Ignore, Deny, and Delay

The February 14, 2005, Blue Valley Board of Education (BOE) meeting surpassed the one-year anniversary of these Blue Valley Board of Education failures and refusals:

  1. To hold employees accountable when they ignore the textbook selection policies over long periods of time. In the summer of 2004, 15 novels were retroactively added to the district's Communication Arts "approved" list -- novels that had been used for years, but had NOT been evaluated against existing textbook promises. Low quality, and sexually explicit books such as Bless Me Ultima, House on Mango Street, and Boy's Life were part of this retroactive process.

    And what was the Board's response to this lack of respect for the internal textbook selection policy? THEY IGNORED IT. Teachers CONTINUE to assign novels and other curriculum for graded purposes using ruses such as "literary circles" or "choice" so that they can assign whatever non-district-approved book they want such as Friday Night Lights, Bastard Out of Carolina, or Rape Fantasies without respect to the promises made by internal textbook selection policies. Why would teachers follow internal textbook policy promises when there are no consequences when they do not?


  2. To implement age-appropriate standards, a key promise made by the official textbook selection policy since at least the year 2000. Because this aspect of the textbook selection policy has never been clarified or enforced by the BOE, books are selected with no regard to the age of the minor children being asked to read them, which means that deviant sex such as pedophilia, incest, and bestiality in books such as Song of Solomon and Beloved is taught without parental knowledge or internal accountability.


  3. To review or audit ANY curriculum choice within the Blue Valley school district -- an abdication of responsibility which has allowed over 29 low quality textbooks to be assigned to our high schoolers that include the f-word as well as extremely vulgar and violent, and sexually provocative messages such as those taught in Lords of Discipline.


  4. To address the public's concern of how the use of textbooks that describe deviant sexual content constitutes sexual harassment against the students. The short story Rape Fantasies is one egregious example of this. Many of these books promote sexual behavior such as teen, oral, and anal sex.


  5. To address the hypocrisy inherent in promoting language f-words and worse that student behavioral codes prohibit the same student to say, write, or use in Internet communication on school property. But it's OK for the teacher to promote this content as "great literature" in the classroom? According to the current BOE, YES.


  6. To respect the role of parents by providing them with proactive, informed information on what is being taught in these novels. The book Stotan also ridicules the role of parents. Rather, the school has made great efforts to HIDE the sensitive content from parents. If you doubt this, read their own internal reviews of these books -- these rationales purposely omit any acknowledgement of the extensive sex or other sensitive topics and themes such as suicide or occultism that is present in many of the books such as Song of Solomon, Awakening, and Bless Me Ultima.

    Furthermore, many of the internal rationales contain information that is simply FALSE. No, NONE of the offensive books are "required for success" on Advanced Placement exams or "essential college preparatory reading" as stated on the rationales. These statements are false. And YES, the Board of Education is aware of these false claims by official school documentation, but again, they simply refuse to deal with it.


  7. To review the BOE's 7-0 vote to retain This Boy's Life by Wolff in the approved curriculum using a vague legal ruling which had nothing to do with classroom-assigned books, and, in light of this, to explain how book challenge policy 4610 could ever be used to remove a book.

    In January of 2005, they used the same stall tactics to chastise over 500 people who signed a petition asking that 14 books be replaced with higher quality textbooks. The BOE's response to the petition was that the patrons should use challenge policy 4610 to bring a book through the challenge process instead of using a petition. Have they forgotten that they THEMSELVES rendered the challenge policy illegal exactly a year prior when they stated that they could not remove the book This Boy's Life from the approved curriculum for legal reasons? Or are they simply stalling and ignoring the real issue -- the content in these books and how that affects young minds?


  8. To institute a board policy for clear, fair, well-publicized, non-punitive, non-socially-ostracizing, and academically equitable alternative assignments for students. The current Blue Valley process, of assigning Charles Dicken's Great Expectations as an alternative to for teen pulp fiction Stotan, for example, is devoid of academic integrity. The current process does, however, intimidate students and parents into reading the offensive novels preferred and assigned by the teachers.