Chaos erupted at Millburn Elementary School Monday after a narrow vote by the Millburn Board of Education eliminated a statewide reading program from the district’s elementary and middle schools.
“This is a disgrace,” someone in the packed audience shouted. About 60 community members in attendance rose to their feet in protest of the board’s decision.
The Millburn District 24 Board of Education voted to withdraw the district’s participation in Reader’s Choice Award programs, three statewide reading programs that enable elementary and middle school students to opt in and vote on their favorite book.
The reader’s choice programs include the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader’s Program, the Monarch Award and the Bluestem Reading Challenge.
The school district has one elementary school in Old Mill Creek, and a middle school in Lindenhurst.
Board member Lisa Wooster made the motion to withdraw from the programs. The motion does not remove the literature from school libraries, but rather is to “eliminate the promotion and celebration of a program that is not equitable for all members of the community,” Wooster said during the meeting.
Wooster was joined by members Peter Pettorini, John Ruggles and John Lorentzen for the majority, voting to suspend participation in the program. Board members Jillyen Phelps, Brendan Murphy and Fred Skeppstrom voted against the motion.
Superintendent Jason Lind said the district is in ongoing conversations with staff and the board to discuss alternative ways to promote reading, particularly over the summer break.
“The board was clear, we want our kids reading. We want our kids reading a wide variety of books, and we want to continue in that process of encouraging reading,” Lind said. “So how do we do that now if that program is not the right program for us to use? That’s an ongoing conversation.”
During a discussion about the Caudill reading program at a March 11 board meeting, Ruggles expressed concern with the book “Stamped: (For Kids) Racism, Antiracism, and You,” which was on last year’s list.
Adapted from the novel of the same name, this version was explicitly written for young readers and teaches the history of racism in the United States, how discrimination continues today and how children can reframe their thoughts to accept everyone, according to the publisher Little, Brown and Company Books for Young Readers.
Ruggles said he was “deeply offended” by the content after his son brought home a copy of the book.
During Monday’s discussion among the board members, he said the 2024-2025 Caudill list was “left-leaning,” and believed it promoted a political agenda.
“If I can’t find one book on there that has a conservative bent to it, then I start thinking the committee might be pushing an agenda,” Ruggles said during the meeting.
After reading some of the books’ synopses and excerpts, Wooster said she found the list to have a “social justice lean.”
Phelps and Skeppstrom also said they read some of the Caudill books from this year’s list, but found no political agenda or leaning in the selection.
The Caudill list for the 2024-25 school year includes fiction and nonfiction books such as “Starfish,” a novel about body image, “A Biography in Verse: A True Story of Outwitting the Nazis,” “How to Become a Planet,” “Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration,” and more.
The purpose of the Caudill Reading Program, according to the program’s website, is to “encourage children and young adults to read for personal satisfaction,” and “to develop a statewide awareness of outstanding literature for children and young people.”
Each year, the program provides a list of 20 books selected by a rotating committee of about 80 volunteer members working as 4th-8th grade educators or school and public libraries throughout the state.
Over 300 schools across the state participate in the Caudill reading program.
Anyone can nominate a book for the Caudill list. Evaluators then read a narrowed list of 50 books before working as a committee to narrow the selection to 20 titles.
The Board of Education members who supported the reading program said they trust the librarians and educators tasked with finding appropriate books for students, and it is not the job of the Board of Education to curate book titles for reading programs
“I trust our librarians, and if they come up with an alternative, I will put my faith in them,” Skeppstrom said during the meeting. “I’m not going to spend the time to vet 300 books over three years, I’m going to trust them to do their jobs.”
Participation in the program is optional for schools, and optional for the students at participating schools. If a student reads at least three of the books on the list, they are eligible to vote for their favorite book at the end of the program. The book with the highest number of votes is presented with an award.
Throughout the year, schools and public libraries often host activities and events surrounding the books’ topics and themes.
Dozens of parents, current and former students, educators and librarians spoke during public comment at the start of Tuesday’s meeting. All the public commenters urged the board to keep the reading program. Not one public comment supported revoking the program.
Many parents shared that the Caudill reading program opened their children’s eyes to reading for pleasure, many of whom admitted their child wasn’t a fan of reading before the program.
Brenda Strobach, a media center clerk at Millburn Middle School, attested to the popularity of the program and how it engages students who don’t usually check out books from the library.
“Removing the whole program for three pages of a book that touches on a subject that made some board members uncomfortable is ludicrous and makes me think the Caudill program is not the one with a political agenda,” Strobach said.
Multiple commentators expressed it would be an abuse of power for a parent on the school board to use the board’s power to upend a reading program.
The parents and educators who spoke during public comment said they found no valid argument from the board as to why the books’ content was not acceptable. Some said taking away the program would “take away student’s right to learn,” and would be “educational neglect.”
Since Tuesday night’s action, Lia Neveu, a former Millburn student, started an online petition to reinstate the reading program.
Neveu was also involved in restoring a controversial book to libraries in Antioch Consolidated High School District 117. The novel, “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” is a coming-of-age graphic novel exploring themes of gender confusion and societal expectations.
The Antioch Board of Education sought to keep the book behind the circulation desk, but then reversed that decision and kept the book on the shelves.
chilles@chicagotribune.com
