The book, In Our Mothers’ House (Philomel, 2009) by award-winning author Patricia Polacco, was relocated behind the desks of librarians in schools serving K-6 students in Utah’s Davis School District. The book is about three adopted children of differing ethnic backgrounds and their lesbian mothers.

Children in the district must present written parental permission to see the book, according to a 26-page complaint filed by the ACLU and the ACLU of Utah Foundation on November 13.

The Davis School District claims that the book violates Utah state laws banning support of homosexuality in instructional materials supplied by schools.

“[T]he District’s primary justification for removing the book from the shelves is that, by telling the story of children raised by same-sex parents, the book constitutes ‘advocacy of homosexuality,’ in purported violation of Utah’s sex-education laws,” according to the complaint.

The ACLU maintains that removing the book violates students’ first-amendment rights.

“The Supreme Court has been very clear that schools cannot remove books from the shelf simply because they disagree with their viewpoints,” Leslie Cooper, senior staff attorney at the ACLU LGBT Rights and AIDS Project, told SLJ. “This case is about students’ rights to books in the library.”

“This is not about instructional materials. It is a book on the library shelf,” Cooper said. “A book that depicts a family headed by a gay couple hardly advocates a gay family lifestyle.”

The ACLU is filing the proposed class-action suit on behalf of the two children of Davis School District mother Tina Weber, along with the other nearly 3,000 students in the district.

“I was shocked when I heard that a handful of parents had made a decision about whether everyone else’s kids could have access to this book,” Weber said, according to an ACLU press release. “Our job as parents is to make sure we teach our children about our values. We can do that without imposing our personal views on the rest of the school community.”

How the case evolved

The flap over the book started in January, when a kindergarten student at Utah’s Windridge Elementary School brought Polacco’s book home and the child’s parent objected to it. The parent filled out a form requesting that the book be removed from the library.

As recounted in a June SLJ article, the book was moved from the K-2 section to the 3-6 grade section following a January 27 meeting of the Windridge School Library Media Committee.

The parent, along with 25 others, then appealed to the District Library Media Committee, filling out complaint forms asking again that the book be removed. The group provided statements claiming that the book contains “propaganda, because it puts forth an idea, then makes it look attractive and normal” and that “the author is wanting us to accept homosexuality as a norm,” among other objections, according to the complaint.

On April 30, the District Library Media Committee voted to have the book put behind librarians’ desks in all district schools.

ACLU’s Cooper says, “The removal of the book was deferring to other parents’ decisions about what their children can read.”

According to a Salt Lake Tribune story published on June 1, school librarians were later being told to remove other books touching on gay and lesbian themes.

A web page on the Davis School District site states that “The Davis District Library Media Policies are undergoing review at this time.” A previous school library policy statement was recently removed from the site, according to the complaint.

Utah librarians respond

“It appeared to us that the Davis School District followed the procedures that they had in place,” said Shelly Ripplinger, president of the Utah Educational Library Media Association (UELMA). “As an organization, we support all school libraries having a selection policy and a reconsideration policy.”

“School libraries serve a different function than public libraries,” Ripplinger added. “Our purpose is to support the curriculum, so with our limited budget we have to focus on supporting the curriculum and leisure reading.”

Chris Williams, community relations director of the  Davis School District, was not available for comment at press time.

On November 14, the day after the lawsuit was filed, The Utah Library Association (ULA) posted a new  Statement on Intellectual Freedom on its website.

A video of parents reading Polacco’s book aloud at a Salt Lake City library appears on the ULA Intellectual Freedom Committee portion of the site. The video was created as part of the 2012 50 State Salute to Banned Books Week (September 30-October 6) organized by the American Library Association (ALA).

In Our Mothers’ House classifies as a banned book, said Wanda Mae Huffaker, ULA Intellectual Freedom Committee Chair. “Being placed behind the desk falls into the definition of being banned” because the book is “not accessible to everyone.”

“Few banned books stay banned,” Huffaker observed. “Most of the time librarians are able to get books back on the shelves. We librarians are good at what we do.”

Polacco, the author of more than 85 books for young people, explained in an October 5 article for the ACLU blog during Banned Books Week that she wrote In Our Mothers’ House after witnessing a fourth grade girl with lesbian parents and adopted siblings being told by an aide that “you don’t come from a real family.”

“This is a first-of-its-kind lawsuit asserting a child’s fundamental right to read,” says Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan, citing that the case is on behalf of the nearly 1,000 district K-12 public school students. “We represent these children because the state and school district have simply failed to teach them to read. We do this after a long and careful process of investigation that has made clear that none of those adults charged with the care of these children, under the Constitution and laws of this state, has done their jobs.”

The groundbreaking lawsuit says the state of Michigan, its agencies that oversee public education, and Highland Park Schools have violated students’ right to read as set forth by state law and Constitution. Also adding to the problem are “serious academic deficiencies caused by a documented lack of books, outdated materials, filthy classrooms and bathrooms,” says the ACLU.

Highland Park—once the home of Chrysler—has suffered a declining population and tax base, and ranks as one of the lowest achieving school districts in the nation. An independent reading assessment of Highland Park students found them reading between four and eight grades below grade level. In fact, less than 10 percent of district kids in third through eighth grade are proficient in reading and math, according to standardized test scores by the Michigan Education Assessment Program (MEAP). By eleventh grade, when students should be college-ready, 90 percent failed reading, 97 percent failed math, 94 percent failed writing, and 100 percent failed the social studies and science portions of the 2011-2012 Michigan Merit Exam (MME).

“Highland Park students want to be educated,” adds Moss. “However, their hopes and dreams for a future are being destroyed by an ineffective system that does not adequately prepare them for life beyond school. The capacity to learn is deeply rooted in the ability to achieve literacy. A child who cannot read will be disenfranchised in our society and economy for a lifetime.”

The lack of basic reading skills for Michigan students violates state law, which mandates the provision of “additional assistance” to children who fail to read at grade level, as well as the state’s Constitution, which requires that “the legislature shall maintain and support a system of free public elementary and secondary schools” and singles out education as an important state function, explains Moss.

Writing samples documented in an ACLU report on district test scores show the extent of the problem. In a letter to Governor Rick Snyder, a fourth grader assessed at a kindergarten to first grade reading level wrote, “this is what I what to do when I grow up at Bussness laddy what And can you give my a favorite By helping me to work my way up to keep up Jobs.”

Another student, a seventh grader who was assessed as reading at the third-grade level wrote, “I go to Barber foucs school. I wish it was batter [illegible] in the clean bathroom. batter teachers and batter lunch.”

Michelle Johnson is a Highland Park resident whose daughter will enter her junior year this fall, but she reads between five and seven levels below her grade. “No one can walk through the halls of Highland Park schools and say that this is a suitable and safe environment to learn,” Johnson says, adding that she spoke at nearly every public school meeting and went to school with her kids every day. “But nothing I do will work if the district and the state don’t meet me half way. All I am asking for is a full partner in my child’s education so that she can learn the basics: reading.”

The report went on to say that the 973 students attending Highland Park’s two K-8 schools and high school were less proficient in reading than students across the state, with 78 percent of Highland Park’s third graders failing to achieve reading proficiency on the 2011-2012 MEAP test, compared to 38 percent statewide. In seventh grade, 75 percent of Highland students didn’t meet reading proficiency, compared to 40 percent across the state.

“Many children have never been given a novel to read,” Moss says, adding that school libraries are usually closed and inaccessible to students.

The ACLU of Michigan alleges that the district is further hindered by a lack a counselors and assistant principals, that students can’t study at home because they’re forced to share outdated textbooks and return them at the end of the day, that school buildings are often filthy, unheated (in the winter, students must wear their winter parkas and gloves in class), and lack security, making easy for vagrants to move in and occupy unattended rooms.

“No case ever filed anywhere in the U.S. has addressed a school system in such dire straits,” says Mark Rosenbaum, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and an ACLU cooperating attorney.

The lawsuit asks the state to use research-based methodologies to improve basic literacy skills that are administered by well-trained and supported professionals and monitored according to accepted standards of the profession.

“We ask that they put trained teachers in the classrooms,” says Moss. “We ask that they provide each child with the books they need. We ask that they provide safe and clean classrooms, bathrooms and hallways. We ask that they make a determined effort to help every child achieve reading and math literacy. We ask that they implement programs that are aimed at helping each child learn to read.”