From the highest levels of state government to the lobbies of high schools, Nebraskans are expressing themselves on the subject of censorship in public schools.
New attitudes towards books in our public classrooms has created a surge of complaints about inappropriate content available in our public schools. From September 1 to November 30 of last year the American Library Association received more than 330 cases reported to its Office of Intellectual Freedom.
The ALA saw more reports last year than in the previous 20 and is not alone in experiencing an increase in reports. State education departments, school districts, and individual schools have also had to deal with the complaints.
The influx of reports has created many problems for deciding committees on school boards. School boards have their own processes for determining what content they want available for their kids, often taking many weeks for consideration.
The Omaha World Herald reports that the Papillion La-Vista public school district has been dealing with complaints since the previous academic year. Parents have been particularly concerned about books with content about race and gender identity. Assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, Shureen Seery, says that all of the complaints have come from parents without kids in the schools where the books are.
School officials, school board members, teachers, students, and parents have expressed a wide variety of opinions on the issue. The Lincoln Journal Star reports that a member of the Nebraska Board of Education, Kirk Penner, read several passages from a book that depicted same-sex acts, as well as others explaining gender fluidity. Penner commented that “We’re hyper-sexualizing out kids.”
Other members of the Nebraska Board of Education have shared different views. Fellow board member Jacquelyn Morrison believes Penner’s remarks target books with LGBTQ themes and does not want them to be taken out of schools.
KETV reported students of Plattsmouth high school disagreed with the policy of their school’s book banning, choosing to protest in their school’s lobby. “We don’t believe one of our school board members should be able to dictate all what we read and consume,” Carlee Petereit told reporters.
The protest came after the policy crafted by school board member Terri Cunningham-Swanson. Swanson calls herself the “conservative firewall” and declares on her website that books within Plattsmouth need to be free from indoctrination.
I think you do a good job of getting to the point when it comes to the explaining the story and the problem. The only things I would recommend is a bit clearer transitions from one paragraph to another because it seemed like the orders could be changed and still make since which is also not a bad thing. The last thing I noticed was the punctuation on the quote in the 5th paragraph needs a comma after that and period inside the quote instead of outside. Other than that great story!
I like this article on the problems that Nebraska schools have with books. I had your story in a little different order but after reading what you have I like how yours flows.