Old as in not young and not digital natives like Millennials and Gen Y-ers. This superintendent's bio says he has 21 years of teaching and administrative experience plus an education degree, MA, and EdD which would make him about 50 if he went straight through without a break. He should know that kids these days mostly don't get their information from paper books anymore but are more likely to get it on places like Discourse. By taking books out of school libraries he is only going to accelerate that trend. If you don't want kids to get ALL their information online, don't force them to. The audience he is actually playing to is older conservative voters in his school district, not the kids.
For some reason you seem to be downplaying the fact that this is an unprecedented Federal investigation. Why? Even NBC reported on this back in March. Your nothing to see here responses don't seem to be alignment with what is actually taking place.
What is unprecedented about it? How many Title 9 investigations do you think the Federal Government conducts in a given year?
As of right now there are 1,939 open Title 9 investigations across the country. So this is just one of 1,939. How is that "unprecedented?"
And those are just the ones related to sexual discrimination which is the basis of this particular complaint. There are thousands more related to ethnicity/racial discrimination and disability discrimination. This is a VERY big country with a LOT of schools. There are about 100,000 k-12 public schools in the US and another 4,000 or so colleges and universities. So that is still a pretty small rate.
Education and legal experts say the federal probe of the Granbury Independent School District — which stemmed from a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and reporting by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune — appears to be the first such investigation explicitly tied to the nationwide movement to ban school library books dealing with sexuality and gender.
GaryK wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 9:10 pm
For some reason you seem to be downplaying the fact that this is an unprecedented Federal investigation. Why? Even NBC reported on this back in March. Your nothing to see here responses don't seem to be alignment with what is actually taking place.
What is unprecedented about it? How many Title 9 investigations do you think the Federal Government conducts in a given year?
As of right now there are 1,939 open Title 9 investigations across the country. So this is just one of 1,939. How is that "unprecedented?"
And those are just the ones related to sexual discrimination which is the basis of this particular complaint. There are thousands more related to ethnicity/racial discrimination and disability discrimination. This is a VERY big country with a LOT of schools. There are about 100,000 k-12 public schools in the US and another 4,000 or so colleges and universities. So that is still a pretty small rate.
Education and legal experts say the federal probe of the Granbury Independent School District — which stemmed from a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and reporting by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune — appears to be the first such investigation explicitly tied to the nationwide movement to ban school library books dealing with sexuality and gender.
Well yes, probably. Because banning LGBT books is a pretty new thing that mostly started in 2021 and picked up momentum in 2022. If this complaint succeeds then I expect we will see many more of them in the coming months and years. If the complaint fails (as I suspect it will) then I doubt many others will follow because what would be the point?
The point is that there is nothing at all unprecedented about a Title 9 complaint or investigation of such. There are thousands of them. It isn't as if the Federal government decided to open an investigation all on its own. It is just following up on a complaint like thousands of others. Some of which have merit, many of which do not.
What is actually unprecedented is for a school district superintendent of a public school district to overrule his professional librarian staffs and secretly censor books on his own. That is actually unprecedented.
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A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr
Ken wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 9:51 pm
What is actually unprecedented is for a school district superintendent of a public school district to overrule his professional librarian staffs and secretly censor books on his own. That is actually unprecedented.
What is unprecedented about that? And is that what happened here?
Ken wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 9:51 pm
What is actually unprecedented is for a school district superintendent of a public school district to overrule his professional librarian staffs and secretly censor books on his own. That is actually unprecedented.
What is unprecedented about that? And is that what happened here?
Read the article. It ended up being a very long and nasty public fight.
In January, when Glenn met with librarians, he told them that the new school board was “very, very conservative” and that any employee who holds different political views had “better hide it,” according to the recording of his comments. In the days that followed, the district embarked on one of the largest mass book removals in the state, pulling 130 titles, most of which featured LGBTQ characters or themes.
After a volunteer review committee voted to return all but a few of the titles, two disgruntled members of the committee filed a police report in May accusing district employees of providing “pornography” to children, triggering a monthslong criminal investigation by Hood County Constable Chad Jordan, which remained open as of August. Jordan didn’t respond to messages requesting an update on the investigation.
In the end, the kids will probably be just fine. I actually know that town. It isn’t far from where we used to live. All that will happen is that this will just accelerate kids moving away from Granbury as fast as they can graduate and get out of town and it will eventually just decline and dry up like so many other rural TX towns.
Last edited by Ken on Wed Dec 21, 2022 10:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr
Ken wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 9:51 pm
What is actually unprecedented is for a school district superintendent of a public school district to overrule his professional librarian staffs and secretly censor books on his own. That is actually unprecedented.
What is unprecedented about that? And is that what happened here?
Read the article. It ended up being a very long and nasty public fight.
In January, when Glenn met with librarians, he told them that the new school board was “very, very conservative” and that any employee who holds different political views had “better hide it,” according to the recording of his comments. In the days that followed, the district embarked on one of the largest mass book removals in the state, pulling 130 titles, most of which featured LGBTQ characters or themes.
After a volunteer review committee voted to return all but a few of the titles, two disgruntled members of the committee filed a police report in May accusing district employees of providing “pornography” to children, triggering a monthslong criminal investigation by Hood County Constable Chad Jordan, which remained open as of August. Jordan didn’t respond to messages requesting an update on the investigation.
I did read the article. It didn't say anything about the superintendent having secretly censored any books. That's why I wondered if you had other information.
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 10:08 pm
What is unprecedented about that? And is that what happened here?
Read the article. It ended up being a very long and nasty public fight.
In January, when Glenn met with librarians, he told them that the new school board was “very, very conservative” and that any employee who holds different political views had “better hide it,” according to the recording of his comments. In the days that followed, the district embarked on one of the largest mass book removals in the state, pulling 130 titles, most of which featured LGBTQ characters or themes.
After a volunteer review committee voted to return all but a few of the titles, two disgruntled members of the committee filed a police report in May accusing district employees of providing “pornography” to children, triggering a monthslong criminal investigation by Hood County Constable Chad Jordan, which remained open as of August. Jordan didn’t respond to messages requesting an update on the investigation.
I did read the article. It didn't say anything about the superintendent having secretly censored any books. That's why I wondered if you had other information.
I think that is what another article said. In retrospect I think the more accurate characterization is that he did it unilaterally, overruling or ignoring the normal district policy for book selection.
Honestly kids kids will be fine either way regardless of how these culture war battle between older adults play out. Mostly they will just pack up and leave as soon as they can. And eventually all those elderly conservatives in Granbury will wonder where their town went.
I’ve been through Granbury many times. It is a lake community with lots of older retirees that will probably decline and blow away like so many other small Texas towns. Mostly because the lake is not sustainable and continues to lose water making all those lakefront homes with boat docks into mud-front homes half the time now. It was built as a reservoir for the nuclear power plant just down the road but real estate developers turned it into lakefront retirement homes that they can’t maintain due to increasing droughts. The nuclear power plant has first priority for any water for its cooling towers so the lakefront retirees are out of luck any time there is not enough water. If young people don’t stick around it will just accelerate the decline. About the only thing it has going for it is a quaint one-block downtown with antique stores that people from Fort Worth come out to visit on weekends. But that isn’t enough to keep young people around.
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A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr
Read the article. It ended up being a very long and nasty public fight.
I did read the article. It didn't say anything about the superintendent having secretly censored any books. That's why I wondered if you had other information.
I think that is what another article said. In retrospect I think the more accurate characterization is that he did it unilaterally, overruling or ignoring the normal district policy for book selection.
Honestly I don't think you even took the time yet to actually read the reporting that details what actually happened. Or else you're deliberately misrepresenting what happened. I'm not saying the process he used was wise, or that he followed district policy, but to pretend that the superintendent selected which books to remove on his own, is simply not correct if the media reporting is to be believed.
Ken wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 11:00 pm
I’ve been through Granbury many times. It is a lake community with lots of older retirees that will probably decline and blow away like so many other small Texas towns. Mostly because the lake is not sustainable and continues to lose water making all those lakefront homes with boat docks into mud-front homes half the time now. It was built as a reservoir for the nuclear power plant just down the road but real estate developers turned it into lakefront retirement homes that they can’t maintain due to increasing droughts. The nuclear power plant has first priority for any water for its cooling towers so the lakefront retirees are out of luck any time there is not enough water. If young people don’t stick around it will just accelerate the decline. About the only thing it has going for it is a quaint one-block downtown with antique stores that people from Fort Worth come out to visit on weekends. But that isn’t enough to keep young people around.
And that is relevant how? You think books containing rape scenes and graphic descriptions of sex would somehow keep the young people from leaving?
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 10:56 pm
I did read the article. It didn't say anything about the superintendent having secretly censored any books. That's why I wondered if you had other information.
I think that is what another article said. In retrospect I think the more accurate characterization is that he did it unilaterally, overruling or ignoring the normal district policy for book selection.
Honestly I don't think you even took the time yet to actually read the reporting that details what actually happened. Or else you're deliberately misrepresenting what happened. I'm not saying the process he used was wise, or that he followed district policy, but to pretend that the superintendent selected which books to remove on his own, is simply not correct if the media reporting is to be believed.
Ken wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 11:00 pm
I’ve been through Granbury many times. It is a lake community with lots of older retirees that will probably decline and blow away like so many other small Texas towns. Mostly because the lake is not sustainable and continues to lose water making all those lakefront homes with boat docks into mud-front homes half the time now. It was built as a reservoir for the nuclear power plant just down the road but real estate developers turned it into lakefront retirement homes that they can’t maintain due to increasing droughts. The nuclear power plant has first priority for any water for its cooling towers so the lakefront retirees are out of luck any time there is not enough water. If young people don’t stick around it will just accelerate the decline. About the only thing it has going for it is a quaint one-block downtown with antique stores that people from Fort Worth come out to visit on weekends. But that isn’t enough to keep young people around.
And that is relevant how? You think books containing rape scenes and graphic descriptions of sex would somehow keep the young people from leaving?
Apparently the news references to secrecy was in response to the Superintendent and a few members of the school board coming up with a list of 130 books to censor in violation of state open meeting laws and district policy that require such decisions get made in public with public comment. In other words they came up with their banned books list in secret and the superintendent implemented it on his own. People had to sue to even get the list of books they removed. The district's actual book selection committee reviewed all 130 books and found that only 5 of them met their criteria for possible removal. Nearly half had nothing to do with LGBT or trans issues but were targeted because they addressed topics like racism or diversity. And that is when conservative members actually called the police on those on the district's textbook review board that they disagreed with.
As for young people leaving? Of course it has nothing to do with whether or not they can read a particular book. Any of them can pull up any of those books on their phones or student chromebooks if they actually wanted to. It is about older conservatives creating a general atmosphere of intolerance in Granbury that will inevitably accelerate the migration of young people away from that town and hundreds of other small towns across Texas and the rest of the US. I saw it teaching in Waco which is a far larger and more diverse/progressive place than Granbury. Yet I had many many students who couldn't wait to leave and not look back. Not because of banned books, but because they just felt generally unwelcome and like they didn't fit in.
During the 13 years we lived in TX I spend many many thousands of hours out exploring the back roads and small towns by bike and car. Always interested in what made a small town thrive or dry up and blow away. Mostly it has to do with whether young people have any reason to stay. Intolerance has its costs and that is one of them.
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A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr
I think that is what another article said. In retrospect I think the more accurate characterization is that he did it unilaterally, overruling or ignoring the normal district policy for book selection.
Honestly I don't think you even took the time yet to actually read the reporting that details what actually happened. Or else you're deliberately misrepresenting what happened. I'm not saying the process he used was wise, or that he followed district policy, but to pretend that the superintendent selected which books to remove on his own, is simply not correct if the media reporting is to be believed.
Ken wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 11:00 pm
I’ve been through Granbury many times. It is a lake community with lots of older retirees that will probably decline and blow away like so many other small Texas towns. Mostly because the lake is not sustainable and continues to lose water making all those lakefront homes with boat docks into mud-front homes half the time now. It was built as a reservoir for the nuclear power plant just down the road but real estate developers turned it into lakefront retirement homes that they can’t maintain due to increasing droughts. The nuclear power plant has first priority for any water for its cooling towers so the lakefront retirees are out of luck any time there is not enough water. If young people don’t stick around it will just accelerate the decline. About the only thing it has going for it is a quaint one-block downtown with antique stores that people from Fort Worth come out to visit on weekends. But that isn’t enough to keep young people around.
And that is relevant how? You think books containing rape scenes and graphic descriptions of sex would somehow keep the young people from leaving?
Apparently the news references to secrecy was in response to the Superintendent and a few members of the school board coming up with a list of 130 books to censor in violation of state open meeting laws and district policy that require such decisions get made in public with public comment. In other words they came up with their banned books list in secret and the superintendent implemented it on his own. People had to sue to even get the list of books they removed. The district's actual book selection committee reviewed all 130 books and found that only 5 of them met their criteria for possible removal. Nearly half had nothing to do with LGBT or trans issues but were targeted because they addressed topics like racism or diversity. And that is when conservative members actually called the police on those on the district's textbook review board that they disagreed with.
Who had to sue to get the list of books? How do you know this. NBC News doesn't seem to think they had to.
I'm curious - are the decisions to add books to the school library also subject to open meeting laws, or just decisions to remove books?
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 11:21 pm
Honestly I don't think you even took the time yet to actually read the reporting that details what actually happened. Or else you're deliberately misrepresenting what happened. I'm not saying the process he used was wise, or that he followed district policy, but to pretend that the superintendent selected which books to remove on his own, is simply not correct if the media reporting is to be believed.
And that is relevant how? You think books containing rape scenes and graphic descriptions of sex would somehow keep the young people from leaving?
Apparently the news references to secrecy was in response to the Superintendent and a few members of the school board coming up with a list of 130 books to censor in violation of state open meeting laws and district policy that require such decisions get made in public with public comment. In other words they came up with their banned books list in secret and the superintendent implemented it on his own. People had to sue to even get the list of books they removed. The district's actual book selection committee reviewed all 130 books and found that only 5 of them met their criteria for possible removal. Nearly half had nothing to do with LGBT or trans issues but were targeted because they addressed topics like racism or diversity. And that is when conservative members actually called the police on those on the district's textbook review board that they disagreed with.
Who had to sue to get the list of books? How do you know this. NBC News doesn't seem to think they had to.
I'm curious - are the decisions to add books to the school library also subject to open meeting laws, or just decisions to remove books?
I'm not the world expert on this event. I was just responding to GaryK who posted it. Some googling brought up Twitter posts by local activists who have filed various open-records complaints with the state and, as of then had still not gotten any official response from the district but had gotten leaked lists which were passed around Twitter.
Generally speaking any group decision-making that any district does is subject to open-meeting laws. That doesn't necessarily mean every part of the process happens in open meetings. But the actual decisions are supposed to be. So, for example, a committee of teachers might review new textbooks for science and forward their recommended choice to the board which will review and approve/disapprove that recommendation at an open meeting in which that agenda item was noticed to the public and the public is free to come comment. A lot of agenda items don't generate much if any public comment. The only things school boards are allowed to do behind closed doors in executive session are certain things like personnel decisions.
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A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr