A group of Hilliard City Schools‘ parents is concerned about the content of certain books within the school’s libraries.
Sarah Kamento, a mom of a five-year-old, and Cyndie Sheets, mother of a Hilliard City Schools’ graduate told The Ohio Star that they have researched the books in the districts’ libraries and have found 49 books in total to date that they say are “inappropriate.”
According to Sheets, books such as This Book is Gay, Looking for Alaska, This Day in June, Call Me By Your Name, and Jacob’s New Dress, to name a few, contain sexual content such as how to masturbate, anal sex, fisting, muffing, how to put different items up your rectum, how to take amyl nitrate for euphoria, gay pride, transgender issues, and extreme profanity.
“I think we need to ask ourselves why our libraries contain books that contain sexual instructions on how to masturbate, have anal sex, and so much more inappropriate sexual content,” Sheets told The Star.
According to Kamento, they have spoken at numerous board meetings as well as have spoken to and emailed individual members of the board as well as Hilliard City Schools Superintendent David Stewart, who noted that their concerns have “points worthy of consideration” but did nothing.
Sheets said that the Hilliard City School District has a book policy where parents can name the books they don’t want their children to read but parents have to search through the library catalog for every single book by name, and the books in the classrooms or donated books are not cataloged.
Sheets and Kamento said they would be agreeable to several options to resolve their concerns, such as a separate place in the library for check out with parental consent, placing some of the more controversial books in the counselor’s office rather than on the general shelves, donating them to the public library, or removing them altogether.
“Maybe there is a book where a little girl doesn’t want to go home on winter break because she is sexually abused. Does it have a place? Yes. But it doesn’t need to be on the general shelves,” Kamento told The Star.
According to Sheets, 20 percent of Hilliards’ population is Muslim, and the Muslim community has come forwards with 1,270 signatures asking the school to clean up its content, and school leaders, yet again, have done nothing.
Both Sheets and Kamento are also asking school leaders to follow their policies.
“The district has to have permission from parents for sex ed but we have a book that is basically illustrated porn. If you cannot produce permission slips you are in stark violation of your own policies,” Kamento told The Star.
According to Kamento, they do not want to ban the books; they just want to have a more appropriate and educational content pool.
“I think a book ban is very mislabeled. I think a book ban provides malicious intent. We want to curate a more appropriate universally acceptable pool of content. We are not looking for a book ban. In school, I should be able to trust the topics are age-appropriate and applicable,” Kamento told The Star.
According to Kamento, “[t]his is not a Hilliard issue, this is a country issue.”
“These are really complex topics. Schools shouldn’t be involved in this in any capacity. The school wants to take my job as a parent and make it their job and they are failing at it. I want my child to have a true childhood where we are not over-sexualizing children. It’s not the school’s place,” Kamento told The Star.
According to Ohio Parents Rights in Education Director Lisa Chaffee, the school libraries should supply children with books that give them hope and encourage them to set goals for themselves.
“We are not banning books. The books we want to be removed from school libraries have content that teaches children to sexually pleasure themselves. Kids don’t need to know this. It doesn’t matter if the characters are gay or straight. No child should be reading this kind of material. Studies show that early exposure to sexual content leads to addiction to sex, pornography and decreases academic performance. If parents want their kids to have access to this material then they can go to the public library or buy them. Let’s supply our kids with books that give them hope, encourage them to set goals for themselves and be who they are,” Chaffee told The Star.
This is the latest development of parental discontent in the Hilliard City School District. Earlier this year, parents sued Hilliard City School in federal court because teachers are engaging in “intimate sexual conversations” with pupils as young as 6 years old.
Prior to that parents voiced concern in regards to educators wearing LGBTQ badges that say “I’m Here. Safe person, safe space.” The badges also display a controversial QR code which when scanned takes you to a website that contains what some have deemed as inappropriate content.
Hilliard City School District Director of Communications Stacie Raterman told The Star that the district is working with legal counsel to write a more comprehensive book challenge policy. But there is no current timeline for when that policy will be completed.
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Hannah Poling is a lead reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Hannah on Twitter @HannahPoling1. Email tips to [email protected]
