Book-banning efforts are taking hold around the country, including in Connecticut.
Woodbridge Is No Exception.
“If you look at the Moms for Liberty website, it all seems very innocuous. This is really serious, and it means that the voters of Connecticut should be paying close attention to who is running for the board of education and what their priorities are.”
-CT’s Lieutenant Governor
Just this month, Moms for Liberty, a group identified by civil rights watchdog, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), as being behind book bans around the country, sponsored a meeting in Avon, CT.
Moms for Liberty’s goal is to “attack public education, ban books, and remove any curriculum that contains discussions of race, discrimination, and LGBTQ+ identities.” And they have been distributing campaign guides for anyone seeking Board of Education positions in their towns.
banning books has now been reframed into calls for Removing, Relocating, or Restricting books.
What the Woodbridge Republican Candidates are saying:
“The purpose of the school library should be to augment the classroom instruction and not represent sensitive topics outside the curriculum. The Woodbridge public library, just across the street, can serve that purpose for those sincerely interested.”
“The school library should be a direct reflection and resource of content needed to reinforce and assist the students in learning about what they are hearing in the classrooms. The school library should be equipped to assist the students in their needs for school. I am not for censorship, however, anything not related to their educational needs could be met elsewhere or offered with parental involvement.”
“The school library should support the curriculum. The Public library can educate the inquiring mind.”
“We do not want to burn books or take them out of circulation. If a parent believes their child should have access to these materials, they can check them out at a public library or purchase it.”
Each Candidate was asked if they would oppose proposals that would censor teachers/and or library materials. After Responding “yes”, they were asked to explain.
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I answered yes for the above question because there was not an option for "other."
Republican Candidate Daniel Del Prete
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Focus the school library on the specific needs of an excellent academic curriculum and use the Public Libraries (just down the road a bit) as sources for controversial material by the truly interested.
Republican Candidate Bruce Marien
Just last September, our Amity BOE meeting made headlines:
In September 2022, the CT Examiner published this story on an Amity Board of Education meeting where local parents spoke out against books in the Amity High School library. One Woodbridge resident deemed such books to be “insensitive to students whose family, religious beliefs, conflict with the pornographic texts and images contained within their pages.”