Thread by @ashleyhopeperez

I appreciate so many folks offering solidarity & reading what @andrewkarre & @veronikellymars & others have to say about book bans. That, AND...

Teachers, librarians, principals, students, school board members: they are the ones most in the crosshairs of this awful moment.

Let's talk about the 20 (or more?) sane voices expressing gratitude for youth access to rich, relevant varied literature that it will take to match the impact and reach 1 hysterical adult's decontextualized claims about a novel in the school library.

If you don't know what's happening in your school board meetings, find out right now. This circus may be coming to a fairground near you--or maybe you're in the thick of it.

The folks attacking the literature in schools have a playbook, talking points, reservoirs of outrage.

School boards, even ones with well-intentioned folks, can get disoriented in the face of these dramatic performances, especially when they are repeated for weeks on end. They start confusing the very small, very vocal, very agitated minority for "the community."

But the agitators haven't read the books. And they misunderstand what teachers do with books, how libraries function, what research says about teens and how they relate to literature.

As w/ other high-conflict toxic situations where one side has a distorted sense of what they should be able to ask or require, school boards can't "win" in these situations by giving in. If they cave (and we've seen it in Leander, Texas) the agitators come back with more demands.

In Leander, not satisfied with the banning and removal of 18+ books, the opponents to access and balanced perspectives are now targeting the AP World History textbook as un-American.

The situation may be worse if some portion of the school board is politically vulnerable to the farther right portions of the community. In these cases, they may be pressured (or motivated themselves) to take extreme positions.

To see what that looks like, just check out this FB page, run by a former Leander ISD school board member, Jim MacKay, who resigned in a show of protest after discovering that "filth" was still in Leander schools. facebook.com/ourleanderisd/…

I can say more about what has gone off the rails in Leander and why (and other school boards look similarly), but let me try to keep my focus on the important moment when folks begin to bring these extreme, decontextualized challenges against books.

Districts have policies for fielding parental concerns. THESE MUST BE FOLLOWED. Typically, books are to remain accessible while a review is conducted. Nothing emboldens extreme folks more than being allowed to ignore the rules & grab attention & action through volume.

Cautionary tales: Leander ISD has lost control of it's ELA curriculum, which is currently lost in a free-for-all in which, not just parents, but anyone in the district can vote on books, lodge opinions, etc. This is a symptom of the devaluing of educators' professional judgment.

Or look here: yonkerstimes.com/sos-claims-vic…

The thing to understand is that giving in will not satisfy or "win over" folks who do not value or trust public education. It instead emboldens them to bring bigger pickaxes and go for larger chunks of the remaining foundation of public ed.

It's simply a fact that some districts have lost focus on their educational mission, centering parental discomfort instead of student needs, capitulating to loud voices rather than engaging in quiet discernment focused on pedagogy. Others are on the edge. Some are sitting ducks.

BUT! Before we all get too depressed, I am willing to lend my middle name and near pathological optimism to anyone who needs it. In all of these spaces, there are actions that can make a difference.

CAVEAT: I'm not an expert in these areas, so before reading on, please follow @PENamerica, @jzfriedman, @ncacensorship, @ncte, @veronikellymars and the other important people and orgs that have been in this work for years. (Please add other recs in replies!)

But I think I can offer a couple of observations, both based on the specific situation in Central Texas where my books are banned as well as in terms of some patterns that we are seeing across the country. Please take all this as an anecdotal perspective--I could well be wrong.

School districts are varied and unique, but here let's just take the rough divisions of urban, suburban, and rural. There will be generalizations to follow.

These challenges and restrictions to youth access are *less* common in urban districts, where a more substantial & visible portion of the public supports broad access to diverse literature and equity-oriented efforts (even if these aren't being successfully implemented).

For example, my kids' school district, @ColsCitySchools, struggles in many areas of its mission (and with the challenges and resource bottlenecks that are common in cities), but here's a move that was celebrated, not controversial in our district: ccsoh.us/site/default.a…

In suburban districts, by contrast, moves like this (special collections to foreground diverse experiences) can quickly become a lightning rod for objections or accusations of CRT, etc.

That may seem surprising because the suburbs tend to have a significant portion of college-educated folks, some of whom are progressive and many of whom are moderate with a general appreciative stance toward education.

Texas examples: Katy ISD, Leander ISD, Lake Travis ISD...

So in these spaces, the voices challenging books, alleging that an author visit will marginalize white students, etc. are IN THE MINORITY (I believe).

But they are a minority that (a) has time & $ (their own and outside funding), (b) feels threatened by demographic shifts bringing more diversity to suburbs, and (c) feels emboldened by the state-level attacks on education (CRT/"divisive concept" legislation).

About rural districts, I'll just say that my *sense* is that there is less public theater around these issues because there is an assumption that communities & schools are more on the same page with a more conservative set of values (generalizing).

Now, I said I was going to offer some suggestions and ideas, limited as they may be. I'm going to focus on suburban/ex-urban districts because this is where there is a sense of "battle" is strongest.

If you would like to support youth access to literature and to respond to parental efforts to hijack school board meetings--and curriculum--here are some steps.

(1) Know what your district's policies are around parental concerns re. curriculum & library access.

Ideally, the SB, upon receiving extreme public comment, would calmly acknowledge that parental concerns are valid and remind of the process for officially registering them. (Note that in Leander, TMK, no *formal* complaint about any of the books was ever filed.)

The SB can/should respond to extreme positions neutrally and factually and with a focus on the professional resources the school consults in making curricular/book selection decisions. Highlight options/alternatives available to parents FOR THEIR OWN CHILDREN'S READING.

Calm, non-reactive, non-defensive responses (even if repeated almost verbatim) avoid feeding energy into the opposition.

(2) Establish a strong presence in school board meetings of folks who support educators & value the access schools provide to a range of texts & perspectives.

An issue in some areas is that a vocal, sometimes intimidating minority has essentially "claimed" the school board meeting, creating a hostile environment for more moderate parents or students who would otherwise want to participate.

Shifting that dynamic, if already established, will take effort, determination, and coordination. (Prevention is easier.) But it is essential bc ceding the SB space to the loudest & most extreme runs the risk I mentioned earlier of SB confusing that voice for the community voice.

(3) Make support visible. In meetings themselves, one parent I talked to described the strategy of having a few parents sign up to support a specific topic and then others who came in solidarity with that position (+ speakers) all wore the same color T-shirt.

That might sound "dinky" compared to hard-core organizing (and we need systemic solutions of course) but I know from talking to progressive/moderate SB members that it is easy to lose ground with other SB members if the support isn't obvious.

(4) Document. Make note of any threatening or intimidating behaviors related to SB meetings. Also document SUPPORT for measures, teachers, books in the form of letters, signs, etc.

(5) Encourage a deliberate, non-reactive approach. This goes back to #1, but bears repeating with an emphasis on issues that become suddenly controversial, like the Jerry Craft school visit in Katy ISD. If SB/school leadership act too quickly, they risk acting on incomplete info.

(In Katy, for example, my understanding is that far more parents supported the school visit via petitions than opposed it via petition, but the school board had already cancelled the visit before the broader support was visible.)

It is preferable, when possible, to stay the course with an event or curricular choice. Doing otherwise signals to folks opposing the judgment of school professionals that making a stink will get results and will promote repeated attempts at derailing the ed process.

Schools can signal that they are listening and willing to discuss the process and priorities, as well as how parents can weigh in on future possibilities, but that X book or event is already set.

(6) Model expectations for dialogue. They can also talk about how parents/students can be involved in meaningful DIALOGUE about the event/book in question--and root that in information (reading of the text, inclusion of teacher/student perspective, etc.)

(7) Procedural approaches. In states like Texas, SB meetings must be open and allow public comment, but the time frame and portion of the meeting are discretionary. Ideas: Limit comment to 30 minutes with carefully follow procedures for allocating slots & monitoring time.

Another approach may be to locate one portion of public comment relevant to the mtg business at beginning of mtg, then "open" comment at the very end of the mtg, requiring those who wish to add non-topic-focused perspectives to also observe the SB business.

Connect. Folks experiencing these issues need to connect across communities to learn from each other and share resources. Also seek allies (@ncacensorship, @PENamerica, @ALALibrary, etc.). Above all, share support for teachers, SB members, principals, librarians, & STUDENTS.

Folks for whom this is a helpful starting point: please add suggestions if you like and/or notice who else is sharing information so that we can build networks and share the load.

The end (of what I have to offer). @jzfriedman