Alumna addresses Blue Valley School Board over controversial book
Article - 10 minute read
‘The Poet X’, a book by Elizabeth Acevedo, was published in March of 2018 where it has come to the center of controversy in 2021 at Lake Norman Public Charter School (LNC) in Huntersville, North Carolina. There, two parents named John and Robin Coble challenged the book, claiming the book is “anti-Christian” and the school’s use of the novel violates constitutional safeguards against government endorsement of religion.
School officials voted to retain the book, stating, “At LNC, no literary selection is mandatory. If a constituent is not comfortable with the subject matter of a material, their perspective is honored and an alternative selection is offered. The Coble family rejected this option.”
The Coble’s filed a federal lawsuit, asking the book to be removed from Lake Norman classrooms by the court. The court dismissed the lawsuit, but in 2022 the Cobles began appealing the court’s decision in the 4th Circuit Court.
‘The Poet X’ is a book that has won multiple awards including the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Pura Belpré Award. It was also a New York Times bestseller.
The book is about a 15-year-old girl named Xiomara Batista, but she also goes by ‘Xio’ or ‘X’. She is brought up in a religious family and gets involved in slam poetry to express her feelings including sexual attractions to a boy named Aman in her bio class and her disdain for the Catholic religion she was brought up under.
On Amazon, this book has a 4.7 out of 5-star rating with the reading age set for 13-17-year-olds and the grade level being set at grades 8-9.
There were many 5-star reviews that had paragraphs talking about how amazing of a book they thought this was.
A couple of shorter written reviews include Ruby on December 8, 2022, who wrote, “Literally the best book I’ve ever read. I highly recommend it”
Another from Bonnie on December 1, 2022, says, “Had to read for a class. Didn't realize it was be in spoken word style poetry. But it works! It's beautifully written. A great take on the coming of age story”
However, there were also people with 1-star reviews, warning parents about giving this book to their children including Mom from Boston who wrote on August 22, 2020,
“Parents beware of mature content! This book was assigned as required summer reading for my 9th grader who is 14. Thankfully I read it before him so we can discuss the content prior to him reading. Themes include sneaking behind parents backs to engage in sexual activity, masturbation, physical abuse, smoking pot, underage drinking, turning your back on God and questioning the Bible and having a gay sibling. Some of the pages were outright embarrassing for me to read because they sounded like porn! I can’t imagine a 9th grade English class discussing them.
“This is not one I would pick to Illustrate how to live morally in a sinful society. And it shouldn’t be a required reading for an entire 9th grade high school, in my opinion.”
Blue Valley School District, a public school district in Overland Park, Kansas, has no qualms removing certain books from course curriculum. In a September 2020 article from BVNW News, the official student media of Blue Valley Northwest, they write, “A committee within the Blue Valley District Office made the decision to retire “Of Mice and Men,” “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” from class study as part of its commitment to eliminate racial discrimination.”
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022, English Language Arts (ELA) teacher for the Blue Valley School District Jaymes Dickinson emailed parents of students in his class to inform them that it was his second year teaching and his first year at Southwest. He also mentioned that resources for ELA were selected at the district level “for their connection to the curriculum in accordance with Board Policy 4600.” Dickinson goes on to say that students would have a choice when it comes to novels and provided a short list of potential novels, and he also provides a link to a list of all the approved novels. He finishes the email by informing parents that if they wish to opt their children out of any of the novels, a system would be in place by the district to get the child an alternative novel.
He also provided a link for parents to sign the BVSD 4600 Policy Receipt, which states, “I have read the policy and understand my child may be assigned to read any of the approved long works for his/her grade level or lower grade level(s). I understand that, if I object to my child reading a particular book, the district has a process in place for determining an alternate title and that I will need to contact my child's ELA teacher to begin that process.”
Birdy Miller, a parent of a 14-year-old 9th grader in Dickinson’s ELA class, reached out to the teacher to inform him that her child is to be restricted “to the classics and Christianity related learning.” Expressly stating they are “not allowed to be exposed in any way to LGBTQ+, sex ed. ad nauseum. No books or stories or assignments related to CRT, satanic or alternate religious studies.” She did accidentally put the name of another one of her fourteen children, but Borowiak-Miller being a unique last name, and Dickinson only teaching the one Borowiak-Miller, it was expected that he would know who she was talking about.
Dickinson would later email the parents for a Quarter 2 update where he informs parents the students would be reading ‘The Poet X’. He makes no mention of sacrilegious or sexual content in the book, only mentioning that the “story is told in free verse, with occasional haikus and unconventional line spacing and breaks. The main character questions a lot happening in her life, and ultimately (spoiler alert!) decides to trust her authority figures, despite not knowing all of the answers herself.”
Despite not warning parents of the potentially offensive content, he ended the email telling parents to reach out if they had questions or wanted to opt out for an alternative novel.
We reached out to Dickinson via email on Wednesday, January 11, 2023, to see why he chose not to disclose the potentially offensive content of the book, but as of the publishing of this article, we did not hear back from him.
It was on Monday, January 9, 2023, when the Blue Valley School Board had their first public school board meeting of 2023, where 25-year-old Izabella Borowiak-Miller, a 2016 alumna of the school district, spoke at the board meeting to speak out against the book. ‘The Poet X’ had come to her attention after her 14-year-old brother brought the book up to one of their other siblings, saying it made him uncomfortable and questioned if it was a sin or not to read it. Izabella said that as soon as she found out about the book, she started writing her letter. After three days of practicing her speech, she, along with her family and two of her friends went to the meeting, along with her younger siblings’ friends’ parents. Handing copies of her letter out 40 minutes before she spoke, she was nervous she would not be allowed to speak, but when it came time, she stood up and gave her speech.
“On the Blue Valley K12 website, in the ‘Novel Rationales’ section, there is a description of the book ‘The Poet X’ and what Blue Valley wishes to accomplish with the book for 9th graders,” Izabella Borowiak-Miller said. “Nowhere in the book description does it forewarn the students nor parents of the book’s explicit sexual nature, and explicit blasphemous rhetoric towards Catholics.”
In her speech, she also read out passages from the book she said she, as a 25-year-old, “would feel uncomfortable and inappropriate reading in front of a group of adults.”
These passages include,
Page 5, “I am the baby fat that settled into D-cups and swinging hips so that the boys who called me a whale in middle school now ask me to send them pictures of myself in a thong.”
Page 39, “bought tampons that I shoved into my body the way I’d seen Father Sean cork the sacramental wine.”
Page 85, “The boy moves his body closer to mine, and I can feel his hands drop down from my waist to my hips then brushing up toward these boobs. I hate that I now push them at him like an offering…”
Pages 323-324, “...my shirt comes off… my jeans unsnap… naked skin rubs against mine… fingers touch my breasts.”
Page 326, “But I also feel him pressed against me. The part of him that’s hard. And when his hand brushes my thigh and then moves up—”.
Due to time restraints, Izabella was unable to read her full letter, which can be found here along with 25 passages from the book that she felt were inappropriate.
Izabella said the school board seemed embarrassed while she read, but they do not give comments or public feedback for public comments. When she finished, she was given applause from attendees including several parents she didn’t know who came up and spoke to her afterward, informing her of their support for her letter.
Izabella said her mom spoke to the principal of the school the day after, but felt it was “unproductive”.
We reached out to the school board to find out how and why ‘The Poet X’ got approved to be read in Dickinson’s class. We also asked what they were doing to ease the situation and what they were doing to ensure “inappropriate” books would not be read in class going forward. Director of Communications for Blue Valley Schools Kaci Brutto responded, not mentioning anything about working to ease the situation. Instead, he referred to Board of Education Policy 4600 Selection of Learning Resources which is the policy that gives students and parents the right to request alternate novels.
“I am not looking to ban books,” Izabella told The Kansas Constitutional in an email. “I am simply angered that the book description was misleading and ambiguous. Where did it end when they sent home notices of possible inappropriate topics being mentioned in class? Like movies that are shown in school a permission slip is used but why is this not the same for books? Why hide this from the parents and the students? My mom has 14 kids and right now 9 are still in K-12. That’s over 80+ teachers and emails coming through constantly. Why would they purposely not have book descriptions?”
This is not the first time controversy was had at Blue Valley School District. In April 2022, South Area School Board member Jim McMullen, who has served on the board since January 2022, was stripped of his Vice President title over “transphobic” and “anti-LGBT” tweets after a 5-2 vote. Board member Kaety Bowers was the only one to stand with him. In a statement he read at a meeting, McMullen said,
“Is it anti-LGBTQ to object to the sexualizing of children across our entire culture and social media?
“I reject the characterization wholeheartedly.
“We could as well be here to censure the five members of the board who voted last month to retain pornographic books in our school libraries. Because if my statements are actionable, so are the actions of my colleagues.”
As of this moment, it is unclear as to what will happen next for Blue Valley School District.
I was just reading some older posts I'd missed...
Well this post pushed me off the fence on school vouchers. I HAD been ambivalent about the Kansas school voucher bill. But if the Blue Valley (in conservative Johnson county) school board voted 5-2 to oust a guy over comments that 10 years ago would have just been common sense, then I think we need to give parents the ability to save their kids.