Moms For Liberty Wilson County Responds To Media’s Assertion That Book Challenges Slow The Efficiency Of The School Board

In response to a piece written by the Wilson Post Editorial Board that can be read HERE.

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By Amanda Price [Chair, Moms for Liberty Wilson County, TN] –

It is my hope that the Wilson Post Editorial Board will carefully consider the following in relation to the official opinion of Main Street Media of Tennessee regarding citizen commentary during Wilson County School Board meetings. 

“The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and the freedom to address government bodies with grievances. It does not guarantee efficiency.”

Implying inefficiency in relation to the First Amendment implies waste. It appears that the Wilson Post Editorial Board is equating their particular set of values for individual speech in Wilson County with the freedom to speak as a whole. This is a very dangerous and costly mistake. 

Most would agree that individual speech is cheapened (or “inefficient” as the Wilson Post suggests) when we merely react before understanding all sides of the argument. However, the Wilson Post now appears to feel justified in applying their assessment of what they consider to be valuable speech as grounds for limiting speech during open meetings. It is no longer enough that said speech aligns with the WCS agenda, it should now also align with the Wilson Post agenda and priorities. These are the very same gradual and silent encroachments on freedom that James Madison warned us about. 

Longer times for citizen commentary can certainly be inconvenient to those who disagree with the content of the commentary or to those who simply have other priorities. While inefficiency is certainly inconvenient, inconvenience is not the same as inefficiency. We would do well to understand the difference. I would suggest the policies surrounding citizen commentary are not inefficient. The procedure in Wilson County for formal book reviews, as recommended by the non- governmental organization, the American Library Association, is inefficient for the severity of the amount of the extreme sexually explicit material currently in Wilson County.

Open meetings ensure that all viewpoints are heard as some may not have the ability to send emails. Many emails can easily be swept under the rug or go unanswered. Furthermore, open meetings are particularly important in relation to the first two prongs of the three-pronged Miller Test for obscenity. The citizens of Wilson County must work together in accordance with the Miller Test to establish community standards that will be applied to Wilson County students.

“Many of the speakers appear at each meeting, usually reading passages from books which they describe as obscene and pornographic.”

By failing to mention the other speakers who have taken comparable time during citizen commentary to support the distribution of extreme sexual content to minors, the Wilson Post has demonstrated clear bias on this subject.

“Seeing reading materials receive 25% of the meeting’s time lessens the discussion time for the other issues.”

The Wilson County School Board has no stated or required end time. Therefore, every item on the agenda has sufficient time to be addressed regardless of citizen commentary should members of the school board be committed to do so. 

“(The First Amendment)…has provided a brick wall in the decision-making path of the Wilson County Schools board.”

This is a non sequitur. If the Wilson Post has evidence to suggest that other issues are not addressed or that decisions are not being made due to citizen commentary, the Wilson Post would do well to present that evidence to their readers when they make such a claim. 

“…the school board has other important issues to tackle — overcrowding, new school buildings, funding for facility maintenance, transportation, and teacher salaries and retention.”

These are all important issues that do warrant extensive discussion but such issues shall not infringe on the First Amendment rights of citizens who wish to use the allotted time to air grievances about the distribution of extreme sexually explicit content to minors with taxpayer funds. 

“The school district already has two acceptable remedies in place – a book screening committee that makes recommendations to the board and a Mature Reading List that makes any questionable book available only to students whose parents have electronically notified the school to allow the student access.”

The book review committee consists primarily of unelected Wilson County School employees. Some feel this allows too much room for bias and conflict of interest that may hinder the book review committee from establishing a community standard that accurately represents the taxpayers of Wilson County. 

The Mature Reading List is certainly a step in the right direction for parents who wish to have control over the extreme sexually explicit content offered to their children. This is content which WCS has apparently distributed to students for decades in some cases without parental knowledge or consent and without accountability or reprimand. WCS has set an example with the Mature Reading List that has caught the attention of school districts across the nation. However, suggesting that the MRL is the final solution to the problem is committing a fallacy of middle ground. 

Much of the time the truth does indeed lie between two extreme points, but this can bias our thinking: sometimes a book is harmful and a compromise of it is also harmful. Just because a parent gives consent for their child to have access to sexually explicit materials doesn’t mean that the content is not harmful or illegal according to current laws. We must not allow fear of controversy to drive Wilson County Schools to turn the Mature Reading List into an obscenity protection list. Taxpayers must now accept the inconvenient truth that they have funded erotic literature (such as the Court of Thorns and Roses series) for minors that remains accessible on the MRL at the recommendation of the book review committee. This alone should cause anyone to question the judgment and mission of the book review committee. 

The Mature Reading List also gives parents a false sense of security as many books with sexually explicit content remain on shelves unrestricted and unrated, prohibiting the full informed consent of parents. Over 100 books with extreme sexually explicit content comparable to a rated R movie are currently on library shelves in Wilson County schools. Many of which have not been read by the librarian before being placed on the shelf, according to former Zone 4 Representative Linda Armistead. If students are not allowed to view a rated R movie at school without parental knowledge or consent, the same should apply to books with similar content. 

Three years ago, the WCS board decided that parents are the only ones qualified to make health decisions for their children, so mask mandates during a pandemic were unnecessary. Now, parents are told that the seven members of the school board, instead of parents, are the only ones qualified to make the decisions about what books will be available to students. That seems like an illogical shift that adds to the inefficiency.

Does the Wilson Post believe that the book review committee and mature reading list abdicate the elected officials of the Wilson County School Board from their role alongside parents and teachers in establishing a community standard as listed in TCA 49-6-3803 (3)(c)?

While it is true that parents maintain the right to make health decisions for their children and the right to decide what books their children can read, they do not have the right to expect schools to violate WCS policies and obscenity laws on behalf of their children. The Wilson Post would do well to remember that WCS policies become arbitrary when students cannot access (4.406), create (6.704) or speak (Category 1-10, WCS 2021-2022 student handbook) the very same content some parents may demand that they read at school.

Rather than gradually encroaching on the freedoms of Wilson County citizens by limiting their right to air grievances in an open meeting, perhaps an emergency provision is in order.  Is there not some way to fairly and legally fast track the procedure in the event that such a magnitude of extreme sexual content is discovered and contested?

With current policies in place, formal book reviews cannot be accomplished without years of inconvenience in school board meetings.