CROSS RIVER, N.Y. - A controversy over LGBTQ content in some of the children’s books in Katonah-Lewisboro elementary schools has resurfaced a fundamental tension: Who decides what students learn?
In KLSD school board meetings two weeks apart last month, parents, students and others addressed that hot-button issue, one that has roiled school districts nationally.
The local conversation never devolved into the polarized rancor seen at school board meetings elsewhere. Still, as the KLSD board prepared last week for its first November meeting, the debate continues over whether teachers or parents should make decisions on what children are taught and at what age.
One group of parents, speaking at the board’s Oct. 10 meeting, asserted their right to decide what was appropriate for their children. They had been the chief providers of their child’s earliest skills, values, culture and security. Shouldn’t they continue to shoulder that responsibility by being informed before potentially unsettling subjects are introduced?
While they sought the right to “opt out” if they disagree with some subject matter, they did not advocate book bans or denigrate the lifestyle choices of other students.
Two weeks later, a second, larger group of parents—some of them teachers or other child-behavior professionals—said educators were equipped through extensive training in the how, when and why of discussing sensitive topics.
They can and should assess when to acquaint students with such things as transgender choice and same-sex marriage.
Most speakers supported the notion that schools can make unilateral decisions about sensitive subject matter. Joe Tomcho, the father of two KLSD students, said of the speakers at the earlier protest, “I don’t believe they speak for a majority of parents in our community.”
Rachel Fusco, a child therapist and mother of two Increase Miller students, said, “I want to know that my kids are attending a school district where administrators are educating families and not families regulating educators.”
Tatiana Rozo, part of the original parent protest two weeks earlier, disagreed, telling the Oct. 24 meeting, “Parents have the right to make choices for their own family with regard to their religious, cultural or parenting style.”
Or do parents and educators, as one trustee suggested, share that burden? The school board’s newest member, Barbara Williams, believes both the home and the schoolhouse have key responsibilities for a child’s development.
“Parents have and will always play a primary role in raising their children and sharing their family’s values and beliefs. Those conversations are likely different from home to home, and that’s OK,” she said, then added, “But we cannot reject books that represent trans children—because we, as a public school system, welcome, accept and support all children.”
Williams was vice president of the Meadow Pond PTO last spring when she was the top vote-getter among five candidates for three school board seats. It was reported last month that a book, the transgender account of “When Aidan Became a Brother,” would be read to kindergarten and other students at Meadow Pond Elementary School that touched off the original Oct. 10 furor.
Williams told the Oct. 24 meeting she had read the book and said it’s “about the simple concept that kids can be accepted and loved as they are.”
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