I am a firm believer in transparency in the classroom. Parents and guardians should have the ability to know what materials are available for their students to access in the classroom, library/media center and what educational value these materials serve.

Parents may not feel the need to know all of these details of their child’s academic experience but if they choose to, the necessary information should be available. For the most part our staff understand the importance of providing relevant educational materials to their students. However, there are times when teachers either knowingly or unknowingly have not provided appropriate materials and parents should know their rights.

• Voted to approve IJLA- A policy for parents/community members to request for materials to be removed from our district if they do not align with our district’s learning values.
• Voted to approve INB- A policy keeping political bias out of the classroom by ensuring that teacher’s are not imposing their political bias, but if discussing controversial, sensitive, religious, or political issue the educator must be knowledgeable about the issue and serve as a facilitator to ensure that points of view are presented in a civil manner. In the capacity as facilitator, it is the educator’s responsibility to identify various points of view on an issue, and to make certain that differing opinions are treated with respect.
• Voted to approve KBB- A policy in response to recent state statue that requires the district staff to notify parents of a change in a student’s educational, social or emotional well-being.

I have fought to ensure that materials in our classrooms and books are appropriate, even going as far as challenging a book See Here that was available to students in the LVHS library. I am happy to report that under new media center/library leadership the book was removed. This isn’t about banning books and censorship it is about selecting appropriately and educationally relevant material in a school library that has limited space and funding.

In addition I was selected to serve on a cabinet for Superintendent Degenfelder to give guidance model policy guidance for other district’s to follow linked here