Paul Lee, a Highland Park scholar and former student at the high school, says he got the initial call about books being thrown away at 9 pm on June 20, and drove over to the school with a flashlight to investigate. “I had three friends with me and we spent two hours recovering as many books as we could,” Lee tells School Library Journal. “There were shattered monitors, glass everywhere, metal desks, broken pieces of wood. We crawled amongst all that.”

According to Lee—who was in the school as the collection was being built in the 1970s, when there was a push to include more black studies in schools—it included African American, African, and African Caribbean works. In later years, he helped build the AV portion of the collection, recommending VHS tapes, educational audio cassettes, and some slides, he says.

Although Lee says he found fewer than 1,000 books in the dumpster, he believes there were nearly 10,000 books in the school’s collection, including such titles as Mike Rowe’s Chicago Breakdown (Da Capo Press, 1973) and Bell Irvin Wiley’s The Life of Billy Yank (1952).

However, Donald Weatherspoon, the emergency manager for the Highland Park’s school district, says that by October of 2012, when he was appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, there were only about 2,500 books at the school—not 10,000. The school librarian had been laid off in 2009, he says, and so the “place had been lying fallow for all those years.” He doesn’t dispute that there may have once been 10,000 titles, but without a prior catalog, he has no way to verify that information.

Weatherspoon—who was appointed to bring financial solvency to the district, which is in receivership—admits that a cleaning crew was in the school the night Lee found the books in the dumpster, but insists the books in question were discarded in error. Titles had been inventoried, boxed, and then set aside, he says. “What happened is that the cleaning crew went into a room and removed everything when they should not have removed materials that had been identified,” he says. “It was a mistake.”

Now, Weatherspoon says, he is working to get records, yearbooks, and any other books that have some meaning and value to the school district to be set aside.

“There was never a plan to throw anything out that was of historical value,” he says.

But that doesn’t quell Marcia Cotton’s concerns. Cotton is a board member from the Highland Park Renaissance Academy Board of Directors, a board which represents the Leona Group, a charter school company which runs the district’s schools.

Cotton says she didn’t know about the books being removed until Lee and others came to protest at a recent board meeting. Her co-board member, Andre Davis, resigned soon after, frustrated.

Cotton has stayed on. But as a graduate herself of Highland Park High School (the school’s original name), and her daughter also a graduate, Cotton says would have liked to see some of the books herself —if she’d known they’d existed.  “Where were they being stored?” Cotton asks. “Were they on shelves? In boxes? Were they forgotten about? Were they even being used to educate the children?”

Weatherspoon says he had informed the Leona Group’s superintendent that cleaning crews would be in the building. He also says a new library is set to be built in the high school for the fall, and he offered some books to the charter school group, which he says “to the best of my knowledge…took some.”

He also says he understands that emotions run high around the books, but believes the concerns may be misplaced.

“Some of these books are so out of date they don’t have the significance that a lot of people are placing to them,” he says. “But that’s not for me to decide. We’re preserving what we have so hopefully we can give them back to the city and the city can decide to keep them in their own community.”

In the meantime, Lee says he is adamant that the books and audiovisual materials he found last month will not be handed back over to Weatherspoon or the district anytime soon.

“We’re not going to give them back to have them thrown out again,” he says.

A committee in the Northville Public Schools district had met Friday, May 3, to discuss the request, brought by parent Gail Horalek, that the district’s seventh graders read an earlier edition of the popular diary written by a Jewish teen who hid with her family for two years in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Anne Frank was betrayed and died at age 15 in a concentration camp.

“Following a thoughtful, deliberative process, the committee reached a unanimous decision to continue use of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl—The Definitive Edition as an option within the seventh grade English language arts curriculum. The committee felt strongly that a decision to remove the use of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl—The Definitive Edition as a choice within this larger unit of study would effectively impose situational censorship by eliminating the opportunity for the deeper study afforded by this edition,” says Robert D.G. Behnke, assistant superintendent for instructional services at Northville Public Schools, in a prepared statement addressed to the school community, which he provided to School Library Journal.

Horalek, a resident of Northville, a bedroom community of Detroit, MI, says her daughter’s school should have clearly communicated the differences between the definitive edition and the expurgated version that many parents remember from their school days. “I’m saying it’s inappropriate for the middle school, and [district officials] are blindsiding the parents,” says Horalek.

First published in 1947, the diary has been translated into 67 languages, with more than 30 million copies sold, according to the Anne Frank Center in New York. The diary has attracted dozens of requests to ban it from inclusion in school libraries or curriculum since its 1952 publication in United States, says Barbara M. Jones, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Parents have objected to Frank’s directness about her sexual awakening, Jones says, or felt their children are too young to learn about the holocaust. Teachers value the diary as a tool to help young people understand history and the adolescent experiences and emotions they share with previous generations. “It’s not just about a war, but it’s also about a girl growing up,” Jones says. “The book is powerful, and it has been my experience that powerful books get censored.”

In November 2009, the definitive edition of Anne Frank’s diary was pulled from the school system in Culpeper County, VA, after one complaint about the sexual references. Culpeper schools switched to the expurgated version edited by Anne’s father, Otto Frank, a switch that parent Gail Horalek asked Northville schools to make in the city’s two middle schools.

Published in 1995 by Random House imprint Doubleday—and then in paperback by Random House imprint Bantam Books in 1997—the Definitive Edition restored passages omitted by Otto Frank, including unflattering descriptions of his wife, Anne’s mother, and others in hiding, and his daughter’s entries about her burgeoning sexuality, according to the foreword of the edition.

Among the additional material are two diary entries, written when Anne Frank was 14 years old, that Horalek considers too graphic for seventh grade. On Jan. 6, 1944, Frank reflects on puberty and her desire to kiss and touch a female friend. On March 24, 1944, Frank wonders whether her friend Peter has seen a woman nude and ponders how to describe her genitalia to him. These sections total about four pages in the 352-page book, but in total, all of the additional material represents 30 percent of the newer Definitive Edition.

Often challenges to books in schools focus on small sections outside of the context of the entire book, says ALA’s Jones. The Frank diary tells the story of a girl growing up in extraordinary circumstances and having thoughts similar to today’s adolescents, Jones says. “She’s concerned about what’s happening to her body and what is happening to her as a person,” Jones says.

Horalek’s daughter grew uncomfortable and went to her teacher and then mother, Horalek says. The school provided Horalek’s daughter with a different book. Troubled with the lack of notification to parents about the difference in editions of the diary and her daughter’s feelings that her teacher had minimized her concerns, Horalek asked the district to switch books.

Horalek clarifies that she doesn’t see the diary as pornography. Instead, she says, a number of students in her daughter’s class are distracted by Anne’s writings on her sexuality and the adolescents treat those pages like porn rather than appreciating the diary, Horalek says.

Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

Horalek says she was initially excited that her daughter chose to read the diary. “I think Anne Frank is a person who everyone should know, not just because of the holocaust but because she truly was special,” Horalek says. “There is so much to be gained by reading her diary.”

The response to Horalek’s request to swap editions has ranged far and wide, with media outlets and their readers, including The Huffington Post, New York’s Daily News, Canada’s The Globe and Mail, and the UK’s The Guardian weighing in. The vast majority of commenters want to retain the Definitive Edition in Northville middle schools, including the Kids’ Right to Read Project, a joint effort of the National Coalition Against Censorship, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The group sent a letter to the district formalizing its request.

Horalek’s complaint has constitutional implications because she is trying to control what other parents’ children read, says Acacia O’Connor, coordinator of the Kids’ Right to Read Project. The courts have ruled that parents can make decisions for their own children but not other people’s, she notes, adding, “The historical importance of this book would outweigh anything considered objectionable.”

The diary’s American publisher, Random House, declined to comment on the Michigan challenge, but Gina Centrello, president and publisher of Bantam Books, did sign the Kids’ Right to Read Project letter requesting that the district retain the Definitive Edition.

Requests to remove a book from a school can lead to additional challenges in other communities, O’Conner says. Often other challenges, regardless of merits or outcome, are used to justify the removal of a book from classrooms or school library shelves, she says, noting that teachers and school librarians work in an environment where parents and administrators are increasingly critical of educators’ work.

According to ALA’s Jones, school librarians and teachers frequently call ALA reporting that they will lose their jobs if they support keeping a controversial book.

“If you stand up to parents and administrators, you run a huge risk,” O’Conner says. “Every time there is a challenge, there is a chilling effect on teachers and librarians.”

Marta Murvosh, MLS, is a former newspaper reporter who works for a regional library system in the Pacific Northwest. Follow her on http://www.facebook.com/MartaMurvosh.

“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.”