"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
Ms. Elia: The sentiment on the podium last night at the board meeting to pull a book from the shelves of the library concerned me. The board and administration should not succumb to the urging of one parent to ban a book. Bart Birdsall, who has won awards in the field of library integrity, has sent you and the board enough material on the issue to educate you to the larger implications of any threat of censorship by the board and the administration.
I fear your tendency is to cave to bigots or people with narrow views. That was what you did when the know-nothings attacked the Muslin children as "towel heads" in the religious-holiday controversy.
I am a registered nurse and have done quite a bit of psychiatric nursing. So Chair Faliera's tantrum last night on the podium when she gaveled down my right to free speech in a forum that is supposed to allow a citizen to approach her elected officials for redress of grievances did not alarm me.
In the hospital, we put hyperactive patients in a little canvas restraint called a camisole that crosses their arms in front of them and ties in the back. We take it off when they calm down. Maybe you should order a camisole for Ms. Faliera's tenure as chair of the board. She appears to lack self-control.
Private sex is just that: private; but when it takes place in the school environment, it is no longer private: it is public and susceptible to public scrutiny and judgment.
Had Ms. Faliera not gaveled me down, I would have continued to ask questions. For example, I would have asked you to tell if you pressured Mark Hart to resign to squelch the emerging rumors. I know how sensitive you are about sexual rumors since you blackmailed Patrick Manteiga with the threat of suing La Gazeta because I said in a column that the school administrators shouldn't have slept their way to the top. Not one member of the school board critisized your blackmailing the press's First Amendment rights.
There is no indication of why Hart left employment in his file. I reviewed it before the board meeting, and it is stripped clean. The Public Relations staff even had to send up to the personnel people to get the piece of paper saying he had resigned "for personal reasons." Correction: It had been removed by a reporter earlier I learned. ldd
The reasons for his departure were both personal and public. The reasons took place in the schools and Rossac in part. That makes Hart's and Falliera's case public business just as Mr. Clinton's Oval-Office activities were public business. And it is as well public business to know if you pressured Mr. Hart to resign and why. In a court case's deposition, you would be obliged to reveal the circumstances of Mr. Hart's leaving and any administration pressure on him to do so. And so would he. So would Ms. Falliera. People can't fudge truth in a deposition. We none can lie to the court.
Hart's file shows he graduated from Loyola magna cum laude. That is a good school and an impressive academic record. The administration does not have many people with distinguished academic degrees on its staff. The majority seem to have early-childhood degrees from undistinguished institutions. Cathy Valdez has an early-childhood degree, for instance, I saw in her file. It was she in her bloated-pay current job for which you hired her who recommended hiring a recently retired Hillsborough County administrator without bids who did not have a business phone with a person answering it. I suspect she did so at your behest.
La Gaceta's published inability to get a live voice on the so-called business phone of this retired administrator did not burnish his credentials. Nor did the fact that when I called his home, a woman with a Minnie- Pearl delivery said, "It's another beautiful day. Let's live it for the Lord!" buttress the credentials of the business. These phone contacts did not support Ms. Valdez's assertions in the board meeting that the retired administrator was highly professional and respected throughout the state.
My belief is that if Ms. Valdez had a more gravid college degree and background, that she would have had the sophistication and business judgment not to recommend the recently retired Hillsborouch County school administrator who got the $148,000 job without bids. And if you were not steeped in the malignant buddy culture that engulfs the administration, you would not have insisted on Ms. Valdez's giving him a no-bid plum contract when he had had no contracts from any source in his business history.
You should have taken measures to keep Mr. Hart as long as Ms. Faliera remains. You exercised one-sided punishment and deprived the schools of an intelligent, well-trained, honorably-degreed administrator whose abilities far outstrip Ms. Falliera's, who's hanging on to her board seat for dear life now it appears.
Poignant was the information given in one of Hart's recommendations that he is a strict practicing Catholic and devoted to his faith. His psychological misery now must be acute. He once told me when I complained about his increased salary when he came back from his brief resignation to work at some Eckerd enterprise that he and his wife had a traditional family outlook and believed the wife should stay home with the children and only the husband work. His situation with Ms. Faliera shattered this Catholic family--as it did Ms. Faliera's because she got divorced as well. Both involved children.
The psychiatric community tells us that children never get over parents' divorce--that even as middle-aged adults they still suffer the wounds of their parents' leaving each other. If you cared about children, you would have counseled both Faliera and Hart to cut out the erotic pranks on school time and lead straight married lives for their children's sakes.
And you would have monitored them to see that they did so. You know well how to monitor and have Ms. Kipley's enthusiastic cooperation in that activity. You monitor for the wrong things, however. You monitor members of the school family who say the least little thing critical of the school administration. You even manufacture cases against them as you did in Bart Birdsall's case. You monitor to injure them and possibly fire them because you lust to retain your power and want no critics in the ranks. But you could have monitored an infidelity adventure that harmed children as well. That would be a benign use of your monitoring penchant.
I also want to know whether the principal who rumor says was linked to Coach Faliera concomitantly met with punishment as Hart did. If not, why not? I see that Coach Faliera resigned shortly after his divorce. I want to know if you forced that resignation too. That's information the public has a right to know.
And I would have asked the board lawyer to say what advice he gave you on school sex with its public dimensions. When two people work for the same outfit, the inferior party can file with the EEOC against the superior party for sexual coercion. I believe that means Coach Falliera and Mr. Hart could have filed against the school board since they were the inferiors in employment to the principal and Ms. Falliera. Such cases are numerous now as more people become aware of their rights under Title VII. Madison Square Garden just paid a settlement of over 9 million dollars to one woman with three more lined up to file charges against the Garden.
It is reckless management to allow employees to engage or try to engage in sex on the job since Title VII went on the books. These peccadilloes can end up in the court with big money settlements for the injured parties.
More significant than the cases above, however, is the threat of censorship and book burning, the sentiments for which I detected support especially from you on the podium last night. No superintendent who cares about learning removes books from library shelves to propitiate a parent who does not understand the right of the freedom to read in a democracy. I have asked for the ACLU to monitor this situation and see that you and the benighted members of the board whose attitude toward freedom of information and freedom from censorship do not engage in a local book burning that injures the students and gives the community a black eye for having a crude attitude toward literature and sex.
The irony of this situation is that it's not OK for children to read about rape but that it's OK for rapes to continue and for illicit sex to find a venue in the school environment itself. The schools have a problem acknowledging sex. That's why the administration punished little girl who reported the molestation by suspending her in the recent case in which she reported that a teacher was molesting a child. I believe school people knew about the molestation and were so intent on denying it that they did not report it and punished the child who did. A pschiatrist told me that punishment for telling the truth damaged that little girl's psyche severely.
And also this: tell the board chair to instruct the board lawyer to send me the public information about his firm's relationship with the board. One of the things I want confirmed is that Dr. Lennard gave Mr. Gonzalez's firm a no-bid contract that none of the firms in town had a chance to offer competitive bids on. So Mr. Gonzalez's recent zealous comments in favor of the no-bid protocol were interested, not disinterested, and hence the board should not listen to his advice on no-bids.
The lawyer's relationship with the school board is public information. The state manual on this law says so. A lawyer can't stonewall and a board can't assist him in evading a citizen's right to the information requested under the open-records law. I don't want to have to begin to leaflet the Florida bar, the Attorney General, the governor, and the state board of education to get the Hillsborough County board attorney to obey the public-records law.
Pray see that he gets the message from the board to do so, or I will have to include all board members in my complaints about non-compliance with the open-government law if it comes to that.
lee drury de cesare
leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com
If you make the text below blue, you
can read that which spills over into
the black part of the page. lee
Aside from the particulars this is a powerful letter from a front
line librarian. No wonder Bart Birdsall was selected as a national
example of thoughtful, passionate concern for library freedom and
service as a Library Journal honoree 2 years ago. He is the kind of
man that will make the school district stand tall and not melt into a
puddle of turgid blandness.
--Kathleen de la Pena McCook
--
On 11 Dec 2007 at 22:01, Montolino@aol.com wrote:
Dear Superintendent Elia and School Board Members:
I watched tonight's school board meeting with dismay. One parent's
complaint about a book should NOT determine whether a book is taken
off library shelves or not. A passage read out of context should not
decide whether a book is taken off the shelf or not. Superintendent
Elia's comments made it sound like this book may very well be taken
out of all schools and that she might work with the entire state to
censor this book statewide. I hope I did not misunderstand.
As a community member and as a librarian I believe censoring
books does students a disservice. I am intelligent because I read
everything and anything I wanted my entire life with full approval of
my parents. Sheltering children from real life does nothing but leave
them unprepared to deal with life's challenges.
With that said I do not advocate putting pornography in school
libraries. I have not read this book, but I plan to read it asap. I
want to see what I think of the overriding message of this book.
For every parent such as Melissa Burt there are parents like my
parents who would NOT want this book taken off the shelf. I read the
Marquis de Sade in high school which is one of the most graphic and
bizaare writers you can read.I was allowed to read everything and
anything, and it did not harm me in the slightest.
No one has a right to deny others from reading a book. Like I
said, for every parent who wants a graphic book removed, you will
find other parents who feel the book should not be censored.
We librarians attempt to purchase age appropriate books. However,
there are many, many reading levels, cultures, and maturity levels.
We have to provide reading material for EVERY child, every culture in
our school, every maturity level. It is a daunting task. Parents who
are conservative should police their children's reading material and
not attempt to keep others from reading materials whose parents may
have no problem whatsover. My parents would have never worried about
the passage read aloud at the board meeting even if my late sister or
I read it in elementary school, and I can produce my very intelligent
parents at a board meeting if necessary to corroborate that
statement.
Before any action is taken concerning this book every single
board member and the Superintendent should read the book in its
entirety, and the decision should NOT be done by one person, one
parent, one school board member, one district supervisor, or one
Superintendent.
I will be discussing the issue with the ACLU and other community
groups, because I am very, very concerned about this issue and about
how the school board caves into a small group of parents (or one
parent) at the drop of the hat. Intellectual Freedom (please see
ALA.org and search "Intellectual Freedom") is one of the foundations
of democracy, in my opinion. We must strive to protect Intellectual
Freedom.
The passage the parent read at the board meeting was graphic, but
it probably reflects many of our students' experiences. Many are
raped, and unless you read the book in its entirety and understand
what context the passage is found, you can not make a judgment. What
if this book gives some child solace reading about her own experience
in life? It might keep her from committing suicide. We read to see
ourselves. Censoring these books often means censoring
children's/teen's experiences in life. Chris Crutcher, a well known
young adult writer, has his books taken off library shelves often,
and he says it well, "To censor my books is to censor those
children's lives, b/c I got these storiesfrom real children."
Once you start picking and choosing which books belong on a
library shelf, you start on a slippery slope, and about one half of
ALL library books in all grade levels can be challenged and removed,
if we open the floodgates, and we will not have any books on the
shelves.
This is un-American and anti-Democracy. I urge you to think very
carefully about proceeding with issues in which the district attempts
to censor books.
Currently, the Hillsborough Countyprocedure is for the parent to
read the book completely first. If the parent is still angry, the
parent can have the school convene a committee that every single
media specialist forms at the beginning of year which requires
community members as well as administrators. Then, as a GROUP the
committee decides whether it should be kept on the shelves or not.
Each school has a different culture, and a book should not be taken
off shelves without a group effort and following the procedure. A
book taken off one shelf should not be taken off another library's
shelf. If a parent can go to the board and ignore the school
procedure, why have a procedure in place?
Ihope to speak to the ACLUabout this book, and I hope that all
of you will read the book, analyze its literary value, how that
passage fits into the book, the overriding message of the book, and
whether some students may find solace in such a book.
Maybe the book has no literary value. I will read it myself and
see, but I believe it probably does, if it landed on the statewide
teen reading list.
Parents have a hard time understanding that their very own
children rights that go beyond what the parent may want the child to
have. Many children are molested by their very own parents, and they
have no where to turn sometimes except to a book on incest in a
school library that might help the child deal with the issue. Teen
pregnancy books and incest books are often stolen out of school
libraries, b/c the child does not want to check it out but
desperately needs the information. Some of these children will never
go to their parents about these issues.
We need to look at the bigger picture, people.
Books do not harm children. Adult reactions to booksdo. I would
like any proof from research studies showing that literary books harm
children. I have never come across such a research study. Before you
think about removing a book, please find research that shows stories
harm children.
Sincerely,
Bart Birdsall
Bart Birdsall
2309 W. Bristol Ave.
Tampa, FL 33609
home (813) 258-8817
cell (813) 362-7937
Montolino@aol.com
Ms. Cobbe: I post this as a correction. ldd
You left last night before I could give you the copy of Mark Hart's resignation form. I need to correct your assumption that it was left out of his file on purpose. I had that file in my possession after Letitia Stein had reviewed it. I know it was in there when I gave her the file to review. She must have taken that form out.
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