Members of this Board have spoken about how our schools need to be a safe place for ALL children. Yet weeks have gone by since this Board sat and listened to the sexually explicit content read at the listening session, and I would like to know what attempts have been made to enforce the Board's own school policy to protect the well-being of the children?
This Board tells concerned parents to follow policy, but has the Board required the schools to retain the identified materials or place them aside until the review process is fully completed (606.1)? Did the Board ensure that the distribution of non-curricular materials to the school libraries were reviewed by administration to prohibit indecent content that is not age appropriate (904.1)?
This Board speaks to the safety of children, however, there is failure to enforce policy and our laws that have already established that this type of indecent speech is harmful to minors and access to this speech should be regulated to protect minors from it. MN statute 617.291 is the law to which we all must abide, and the Bloomington school staff, teachers and School Board are not above the law and the law states, sexually explicit materials are harmful to minors.
The issue in front of the Board, is about sexually explicit and age-appropriate content that is available without restrictions in our schools. Other issues of content and themes are being used to distract, divide, cover the truth, and falsely accuse concerned parents of hate. But parents asking for sexually explicit content to be removed from the library want to protect their children and their innocence. Sexually explicit books available in our school libraries undermines parental guidance and awareness and creates a harmful and unsafe environment for the children. Having this harmful material available without restrictions or parental approval, does not create a safe school for ALL children.
Thank you. SS
