School Board Meeting 9/23

[Anonymous]

Thank goodness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel terrible that school librarians are now going to be targets of this insane witch hunt. It is all for politics and all for show and yet it is going to create enormous stress, interfere with the important work that they do, and cause real harm to people.

It is so clear that these people don’t actually believe anything that they say and they don’t care what harm they cause. They know children are in the audience and yet read passages that they know are intended for a young adult audience. Elementary schoolers are not highschoolers. Those passages are not in any books in an elementary school library. But they don’t care, because it’s all just a big stunt. Conflating high school readers with kindergarten readers is precisely what they do. And they don’t care that I kindergarten or is actually listening, because actually caring about children is not the point. Ginning up political outrage is the point. They disgust me.

DP. Start by assuming that parents do care about their children. That their actions are not purely political or performative.

It'll help you to understand them and will lower your blood pressure.

Parents care for their children. But this woman was not a parent of an FCPS child. These were political agitators who heard about a controversial book in another district and decided to make a hubbub about it to gin up outrage.

These was no “protecting” children involved. She harmed children by reading out loud passages that were age inappropriate. She didn’t care…she kept plowing on despite the children in the room because she got off on the shock and outrage and attention she was getting.

If someone seriously has an objection to a book, there is a formal process for challenging the book. It involves actually reading the entire work, which I can almost guarantee this person did not do. Because that wasn’t the point. The point was getting attention.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mr Frisch might be surprised to know that I do not want graphic novels illustrating sexual acts between naked heterosexuals in the library, either.

I also don't want novels for high schools with graphic language describing sexual acts of pedophilia of an adult man preying on a ten year old girl.


Must one tolerate porn in order to be tolerant of LGBTQ kids?

Do you know what pornography actually is? Believe me, it’s EASY for any child to find on a phone. It’s not in any FCPS school library, even this graphic novel. You really need to get out more. Have you even seen the book? Not just a screen shot, but the whole book? I haven’t. But I trust the librarians have. And if I had a specific objection to it, I would file an objection.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Karl Frisch is disgusting. He wasn't a good Board member before this, but now he has his own Omeish-like moment of blatant stupidity.

Well, I also checked out Fairfax Pride's tweet.

Neither Mr. Frisch or Fairfax Pride are helping their cause. They are playing into the stereotype of gays being about porn. That is not helpful. For a group that has worked so hard to be accepted and made such progress, this is troubling.

I guess he thinks the way to progress is San Francisco Gay Men's Choir "We're Coming for Your Children" style. This is an especially bad look considering he isn't even a parent.

We went from "love is love" and "who cares what consenting adults do" to.... this.

Troubling indeed, for society generally, for gay people and for those of us who are straight with gay family we want to see safe, accepted and thriving. Let's not go backwards please.

You keep bashing Frisch for not being a parent, and your homophobia is just thinly veiled. There are other SB members who are not parents. The SB doesn’t represent parents only; it represents the entire FFx community. Whether or not you are a parent is not relevant. I cared about our school system for decades before I became a parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's in a Secondary School library. Are the middle school books kept separately from the high school ones?

And, I am a defender of free speech--but this is a school library where the readers are minors.

They also have choice to NOT check the book out. I feel no need to protect my HS from the word di*k. The kids are watching porn on the bus.

This is not a good thing.

+1. Technically not allowed and forces kids around to be exposed whether they want to or not.

I can’t believe some PPs are all “a slight majority of high school kids have had sex, NBD!” What about kids who haven’t and don’t want to read smut in their literary fiction? That was me all through HS.

“Smut”? Lol. You sound like the Church Lady from SNL.

Here’s what you do in a HS library if you don’t want to read a book: you don’t read it. You choose a different one. I hate science fiction. So I don’t read it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have merit and it’s not my business to say it shouldn’t be in the library. It’s just not the book for me. Easy!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel terrible that school librarians are now going to be targets of this insane witch hunt. It is all for politics and all for show and yet it is going to create enormous stress, interfere with the important work that they do, and cause real harm to people.

It is so clear that these people don’t actually believe anything that they say and they don’t care what harm they cause. They know children are in the audience and yet read passages that they know are intended for a young adult audience. Elementary schoolers are not highschoolers. Those passages are not in any books in an elementary school library. But they don’t care, because it’s all just a big stunt. Conflating high school readers with kindergarten readers is precisely what they do. And they don’t care that I kindergarten or is actually listening, because actually caring about children is not the point. Ginning up political outrage is the point. They disgust me.

DP. Start by assuming that parents do care about their children. That their actions are not purely political or performative.

It'll help you to understand them and will lower your blood pressure.

Parents care for their children. But this woman was not a parent of an FCPS child. These were political agitators who heard about a controversial book in another district and decided to make a hubbub about it to gin up outrage.

These was no “protecting” children involved. She harmed children by reading out loud passages that were age inappropriate. She didn’t care…she kept plowing on despite the children in the room because she got off on the shock and outrage and attention she was getting.

If someone seriously has an objection to a book, there is a formal process for challenging the book. It involves actually reading the entire work, which I can almost guarantee this person did not do. Because that wasn’t the point. The point was getting attention.

She suggested she was a parent at Fairfax HS. Was that misleading?

There were apparently no children present at the Board meeting when she read the passages (and if any YAs were present they were the same age as those FCPS would allow to check out the books).

The formal process for challenging the books has now been initiated by FCPS. The odds that it would have done so without this parent speaking up and the outcry over the next 18 hours are slim to none.

Anyone who has tried to be a polite, behind-the-scenes advocate in FCPS knows you usually get completely ignored. FCPS just renamed a school after a man who urged others to "make good trouble," which is exactly what appears to have happened here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And now we have regular wannabe right wing media viral star, Asra Nomani. Again.

Is she gunning for a job on Newsmax or something?

Maybe she just sees egregious actions on the part of our School Board. After all, she is a journalist. You have a problem with that?

Pfft. She’s not a journalist. She’s an activist with an agenda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's in a Secondary School library. Are the middle school books kept separately from the high school ones?

And, I am a defender of free speech--but this is a school library where the readers are minors.

They also have choice to NOT check the book out. I feel no need to protect my HS from the word di*k. The kids are watching porn on the bus.

This is not a good thing.

+1. Technically not allowed and forces kids around to be exposed whether they want to or not.

I can’t believe some PPs are all “a slight majority of high school kids have had sex, NBD!” What about kids who haven’t and don’t want to read smut in their literary fiction? That was me all through HS.

“Smut”? Lol. You sound like the Church Lady from SNL.

Here’s what you do in a HS library if you don’t want to read a book: you don’t read it. You choose a different one. I hate science fiction. So I don’t read it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have merit and it’s not my business to say it shouldn’t be in the library. It’s just not the book for me. Easy!

x 1 million

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Encouraging people to misbehave and lose all decorum and civility at public meetings by giving them press is a bad idea. But right wing media regularly post these sort of clips and the goal of the people who behave this way is to go viral through those sites.

Exactly. This wasn’t an actual legitimate challenge of a book. There is a process for that and it doesn’t happen in SB meetings. This was about creating clickbait and fodder for the right-wing outrage machine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And now we have regular wannabe right wing media viral star, Asra Nomani. Again.

Is she gunning for a job on Newsmax or something?

Maybe she just sees egregious actions on the part of our School Board. After all, she is a journalist. You have a problem with that?

Pfft. She’s not a journalist. She’s an activist with an agenda.

I'm sure you don't even begin to see the irony in that statement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous[b wrote:]Encouraging people to misbehave and lose all decorum and civility at public meetings by giving them press is a bad idea[/b]. But right wing media regularly post these sort of clips and the goal of the people who behave this way is to go viral through those sites.

How else do you expect the parents to get the attention of the School Board? They send form letter responses to comments sent to them. If we had real investigative reporters, we would know. Most parents are not checking out the books in the school library. I'm guessing if you showed that video to most parents, they would be appalled.

Remember: this book is about pedophilia and it is available to seventh graders. It does not belong in the school library. It is time that our SB paid attention to what is actually going on in the schools.

Question: have you read the book? The actual book? One passage with a character discussing being molested does not mean the book is “about pedophilia” or in any way promotes it. Have you READ THE BOOK?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous[b wrote:]Encouraging people to misbehave and lose all decorum and civility at public meetings by giving them press is a bad idea[/b]. But right wing media regularly post these sort of clips and the goal of the people who behave this way is to go viral through those sites.

How else do you expect the parents to get the attention of the School Board? They send form letter responses to comments sent to them. If we had real investigative reporters, we would know. Most parents are not checking out the books in the school library. I'm guessing if you showed that video to most parents, they would be appalled.

Remember: this book is about pedophilia and it is available to seventh graders. It does not belong in the school library. It is time that our SB paid attention to what is actually going on in the schools.

The school board’s job is not to ban books from a school library. Those decisions are not made at the SB level. There is a process for challenging books that begins at the school level. There are regulations about it.

This wasn’t ABOUT the book. It was about the press.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel terrible that school librarians are now going to be targets of this insane witch hunt. It is all for politics and all for show and yet it is going to create enormous stress, interfere with the important work that they do, and cause real harm to people.

It is so clear that these people don’t actually believe anything that they say and they don’t care what harm they cause. They know children are in the audience and yet read passages that they know are intended for a young adult audience. Elementary schoolers are not highschoolers. Those passages are not in any books in an elementary school library. But they don’t care, because it’s all just a big stunt. Conflating high school readers with kindergarten readers is precisely what they do. And they don’t care that I kindergarten or is actually listening, because actually caring about children is not the point. Ginning up political outrage is the point. They disgust me.

DP. Start by assuming that parents do care about their children. That their actions are not purely political or performative.

It'll help you to understand them and will lower your blood pressure.

Parents care for their children. But this woman was not a parent of an FCPS child. These were political agitators who heard about a controversial book in another district and decided to make a hubbub about it to gin up outrage.

These was no “protecting” children involved. She harmed children by reading out loud passages that were age inappropriate. She didn’t care…she kept plowing on despite the children in the room because she got off on the shock and outrage and attention she was getting.

If someone seriously has an objection to a book, there is a formal process for challenging the book. It involves actually reading the entire work, which I can almost guarantee this person did not do. Because that wasn’t the point. The point was getting attention.

She suggested she was a parent at Fairfax HS. Was that misleading?

There were apparently no children present at the Board meeting when she read the passages (and if any YAs were present they were the same age as those FCPS would allow to check out the books).

The formal process for challenging the books has now been initiated by FCPS. The odds that it would have done so without this parent speaking up and the outcry over the next 18 hours are slim to none.

Anyone who has tried to be a polite, behind-the-scenes advocate in FCPS knows you usually get completely ignored. FCPS just renamed a school after a man who urged others to "make good trouble," which is exactly what appears to have happened here.

Had she gone through the actual process laid out in the regulation to challenge the book, the same process would have occured. I am angry that her yelling at the school board meeting got her what she wanted. There are rules for a reason. For what it's worth, the graphic novel she held up (Gender Queer) is reviewed in the professional library review sources as being for grades 9 and up. Are there some graphic pictures, yes. You know what else has graphic images? Half the stuff high schoolers are watching on tv and who knows what on social media.

[Anonymous]

Here’s what you do in a HS library if you don’t want to read a book: you don’t read it. You choose a different one. I hate science fiction. So I don’t read it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have merit and it’s not my business to say it shouldn’t be in the library. It’s just not the book for me. Easy!

This is a school library for children. Do you let your kids decide what to have for dinner every night? Do you let your four year old decide what to purchase at the grocery store? Does you let your six year old go to school in freezing weather without a coat? Wearing sandals?

Kids make lots of choices. I let my kids make choices on many things--but I made sure their choices are safe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

She is pushing this topic. Why is that? Don’t you want to know who is amplifying these “issues” and why?

Kids experimenting with sex isn’t “porn”.

Giving them books with very explicit pictures of sexual acts being performed by young people is. Giving them books that talk about a ten year old performing graphic sexual acts on an adult and vice versa is pedophilia. Last I heard, pedophilia is illegal.

Maybe she is pushing the topic because she knows it needs to be pushed. She is just reporting what happened at the meeting and providing the evidence. You have problems with that? If it is so harmless why does it bother you?

You clearly have not read either book. Or, you don’t know the meaning of the terms “graphic”, “porn”, or “pedophilia”. A book in which a character as a young adult discusses the fact that he was molested as a child is not “pornographic”.

Unless you are saying that it turns you on for a character to mention he has been molested.

In which case the problem is clearly YOU.

Pornography is, by definition, salacious and prurient, meant to be sexually arousing. If you read those passages and are sexually aroused…well, that’s telling a lot about you that I’m not sure you really want to say out loud.