During the Canyon Independent School District meeting on Monday, council members decided to postpone the vendor vote for its healthcare record and book removal process from classrooms and school libraries. A key reason for introducing the measure concerned newly elected board member Paul Blake and giving him time to catch up and study issues related to the measures.
During the public speaking portion of the meeting, multiple community speakers attacked the morality and character of the longtime board members, with Superintendent Dr. Darryl Flusche called by name.
Local resident Carl Kinsey spoke of an alleged incident at Canyon High School during the spring semester in which a boy allegedly went to a girl’s bathroom and was taken out of the bathroom by a teacher. He also claimed that the teacher was reprimanded for their action. He said the council didn’t do his job to protect the girls in their school district. Kinsey talked about the district’s policies responsible for incidents like this, but no specific policies were mentioned.
“I was told that the Canyon Independent School District is a public school district and that every student will be protected, but what about the girls who were in that bathroom when that boy went there?” Kinsey asked. “No, you didn’t. This district has proven they won’t protect your daughters.”
Much of the public forum portion of the meeting covered some lectures and terminology regarding the health curriculum and how health is taught, including verbiage as a “pregnant person” rather than a “woman”. The contention of some of the community commentators was that language like this promotes an LGBTQ + ideology. The mental health programs and curriculum were attacked as an invasion and did not reflect the core values of the overall Canyon community by members of the public.
Overall, multiple community members who spoke at the meeting opposed any mention of LGBQT + material in the school district’s health curriculum. They pushed for a religious ideology to be the basis for the health curriculum and the choice of library materials. Some have called for a complete ban on any book dealing with transgenderism in any form in library literature. Furthermore, once again, the claim has been made that the CISD library is full of pornographic material.
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The CISD said it is postponing the vote on approved health programs so that all board members can study the chosen providers in more detail. The council also decided to postpone the vote for its new measures regarding book challenges that parents find inappropriate for school libraries. In the proposed plan, any parent could challenge a book, which would trigger a review by a select group of educators and parents to revise the title in question. If removed, the book would not be available in any district library.
Council member Linda Hinders pointed out that this process will not only remove books due to the random questionability of any particular set of beliefs, and the district will still make sure that a wide range of materials are available to students, regardless of beliefs. religious or personal. According to the policy, no books will be removed solely because of the ideas they express. Under the proposed policy, the final criterion will be the adequacy of the resources for their intended use.
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CISD board members rejected comments made to them in public comments as they are not morally fit to do their jobs or do not have students’ best interests in mind when making decisions or following policies.
Hinders said they as board members care about the decisions they make and wanted to give new board member Blake time to review the materials.
CISD council member Randy Darnell also dismissed attacks on the faith and character of council members made by some during a public comment.
“I take offense to anyone who says I don’t love my daughters, or that I don’t care about children,” Darnell said. “It is absurd to criticize the people who are serving this community for free for doing respectable work for this school district. No person on this board has chosen a book for this district. If there are any inappropriate books, we will get them out. I don’t think we have many in this district. I think the tenor of the meeting could be helped if there was more respect for the people in this council. “
Both agenda items presented should be addressed at the CISD meeting in July.
Upon further review, Flusche said there was no evidence that any of the details of the alleged bathroom accident, described during the public commentary portion of the meeting, had ever occurred.