Your conservative FHSD board majority recently introduced a number of policy proposals designed to help return our schools to places of education. Since the proposals are both good and effective, the reliably progressive St Louis Post Dispatch has decided to take a swipe at them. In a front page article and another editorial, the journalists at the Post Dispatch put forth the claim that the proposed policy standards on inappropriate content for children will cause the district to ban Harry Potter – an insane claim.

Newly elected progressive board members Steven Blair and Carolie Owens have also spoken about the proposed changes, with Mr. Blair (a pastor) even claiming in a board meeting that this could lead to banning the Bible from the district libraries (the article fact-checked his statement in the next paragraph, showing that he did not really understand the proposal). Their sponsors, the Francis Howell Forward PAC and the St Charles County Families for Public Schools PAC (run by progressives and Democrats) have also railed against the proposed changes. But while their rhetoric is long on emotion, it is short on facts. The fact is that the Post Dispatch would not even be able to print the explicit passages from the books that would be affected by these policies on the front page (or any page) of their newspaper, while Facebook would block such quotes on Blair’s and Owens’ pages as going against community standards.

This illustrates a standard progressive propaganda tactic – rather than discussing the problem and working to solve it, they come up with an extreme hypothetical scenario in an attempt to stop all discussion and ignore the problem. Here are some facts to clear things up:

  1. Books with erotic descriptions of sex that would get a movie rated R or NC-17 are also in district libraries, including middle school libraries
  2. The current library collection policies and processes have done nothing to prevent these from being purchased
  3. In the past four years, the current district process for challenging and removing books has never resulted in a single book being removed from the shelves. In 2021, this committee voted to keep the book “Crank” in our middle school libraries (NSFW link).  This book graphically describes a teen girl being raped.

We have nothing against theaters showing R-rated movies or book stores selling whatever they think customers will buy. But the school environment is a very different context, and what may be OK for the adult public at large is not fine for young children.

As an example of an explicit book in the middle school libraries, take Empire of Storms, by Sarah J. Maas. District librarians must love to read her books, since two middle schools and all three high schools have copies of the 7 books in this series (Throne of Glass). But the content in these books (NSFW link) is definitely not OK for pre-teens.

We challenge anyone to justify why books with this content are in ANY district middle schools (Barnwell and Saeger). They probably don’t even belong in the high schools – what’s the educational value of children reading about violent fantasy sex? Is this the best use of our limited tax dollars and shelf space? The district pays to filter internet access and requires parent permission at the high school level for their student’s class to watch rated R movies (without any progressive objection), so why should this not be applied to library books with explicit content? These questions are not being asked under the current policy. Cries by progressives to “trust the librarians” ring hollow when those “experts” are obviously not exercising any sort of good judgment regarding book selections.

What else you can do:

  • Attend the August 15th, 2024 FHSD School board meeting and voice your concerns –
    See here for schedule and more information.
  • Please contact us to find out more, help us to find and elect a better school board, or to share your concerns and experiences
  • Consider making a donation to help us elect better school board members.