February 26, 2018 To: The Monona Grove School District School Board Members RE: Instruction Materials Complaint We are submitting this formal appeal for the Instructional Materials Compliant that was submitted on December 21, 2017 regarding the book To Kill a Mockingbird being removed from the English 9 Curriculum. This appeal is being submitted on the bases that school board policy 9130 was not properly executed on the part of the school district. And because the committee failed to perform due diligence and execution of their duties as a committee by not fully addressing the objections written in the complaint or following the criteria outlined in school board policy 9130 in their analysis of the book. To begin with, we are still not able to locate administrative guidelines outlined by the Superintendent as it is stated in policy 9130 “to ensure that students and parents are adequately informed each year regarding their right to inspect instructional materials used as a part of the educational curriculum and the procedure for completing such an inspection.” And to the date of this submission, we still have not received or been directed to these administrative guidelines even after making a request at the School Board meeting on February 14, 2018. In the pursuit of this curriculum we have contacted teachers regarding specific curricular items and have inquired at 2 Principal/Parent forum meetings with Dr. Brost. At the January 15th meeting Dr. Brost told us that all teachers should have their curriculum with standards and objectives posted on their district websites or another website that parents should have access to; however, none of our son’s teacher have it posted. Also, we have not received a course syllabus for any of the core academic classes (English 9 Honors, World Affairs, Biology, Advanced Algebra) for either semester and for most of our son’s elective classes (Survey Tech, Computer Science, French2). We reported this to Dr. Brost at the Principal/Parent forum meetings held on January 15, 2018 and February 19, 2018. We also reported, that none of our sons’ teachers have their curriculum posted, back to Dr. Brost at the February 19th meeting. Curriculum should be available and easily accessible to all community members but most importantly to families with children in the district, however this is not the case in the Monona Grove School district. Upon finding out that an inappropriate item was to be used in the English 9 Honors class, we made the appropriate inquiry to our child’s teacher, Ms. Sharon Fritz, to determine what the curricular purpose was to use the book To Kill a Mockingbird in the English 9 Honors class. Following an e-mail exchange with Ms. Fritz, we addressed the issue with Dr. Brost at the Principal/Parent forum meeting held on December 18, 2017 were he asked us to schedule a meeting with him to discuss it further. We e-mailed to set up the meeting which then took place on December 21, 2017 with Dr. Brost, Dr. Lisa Heipp, Ms. Sharon Fritz, Mr. Paul Kelley, Tujama Kameeta, and Jeannine Kameeta. At the meeting we asked Ms. Fritz to read a passage from the book To Kill a Mockingbird and to then demonstrate how she would facilitate that lesson to a group of students. Unfortunately, she was unable to read the passage clearly and instead mumbled through it quickly, so we couldn’t really understand what she was reading. And when we asked her to facilitate a discussion with the adults in a conference room, Mr. Kelley stepped in and diverted the process in an attempt to defend the book and its use in the classroom. During the discussion Ms. Fritz stated that she wished that she didn’t have to read the N-word and that it didn’t even exist. We tried to get the district employees present at the meeting to look at the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird from the perspective of an African American person and none of them were able to do it. We even tried to give them something 2 of them could relate to and changed the concept to be an inappropriate word for women. At that point, Ms. Fritz seemed to be getting a sense of what we were saying, and Mr. Kelley acknowledge it a bit. However, Dr. Brost said he still wouldn’t know how he would feel even if he had a daughter in a class. So, during this meeting, multiple members of the district showed they were unable to even look at something from a different perspective until we chose something they could maybe relate to and if they cannot relate to it or understand it, how are they going to be able to teach it. In that meeting, they demonstrated that they were not able to bring any perspective regarding racism because they haven’t experienced and could not relate to it and if they were truly prepared to teach this concept to a multi-racial class of students, they would have been able to understand the points we were discussing in the meeting. So, in response to this inability, we submitted a formal materials complaint to Dr. Lisa Heipp during the meeting which outline all the inappropriate items in the book To Kill a Mockingbird and an explanation as to why the book is inappropriate to include in the curriculum. In response to the written complaint, Dr. Heipp, with the approval of the Superintendent, Dan Olson, formed a materials review committee. However, upon forming the committee and executing the review process, Dr. Heipp did not execute her duties appropriately. Lisa Heipp failed to approach the committee and review process, in a fair and impartial manner. It was very clear that she was biased in her selection of the committee, in the materials she provided to the committee, and in the facilitation of the review committee meetings. The committee cannot be unbiased and objective when you place a former MGHS English teacher, who had a part in putting this into the curriculum in the first place, on the committee. It is also not a coincidence that the only African- American member of the committee is also a member of the district facilities committee. Which means the district has already vetted him and selected him based off prior interactions with him. Also, the policy does not state that the Director of Instruction is supposed to facilitate the meetings but it does state that the Superintendent can be an ex officio member of the committee. Policy 9130 also dictates that the committee members must be “knowledgeable in the area” yet most of the committee has not experienced racism, could not put themselves in the shoes of an African American student, and were not familiar with current school board policies or the current English curriculum being taught at MGHS. Therefore, they do not qualify as “knowledgeable in the area”. In fact, one committee member, Jennifer Smith, who should have been knowledgeable acted as the authority on the subject matter and then flat out lied to the committee members and included a microaggression toward African Americans when she stated that Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, written by a black female protagonist, was not challenging enough when it has a Lexile of 930 compared to 870 for To Kill a Mockingbird. To clarify, the Lexile score of a text is a measurement of the text’s level of difficulty. It ranges from below 200 to more than 1600 and the higher the Lexile level, the more challenging the text. So, acting as an expert, Jennifer Smith misled the committee. But note, this was only 1 example of false information being given to the committee during the meeting. Lisa Heipp also blatantly lied and mislead the committee in her review of the current standard English 9 curriculum which will be discussed later in this appeal. What is really puzzling, is that 3 of the committee members (Shelby, Matt, and Jennifer) who voted to keep the book in the curriculum made statements with their vote requesting the English department look at other options for a required text and to look for ways to incorporate everyone’s voice. So, in essence, they were stating that the book should not be in the curriculum; but still voted to keep it in the curriculum. This is further proof that qualified committee members were not chosen because they were unable to perform the necessary duties of the committee. Before someone is placed on a committee, the person forming the committee should verify that the person is capable of executing all the required duties of the committee, including voting against the district. In terms of the materials that were provided to the committee, there were 3 supplemental items given that supported the position of the complaint in comparison to 6 that did not support the position of the complaint. Nowhere in policy 9130 does it state the committee should be provided with supplemental materials to guide their decisions. However, it was apparent by the Review Committee’s discussion that these supplemental materials redirected the committee members away from the issues stated in our formal complaint. In fact, Shelby Steel, Romar Nelson, and Matt Hindl all voted to keep the book in the curriculum on the premise that they think that students should have “difficult” or “tough” conversations in the classroom. A concept that came from 2 of the supplemental items included by Lisa Heipp. Neither of these items had anything to do with the issue of racially harassing students and violating school board policies, which is the real issue with having To Kill a Mockingbird in the school curriculum.