we
015see the fascinating process of fertilization unfold and watch as an embryo develops from a tiny cluster of cells into a fetus maturing day by day until the time comes for a newborn to meet the world outside the womb i don't know um it just seems like it would and if the board has no money and cannot afford to put in these two books they're around 50 bucks a copy i'll donate them so i don't know how to go about applying to do that is this the proper event you'd like to reach out to me afterwards we can okay we can talk about it thank you thank you next up is eileen breiner followed by stephen magnussen good evening eileen breiner downers grove we hear a lot about diversity and inclusion in tonight's discussion i want
016to show how hypocritical this board is when it comes to diversity of thought and inclusion of a variety of ideas in january i came to the board meeting and requested that pro-life books be added to the library i had a list of suggested titles on follow-up with the board i was told no there would be no pro-life books added and this discussion was over well so much for diversity of thought books that align with your ideas are fine but books that are with a different viewpoint are excluded you're not educating here you're indoctrinating i hope this discussion will lead to more ideas being presented to students not less please stop the indoctrination [Applause] stephen magnuson followed by barb allen uh hello i i personally am a uh i go by gender fluid that's the gender
017eyes i uh work with um and personally i've struggled a lot with that and my mental health over a long period of time um having a book like genderqueer would have been really nice for me when i was actually going here still uh might have actually helped me to quit sooner come to terms with who i am as a person and help a lot with my personal mental health struggles and my uh issues with like suicide and i think it's very important that people should have the opportunity to learn more about who they are and they should also be able to learn more about people around them especially as more people are understanding what they are i don't think you should be stopping them from learning what they are because all that does is make
018them hurt um removing this book wouldn't be about stopping indoctrination it's not it's not considered indoctrination when you tell kids that oh a man and a woman should be together or oh this person is a man but it is indoctrination for some reason when you say oh a man and a man can be together or oh this person is non-binary like i don't i personally i just don't understand the like thought process behind that uh it's always kind of eluded me but the idea of removing a book about finding out who you are and going on a journey is like backwards and frankly i personally think you should be teaching more of these as part of like the english curriculum um like we see a lot about like shakespeare and stuff like that which is
019very important in its own right but it doesn't relate as much to people in the modern era it has a very important literary significance but we don't talk about like modern struggles as much at least we did when i was here a couple years ago um i think it would be frankly good if it was actually taught as part of the curriculum that's it for me all right our final speaker is barb allen okay hi my name is barb ellen i'm a downers curve resident and concerned parent i became aware of the book genderqueer from the news as well as when my district 99 student texted me a picture of a page from genderqueer that depicts a person performing oral sex to another person's strap-on penis this picture was sent to my teenager by another
020district 99 student who noted it was from the school library my husband and i talked with our teenager about the picture and the book my teenager was appalled by the book and shocked that it is in the school library by providing gender queer in the district 99 libraries district 99 is in fact promoting oral sex sexual exploration and sexual promiscuity make no mistake this is not about inclusivity this is not about giving students safe spaces no sexually explicit material should be provided by our schools regardless of sexual orientation period i question how genderqueer met the criteria to be included in district 99 libraries every one of the eight bullet points in the criteria particularly the relevance to district 99 curriculum are arguable please tell me how giving a blow job to a strap-on penis fingering
021yourself or after fingering then licking vagina slime off your finger is relevant to the district 99 curriculum just because a book is in print does not mean it is good good or relevant there is a lot of good in our society but also a lot of trash and it is the duty and responsibility of district 99 to ensure the content provided at our school is appropriated most students have sexually have access to sexually explicit materials outside of school this does not validate providing sexually explicit content in school as well providing sexually explicit materials to our students is inappropriate at best and genderqueer has in fact been ruled obscene in a port of law on may 18 2022 the virginia beach circuit court ruled the book genderqueer is and i quote obscene to unrestricted viewers by
022minors viewing by minors if district 99 votes to keep gender queer in the library i would expect lawsuits to be coming your way as well thank you [Applause] just to clarify board members as you're aware we did receive from mrs breiner suggestions of books that should be in the library the librarians did respond to mrs breiner several times and i believe one of her recommendations is actually been purchased and is in the library so i want to just be clear that how it was represented this evening was not factual so moving on i have nothing else to comment on this matter with the board okay thank you all uh so we'll move on to our only action item for the night we have a requesting a motion for the board of education to accept the
023recommendation of the ad hoc curriculum objection committee and the superintendent and take no removal action on the book genderqueer so i think it was no no chris oh with chris and joanne excuse me thank you very much christopher espinoza aye joanna vazquez drexler aye mike dan report aye shirelle fuller aye jenny hagstrom aye troy pavich aye nancy kupko aye the motion is carried the book remains [Applause] thank you all you