Is Elmbrook policy on book content working?
Elmbrook candidates respond, while community members find content including a teacher molesting a 12 year-old, extreme violence and more sexual abuse.
Elmbrook candidates were asked in this year’s Board Candidate Forum on educational materials, including library books and resources in curriculum, and if policies are working in these areas. Responses include the following:
Mary Wacker:
“Are district policies working? Yes. Yes they are. The job of the school board is to hire the best, rely on their expertise to do their jobs […] as a board member, I intend to trust our experts to use their professional knowledge and good judgement wisely […]”
Jean Lambert:
“The purpose of the [library] program [is] ensuring students and staff are effective users of ideas and information accomplished by providing a current, dynamic and diverse collection of print and non-print services through collaborative efforts of the Director of Library Services, library staff and teaching staff, professionals with professional standards in their disciplines guided by policy […] I believe these policies are well-designed, and that they are working, though occasionally there are missteps that once brought to the attention of the administration have been promptly corrected […]”
Peter Machi:
“In a school, materials that the kids have access to needs to be age-appropriate. It is our duty to protect and care for and nurture and foster a safe environment for our students […]”
Nicole Hunker:
“As a district it is essential to continuously review all educational content to ensure the lines of age-appropriate standards at each school level. School age children whose minds are still developing may not fully comprehend the implications of certain content. Just as we restrict access to specific websites, and regulate TV shows and movies, it’s reasonable to extend this consideration to books and other educational materials. However, it’s important to clarify this isn’t about book banning. Rather, it’s about ensuring materials provided in our schools are suitable for their intended audience. If a book isn’t deemed appropriate for a school board meeting, radio broadcast, or public TV, then it raises questions about its suitability for our impressionable children […]”
Elmbrook community members continue to review our library collection & curriculum and point out questionable finds. Here are three of the latest with some excerpts.
“‘Do you want to kiss me, Josh? Is that it?’ ‘I can’t—I can’t—you’re my teacher.’ I wanted to kill myself right then and there.”
“‘Listen to me very carefully,’ she said on the way. ‘What we did was fine. We care about each other, and when people care about each other, they kiss. You know that, right?’ ...I was a little annoyed. I wasn’t a baby. ‘Yes.’ … ‘But you know I could get in trouble for it, right? I mean, I could lose my job. I could go to jail.’ Her fingers strummed on the steering wheel. …‘I know.’ … ‘So-and I know I’ve said this before-you can’t tell anyone what we talked about or what we did. OK?’ …'Uh-huh.’ … "‘Promise me, Josh. Promise me you’ll never tell anyone.’”
“‘When did you decide? How far along did things get before you decided you were going to have sex with me, Eve?’ There’s a thousand years before her answer: ‘The day we met, Josh. The first time I laid eyes on you.’
“‘I was molested. When I was twelve.’”
“And, my brothers, it was real satisfaction to me to waltz—left two three, right two three— and carve left cheeky and right cheeky, so that like two curtains of blood seemed to pour out at the same time, one on either side of his fat filthy oily snout in the winter starlight. Down this blood poured in like red curtains, but you could viddy Billyboy felt not a thing, and he went lumbering on like a filthy fatty bear, poking at me with his nozh.”
“When the last movement had gone round for the second time with all the banging and creeching about Joy Joy Joy Joy, then these two young ptitsas were not acting the big lady sophisto no more. They were like waking up to what was being done to their malenky persons and saying that they wanted to go home and like I was a wild beast. They looked like they had been in some big bitva, as indeed they had, and were all bruised and pouty. Well, if they would not go to school they must still have their education. And education they had had. They were creeching and going ow ow ow as they put their platties on, and they were like punchipunching me with their teeny fists as I lay there dirty and nagoy and fair shagged and fagged on the bed. This young Sonietta was creeching: ‘Beast and hateful animal. Filthy horror.’
“There was now like a sea of vonny runny dirty old men trying to get at me with their like feeble rookers and horny old claws, creeching and panting on to me, but our crystal droog was there in front, dealing out tolchock after tolchock.”
“‘She died, you see. She was brutally raped and beaten. The shock was very great. It was in this house,’ his rookers were trembling, holding a wiping-up cloth, ‘in that room next door. I have had to steel myself to continue to live here, but she would have wished me to stay where her fragrant memory still lingers. Yes yes yes. Poor little girl.’”
“He grabbed me once. Pushed me against a brick wall, hands greased with experience arms metal cables looping around and encasing me. I fought, tried to kick and failed, his mouth dove for my neck and I bit him until I tasted blood.”
“I took my eyes off the rage in his face and looked up to the green peace of leaves fluttering above, trees witnessing pain shame I crawled into the farthest corner of my mind biding time hiding surviving by outsiding and when he was done using my body he stood and zipped his jeans lit a cigarette and walked away.“
“I didn't speak up when that boy raped me, instead I scalded myself in the shower and turned me into the ghost of the girl I once was, my biggest fear being that my father, no stranger to gaming with the devil, would kill that boy and it would be my fault. But that boy who raped me on the rocks by the creek got drunk and lay down on a dark night to play chicken with the devil and he lost.”
“One: at community college, my health professor invited me to celebrate the A+ average he gave me for a paper I wrote about LSD he said we could drink wine at a motel, his treat he said we would have awesome sex at the motel he said his wife was totally cool with him fucking students at motels when I declined the offer and tried to leave, he chased me around the desk he blocked the exit bullying me to at least make out with him I didn't”
“Two: At Georgetown University, my department head invited me into his office to discuss my need for a special scholarship to study in Peru. To be able to translate Spanish, I'd need to live in a country where it was spoken I brought notes to the meeting, all my pla- he lifted his hand to interrupt me the department head said that we had been lovers centuries earlier we'd been Aztecs, had sex in the jungle he said that we were cosmic soul mates and needed to have sex again, unite our bodies- I walked out before the ritual chase around the desk”
Elmbrook’s Director of Library Services, Kay Benning, has complained about our “restrictive” library policy. In October 2022, Elmbrook’s Chief Strategy Officer, Chris Thompson, said “It is important to recognize the added scrutiny this process brings to their daily work” and “The book acquisition criteria from PS 6163.1 also applies to our existing collection of over 215,000 unique titles. Our library team is constantly reviewing our collection and, when necessary, books are reevaluated and sometimes reassigned.”
As previously covered, the Brookfield Elementary librarian who ordered “Fun Home” circulated nomination papers for current candidate Jean Lambert, and the Director of Library Services, Kay Benning, signed these papers.
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