By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
School board members in Rockingham County want the division to do more to combat antisemitism by warning graduation speakers to avoid rhetoric that could be seen as targeting Jews.
Board member Hollie Cave urged Superintendent Larry Shifflett to talk with graduation speakers about acceptable parameters for their speeches.
Last year, she said, one speaker made a remark that “really bothered me” and that she considered to be antisemitic, although she didn’t specify what had been said or who made the comment at which school. Cave said she doesn’t want that to happen again.
“My request, just to Dr. Shifflett and to all four of our high-school principals, is that you have taken pause and time to speak with these speakers so that they know that we don’t support that type of thing in Rockingham County,” Cave said.
Her request came after fellow board member Matt Cross suggested that schools make field trips to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., mandatory for county students.
“I really don’t like just the idea of the autonomy of a teacher and whether they can go or not go,” Cross said. “I’d like for the board to set a standard thing.”
Aside from Cave’s mention of a remark made at graduation last year, the board members did not point to any specific instances of antisemitism in Rockingham County schools.
Their requests to quash it, however, follow a push from Richmond to do the same. Earlier this month, Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order directing state education agencies to compile tools to help local school districts prevent, track and report incidents of antisemitism.
Cave said Rockingham County should get a jumpstart on those and other efforts to combat antisemitic rhetoric.
“When we start putting those things in our requirements and our curriculums and just in our everyday interactions with each other and with our students,” Cave said, “we’ve got Rockingham County that knows better, so we don’t need the governor – no matter who’s in the governor’s mansion – to tell us this is the right thing to do.”
Seven more books banned
At its May 12 meeting, the school board decided to permanently remove seven more books from Rockingham County school libraries and classrooms. The review of 50 titles that began last spring with the county’s new policy prohibiting sexually explicit content in supplementary school materials is now almost complete, with just six remaining.
Two were removed against the recommendation of Superintendent Larry Shifflett and the Content Review Committee, a group formed by division leaders to review and discuss each book in depth.
Board member Hollie Cave disagreed with the review committee’s position because she said she found many instances of sexual content within the two titles: “Perfect” by Ellen Hopkins and “Tweak” by Nic Sheff.
The superintendent and committee supported the removal of five others:
- “Forever” by Judy Blume
- “The Infinite Moment of Us” by Lauren Myracle
- “Yolk” by Mary H.K. Choi
- “Breathless” by Jennifer Niven
- “How Beautiful the Ordinary” by Michael Cart
Of the 44 books voted on thus far, 24 have been prohibited – 13 of those against the Content Review Committee’s recommendation. Fifteen titles have been returned to all shelves, while three were retained in high school libraries.
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