Parent-Activist Says School Board Put Censorship Fears Over Students' Welfare
by Jim Brown
January 2, 2004
(AgapePress) - Ignoring the concerns of area parents, a California school board has approved a sexually explicit book that was previously removed from district classrooms. At a recent school board meeting, more than 40 residents called on Modesto City Schools to drop the book Always Running La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. by Luis Rodriguez. Although parents objected to the book because of its hard-core descriptions of violence, drug use, and sex, the school board voted 4 to 3 to keep the book on the district's approved reading list.
Local parent Pam LaChapell feels the board's decision adversely affects district students. According to her assertion, the argument of those board members who favored keeping the explicit book on the list was simply that "they are opposed to book banning of any kind." Therefore, LaChapell says, "basically what we saw happen at that school district meeting is that they [held their feelings about] book banning and censorship supreme over the welfare of our children."
The activist-parent is vowing to continue her grassroots effort to warn parents about sexually explicit books on the district's reading list and to campaign to have such materials excluded. In the meantime, she is urging parents whose children are required to read Always Running to request an alternative assignment.
"What we need to do is have more and more parents go to their teachers and say 'My student will not read books with sexually explicit material.' If we have enough parents doing that," LaChapell says, "it will get to the point where the teachers won't be able to manage it. They will have to drop these books because they will otherwise be ending up teaching two books at the same time."
Because of the recent decision of the school board, Always Running will remain on the Modesto City Schools' approved reading list for the next two years.
