President Barto and Members of the NMUSD Board of Education,

Most importantly, to be clear, I do not recommend and have no intent for NMUSD to “ban” books or suppress expression/rights/viewpoints, but it is time for NMUSD officials to ensure our community that age-appropriate literature promoting the reading skills or developmental understandings can be found by our community’s youth on our tax-supported library shelves in our tax-supported schools. 

We have elected you to represent our community and regardless of culture changes, I believe in local control of our schools and the ability by local officials to determine community standards while respecting State law.

I am writing to express concerns regarding the discovery by parents of age-inappropriate books located in the Wilson Elementary School library. I support an internal investigation and efforts to remove Flamer by Mike Curato (click here to see book concerns), Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli, and The Girl from the Sea by Molly Ostertag (click here to see book concerns).

I agree with the Wilson Elementary School parents’ objections to the NMUSD’s exposure of very mature content to elementary school youth on topics of sexuality, violence, and profanity which may be suitable for older ages/grades according to the publishers. As a community member, I am concerned about the process which allowed the books to be on the library’s shelves in the first place.

In reviewing a few other NMUSD libraries’ online catalogs, it appears that similar age-inappropriate books are also at other primary and secondary schools raising more concerns about the content exposed to our community’s youth enrolled in the NMUSD schools.

Therefore, I request that the NMUSD Board of Trustees create and appoint an Ad Hoc Library Book Review Committee consisting of a representative sampling of parents, community members, teachers and two NMUSD trustees to establish clear parameters for new library books, whether donated or purchased, and the removal of age-inappropriate books currently on the shelves. The Ad Hoc Library Book Review Committee should be modeled after the NMUSD Measure F Oversight Committee which selects a chairman from committee members to give public transparency and offer community involvement. Additionally, before funding is approved all human sexuality materials should be screened and approved by a panel of 12 parents, the same as a jury in court. Such a panel should review and approve or reject not only “sex education” curriculum, but any sexual information provided by speakers, videos and other materials such as young adult literature which is made available via the classroom or library. I do not believe it is necessary to outsource the management of the committee or panel to a consultant or a facilitator because we have many qualified staff members capable of overseeing this committee.

Again, I am not recommending censorship.  There are many different opinions in our community and through an open forum, such as an Ad Hoc Library Review Committee, all viewpoints would be considered to determine age-appropriate library books in our tax supported schools.