Roiled by the removal of ‘unsuitable’ books from Radnor H.S. library, RTSD reviews handling of parent book challenges. Plus, hot headlines and This and That

By way of background: Policy 144.1 directs the Superintendent to appoint a 6-person committee to evaluate challenges to library materials: a Radnor High School parent, a school board member, a teacher in the subject area, a librarian, an administrator and the principal. The committee is directed to read the challenged books, discuss them and vote. In this instance, committee members were required to sign NDAs, pledging not to reveal the names of anyone on the committee, ostensibly to allow for open discussions without fear of backlash. (Members could reveal their own names if they so chose. So far, none have.)

Tuesday’s night’s meeting was a first step in what would be a thorough review of the policy, RTSD administrator Scott Hand assured the crowd. The district will talk to stakeholders, including Radnor educators and librarians, research other districts’ policies, ascertain best practices from the American Library Association, and collect and curate suggestions from the community.

Public comment followed, lasting a full hour-and-a-half. Most focused on what they felt were flaws in the policy and the rollout of the decision, others focused on the challenged books, and some touched on both.

The three books removed from Radnor High School’s library – Blankets, Gender Queer and Fun Home – are prominently displayed at Main Point Books. At Tuesday’s meeting, bookstore employee Owen Elphick defended Blankets after breezily inviting anyone who wanted to buy the books to head up the street to his store.

A few of highlights:

• The first student speaker, Radnor junior Regan Whitehead, questioned why the banned books showed LBGTQ relationships in “brief” scenes while the library has “similar or even more explicit” heterosexual content “spanning entire chapters.” Whitehead called this a “clear double standard” that hides diverse perspectives and discourages the critical thinking essential to learning. “A small group of parents should not dictate what books other people’s children are allowed to read … Representation matters,” Whitehead said. “Everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in the books available to them.”
• Radnor parent Mike Roach said books with LGBTQ themes are often read privately in the library. They don’t get checked out because students fear the reactions of their parents, friends and teachers. His statement was a response to the Superintendent’s letter to parents in which he stated RTSD’s policy weeds out graphic novels  that haven’t been checked out in a year as a basis for the three books’ removals. (Circulation records obtained by parents show multiple checkouts for each title.)  Roach also questioned the district’s commitment to inclusion. “Is Radnor really giving LBGTQ communities a place to shine? Or by removing these biographical memoirs from books, are you telling students and adults to stay in the closet, we don’t want to hear from you?”
• Parent Leah Press called the book challenges “a personal vendetta against LGBTQ material that dragged the rest of the community into their complaint.”
• Parent Emily Nelson said the policy’s lack of transparency violates RTSD’s stated mission to engage the community in decision-making. “The community can’t engage if it doesn’t know there’s a [book] challenge, what it is, how and where it’s being addressed, what the criteria are for review and how to offer input.” The core message of the three books, Nelson said, is to “make you feel less alone and strange” and noted that “trans and queer young people are at high risk for self-harm,” adding, “Having a decision made in secret feels disrespectful to the librarian’s judgement.”
• Former parent Sherry Luce, who leads 27,000 statewide members (570 of them in Radnor ) of Red, Wine and Blue, an alliance of liberal-leaning suburban moms, suggested a new policy “that puts everything in the sunlight” and asked why “the policy review has been discussed for two years with no action taken.” She said parents can restrict what their children can check out by filling out a form. “No one parent should make a decision for everyone in this room.”
• A sixth-grade boy bravely asked officials to add a student voice to the committee. “Why would you ban these books?” he asked. “I didn’t know these books existed until the book ban. Now I have an interest in reading them.” (The crowd laughed.)
• High school senior William Lo complained about being kept kept in the dark. “As someone who sits in the high school 7 or 8 hours a day, I was pretty disappointed to learn of this decision from my mom,” said Radnor senior William Lo. “It wasn’t officially announced to students. They weren’t given an option to talk about how they felt about these books,” adding wryly: “I’m fairly certain that most high schoolers weren’t first exposed to porn through these books. Anyone of any age can download the apps and see anything.”
• Another senior, a tearful Mia Kripke, said she felt “Radnor was a safe place” when she first questioned her sexuality at age 13. “I’m 18 now and I’m worried about the community that’s being created. I’m worried about being in a school where these books aren’t allowed.” She called books “really good resources for all students” that “give them a place to discover themselves…I’m not proud to be somewhere where you’re banning books, where you’re saying ‘I don’t want these queer communities here.’”
• Joanna Bell-Mariam criticized the secretive nature and composition of the ad hoc committee, pleading for at least one student and educators in language arts to take part. “It’s not clear the ad hoc committee was chosen in an unbiased manner.” She said “many teachers and guidance counselors were outraged and some were moved to tears when they were told of this decision.” She argued for a “much higher bar for book removal … These books were accused of being porn when they are memoirs that contain uncomfortable materials and experiences.”
• Villanova education professor Jerusha Conner talked about books being safe places for young people to explore important questions about their sexuality and gender identity “in the absence of an open, supportive home environment.” Connor praised the “warm, welcoming atmosphere” cultivated by Radnor High School’s librarian and noted that the 18-year-olds at RHS were adults who don’t need parental consent to see NC-17 rated movies, make healthcare decisions or vote. Conner (below) requested that 18-year-old students be named to book challenge committees.

• A Wayne parent argued that Policy 144.1 was woefully outdated, written when book challenges were relatively rare and included such titles as “Gossip Girls” and “The Kite Runner.” Although well meaning, the 2005 ad hoc committee operated in a vacuum, she said, and didn’t review the books in the context of others in the library, best practices, and ALA guidelines, she said.
• Parent Margo O’Donnell said she read two of the books after she heard they were banned. “Taken in context, they are as beautiful as they are painful … They show the vast expanse of how others live. They’re not how-to manuals.”
• Vincent Lo was the only parent to ask why “images the superintendent and ad hoc committee had deemed pornographic were included in an email sent to the community.” Like others, Lo criticized the district’s handling of the challenge and its announcement of the decision. “There has been no public notice about the review process, no transparency about how the ad-hoc committee was selected, no clear explanation for why these books were removed. Is there an appeal process? If so, the community needs to know.” He said he “trusts professionals to do their jobs. We need to step back and avoid micromanaging every aspect of our child’s education.”

Lo wasn’t the only parent who sought clarification of the committee’s reasoning. In his various communications since the controversy erupted, Batchelor has given a few explanations for the committee’s vote. In one instance, he claimed “visually explicit mature content” was deemed “inappropriate for a high school library that serves students as young as 14.” In the same letter, he stated that district policy allowed for the removal of Gender Queer because it hadn’t been checked out in the past year.

A few speakers went a step further, asking the district to overturn the decision and return the books to the shelves pending its policy review. Policy Committee Chair Susan Stern explained that her committee didn’t have the authority to reverse the ad hoc committee’s decision. The full school board would have to discuss the idea.

SAVVY reached out to the parent who filed the book challenges on January 17 and asked for an interview. We know who he is because we obtained his Jan. 22 email to supporters.

The email’s subject line: Porn in the Radnor High School Library.

The email confirms that the challenger is the same Radnor father who filed a pornography complaint with Radnor police over RTSD’s inclusion of Gender Queer in the high school library 2023.

He sounded confident his challenge would succeed this time.

“I think I finally convinced the Superintendent and RTSD’s legal counsel that certain books housed in Radnor’s library violate Commonwealth and Federal law by containing child pornography and that furnishing them to those under 15 subjects school staff to 10 years in Federal Prison,” he wrote. He “got nowhere” three years ago when Democrats were attorneys general at the state and county level, noting that the fact that Republicans now hold those positions “didn’t hurt either.” His new challenge, he wrote, “focused on books containing graphic images of child pornography: Gender Queer, Blankets and Fun Home.”

All three of his book challenges used identical language, contending the books would cause “childhood trauma, a willingness to be sexually exploited, enable sexual groomers and acceptance of pedophilia.”

Interestingly, his letter asked for parent volunteers to serve on the ad-hoc committee that the superintendent was convening to review his challenges, claiming the superintendent had asked him for nominees. Our sources tell us the superintendent has acknowledged receiving names from the challenger but asked the high school principal to appoint the parent representative.

The challenger refused our request to be interviewed. Instead, he sent us graphic images from the books and suggested we publish them so SAVVY readers “can judge for themselves.”

He also said we should direct our questions to the ad hoc committee. We’d do that in a heartbeat but, due to their NDAs, we don’t know who they are.

We’ve also emailed a list of questions and a left a voicemail on the cellphone of Superintendent Batchelor. We emailed the same questions to RTSD’s solicitor. If and when we hear back from the superintendent and/or the solicitor, we will update our story.

We did interview several stakeholders but almost all asked to stay off the record.

A notable exception was Carl Rosin, a widely respected Radnor English teacher for 26 years.

For him, the removal of Fun Home hits home. It’s one of the most popular of the 12 books he recommends to students for a coming-of-age themed assignment in his AP-level “Viewpoints on Modern America” class. He’s awaiting word on whether he can suggest the book next year.

(If the name sounds familiar, Fun Home inspired a Broadway musical that won five Tony Awards in 2015.)

“This is an award-winning, highly regarded book – it was ranked 35 in the New York Times list of the top 100 books of the 21^st century,” Rosin tells us. “In terms of literary value, it’s probably the best graphic novel I’ve encountered. We also don’t have a lot in the curriculum that takes the viewpoint of a lesbian woman.”

Rosin calls the parent’s challenge “ill-founded.” Contrary to his petition, there are no “minors” engaged in oral sex. there is no “pedophilia … That’s not what happens. It’s just not accurate. I was taken aback that the challenge was supported by a panel of people who read the book.”

While he’s less familiar with Blankets, Rosin has read Gender Queer. He understands how parts could be considered “problematic” but says those parts should be evaluated in context. “I told the superintendent the next time you put together a committee, put me on it.”

Superintendent Batchelor chose a health teacher as the committee’s “subject area” teacher, sources tell us. He appointed similarly when Gender Queer was first challenged in 2023. Other teachers and parents have echoed Rosin’s call for a language arts teacher to participate in future reviews of book challenges.

Rosin tells us he supports “public discourse” about challenging library materials but, like others, voices concern that “we know so little about the committee’s deliberations.” Their anonymity ensures that “committee members don’t have to defend their positions,” he says.

What’s next?

According to Scott Hand, the policy committee’s administration liaison, the committee will continue its due diligence and start discussing its findings and potential revisions to Policy 144.1 at its next meeting on April 8.

Where the district will ultimately land is still TBD but one thing seems assured: The next parent challenge to books in Radnor’s school libraries won’t be handled the way this one was.

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