Perkiomen Valley High School students walk out over proposed library book policy targeting ‘sexualized content’

Holding signs reading “Stop Banning Books,” “Books Aren’t Obscene, Censorship Is,” and “Teach Children the Truth,” around 150 students walked out of Perkiomen Valley High School Monday, protesting a proposed policy they said would jeopardize their access to valuable books and information.

The proposal under consideration by the Perkiomen Valley School Board mirrors the controversial policy adopted last year by the Central Bucks School District targeting “sexualized content” in library books — resulting in what employees say has been more than 60 book challenges and reviews there.

Some Perkiomen Valley board members said at a recent meeting that parents don’t want schools making sexual content available to children, and that they aren’t targeting any particular group. But a number of students who walked out Monday — gathered on the high school track during the last period of the school day — said they saw the policy as an attack on LGBTQ students.

“At what point do you stop sheltering your kids from the real world?” said senior Cece Drury, who said it was “no coincidence” that books that have already been challenged in the district through its current process center around LGBTQ experiences and relationships.

Aspen Bradley, a junior who helped organize the protest, said the policy served “to erase many of our marginalized students in the district library, and to make us feel we are inherently dirty or wrong.”

The school board was slated to meet Monday night, though the policy wasn’t on its agenda. Superintendent Barbara Russell said the district was working on a way to accommodate parental concerns while not denying all students access to books they wanted to read.

Board president Jason Saylor didn’t immediately return a request for comment Monday afternoon.

Saylor filed six of the nine challenges received by the district over the past year, according to the Pottstown Mercury. Saylor told the Mercury other parents had contacted him with concerns about the books — which include Me, Earl and the Dying Girl, and The Haters, both by Jesse Andrews; Flamer, by Mike Curato; Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel; All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson; and The Black Flamingo, by Dean Atta.

The other books challenged were I Am Not a Girl by Maddox Lyons and Jessica Verdi; Surveys, by Natasha Stagg; and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. (In a message to the community last month, Russell listed the challenged books and said that following a reevaluation process, the district had removed Surveys and deactivated access to The Haters and The Black Flamingo through a consortium library.)

A number of those books appear on most-challenged lists and have been targets of groups like Moms for Liberty.

» READ MORE: An award-winning author went to Central Bucks to protest proposed book bans, including of one of her own

At a March policy committee meeting, Saylor said that a book might have “300 pages of great information,” but “if it has one page of what I consider to be extreme sexual content, it should not be in an education center.”

Students Monday said they felt sex education in school was lacking, and that restricting access to books would make the situation worse.

“Regardless of whether you educate kids, they’re going to do sexually explicit things anyway,” said Nadia Lees, a sophomore, who feared the policy would make it easier for critics to challenge and remove books they didn’t like.

Aislinn Pepper, a sophomore, expressed concern about how a policy restricting sexualized content would affect the curriculum for Advanced Placement English, which she plans to take next year.

“I understand where they’re coming from,” Pepper said of the policy’s proponents — noting that public schools serve a broad community with different beliefs. But she objected to the “disrespect put on high school students,” who she argued are capable of handling challenging material.

Another student said that books were a “safe place,” offering students the ability to learn about uncomfortable or challenging topics in a controlled environment.

“You can always close a book, but you can never close a bad experience,” he said.