The Francis Howell School District board voted Thursday to allow hate speech, false science and false historical claims in educational materials, a decision that alarmed some students, parents and teachers.
The school board approved the revised policy by a 5-2 vote. It reverses an amendment passed by the board in August that explicitly banned such content.
The board’s vice president, Randy Cook, introduced the measure, which also replaces language in the policy that called for presenting "all points of view" on international, national and local issues with language that calls for a wide variety of views.
During the meeting, Cook said he proposed the change to prevent viewpoint discrimination.
The policy will allow offensive speech and false information in books and curriculum, so long as the board deems them “educationally suitable.”
“The changes that are proposed here are based on guidance from our legal counsel,” Cook said. “I have every expectation that our educators will provide educationally suitable materials going forward, as they have in the past.”
Nathaniel Basset, a Francis Howell parent, said he doesn’t trust board members to consistently approve appropriate materials.
"How will they decide what should and shouldn’t be in our schools? The metric for their choice is educational suitability, which is yet to be defined,” Basset said. “The political stance of a book and the book’s content are often inextricably linked, making it nearly impossible to parse the...
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