Citizens Have Concerns About Sexual Content In School Library
Concerned parents and citizens are calling for an update to the Hermon school system’s policy on which books are and are not allowed in its library.
A group of parents in the town of Hermon have taken issue with many of the titles in the Hermon middle and high school libraries.
After a brief overview of the content of the books, the group has now accumulated a list of 83 titles that contain what they call explicit sexual and erotic content.
“Unfortunately it’s exposing kids to things that a thirteen-year-old and fourteen-year-old really isn’t meant to be reading or watching or listening to,” says Danielle Haggerty, a concerned citizen.
Haggerty no longer has any children who attend any of the Hermon schools but she is still in full support of the school’s policy being changed.
Haggerty says that there needs to be new policies put in place that restrict the sexual content children are exposed to.
“That’s what we’re trying to do is look at this content just like we would look at tv, we look at the radio and look at it to see, does this enhance the life of our children and so far we’re finding a number of books that it does not.”
Regina Leonard, a local parent, says that she and other community members think it would be best to remove books from the high school library containing sexual content that would not be suitable for thirteen and fourteen-year-olds at the oldest.
However, Leonard says that they don’t want to necessarily ban any of the books that are deemed inappropriate under the new policy.
“The rating system is based on sexual content within the books its not that we’re looking at banning any books or a specific genre of books or a specific gender or sexuality. It’s just based on sexual content.”
We reached out to Micah grant, the superintendent of schools, and he said he isn’t aware of any challenged materials in the schools and that they have not received any challenges to books this year.
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