City News Parents speak against explicit books, sue Dearborn school board

Hillsdale attorney Daren Wiseley is representing the concerned parents in a lawsuit against the district

By Haley Strack, Logan Washburn, and Thomas McKenna

Senior Reporter City News Editor Collegian Freelancer

DEARBORN, Mich. — Michigan parents are suing a school board with the help of a Hillsdale-based lawyer for approving sexually explicit library books.

Parents with children in Dearborn Public Schools notified the Board of Education of their intent to sue at a Monday night board meeting. Parents, represented by attorney Daren Wiseley, claim the school board has not allowed parents to remove their children from instruction on explicit topics, and violated parents’ rights to free speech, freedom of religion, and the right to control their childrens’ education.

“These parents have expressed to you great concerns regarding books depicting/describing pornography, pedophilia, and/or other sexually explicit content in your school library,” the lawsuit reads.

“They are also concerned over your sexual education policy, enhanced by your own denial of their rights as parents to be provided with the content taught on the subject, and the denial of their right to ‘opt-out’ of your district’s sexual education program, in direct violation of Michigan law.”

A group of mostly Muslim parents made national headlines after hundreds of them protested sexually explicit books at an October school board meeting. This spurred an internal review of books on library shelves and library websites. The school board announced the results at Monday’s meeting.

The board approved

“Flamer” by Mike Curato and “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold, and restricted “Eleanor & Park” by Rainbow Rowell to high school libraries. The district removed two of the books in question, “Red, White, and Royal Blue” by Casey McQuiston and “Push” by Sapphire.

The novel “Flamer” contains explicit references to genitalia, masturbation, and sex. Hillsdale County native and mother Stephanie Butler read a graphic passage about masturbation from the novel during public comment at the Monday meeting.

“It is a felony to disseminate sexually explicit matter to minors,” Butler said. “This is the law. I don't care what the ACLU says. I don't know if they've read these books. We know our rights as parents, and we know that right now our rights are being infringed upon.”

Sebold’s book “The Lovely

Children’s Museum of Branch County meets fundraising goal

By Tracy Wilson Design Editor

The Children’s Museum of Branch County can now restore and move into a 19th century building in downtown Coldwater, following a fundraising effort.

“We’ve always wanted to go back downtown,” board member Shana Grife said.

“Finding a space has been the challenge.”

According to Grife, the project to relocate the CMBC to downtown Coldwater costs $500,000. CMBC raised over $73,000 through fundraising on Patronicity, a website that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation uses to match donations toward public projects.

“The goal is to have an inclusive platform that allows local residents and stakeholders to play a role in projects that will transform their communities into places where talent wants to live, businesses want to locate, and entrepreneurs want to invest,” according to the MEDC website.

Grife said half of the fundraising money will go directly toward improving the museum, while the other half will go to the Downtown Development Association, which owns the new building and has been working with the CMBC to borrow government money for the project.

“We’ve really focused a lot on our fundraising, trying to add more educational stuff to the museum. Largely, our money goes for fun stuff,” Grife said.

Grife said the DDA’s money goes toward the essentials.

The new location will be significantly larger than the current location. One of the planned improvements will be a large retail section at the front of the store.

“We’re hoping that we have items you can’t get at big box stores,” Grife said.

The CMBC offers a variety of exhibits for children, such as a large wooden barn playset and an engineering toy called a Rigamajig. The new facility, Grife said, will include a multi-purpose STEAM classroom.

“It’s fun to see how excited they are to come, and it’s also, in a way, fun to see how sad they get when they have to leave,” Grife said. “When I first got involved, I was always excited when we had new visitors. And then the president of our board said, ‘Really, you should be more excited about our returning visitors because that means they had such a good time they want to come back, and there’s more for them to experience.’ Kids tend to bug their parents and want to come back.”

Local families from the Hillsdale, Reading, and Coldwater areas often visit the nonprofit CMBC.

Coldwater resident Jessica Carpenter said her 3-year-old daughter Adelynn loves to play with all of the toys at the CMBC.

“I don’t think she has a favorite thing to play with,” Carpenter said. “I think she’s pretty much played with everything here. I love how they have all the different activities. The music is amazing, and I don’t have to take it home to listen to it.”

Bones” describes explicit scenes related to sex, rape, and murder. Parents have expressed concerns the book is pornographic due to its graphic content, according to the Banned Books Project of Carnegie Mellon University.

“The parents had no other choice but to retain legal expertise in this,” Dearborn resident Mike Hacham said. “The problem is that this board did not take any parent or person up here seriously. And as I said at the first board meeting that I went to, we will take this to court, we will pursue legal action. The words that came out of my mouth were not a joke.”

As parents press school boards to remove explicit materials from schools, Michigan Democrats are rallying around LGBTQ books. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan sent Michigan public school districts a letter encouraging them to “protect the constitutional rights of students and their families by opposing censorship in school libraries” on Nov. 1.

In October, Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer accused Republicans of exploiting the book debate, asking her election opponent Tudor Dixon: “Do you really think books are more dangerous than guns?”

“This is not about gay people. This is about children,” one Dearborn father said. “What is it going to take for you guys to take the books away? I'm not going to stop coming until these books are removed. We don't want to opt out, we want the books off the shelf. Nice and simple.”