Parents slam 'unelected extremist from Tennessee' behind book-banning campaign in school districts

Far-right evangelical activist Karen England has been teaching conservative activists how to get books banned in their local school districts. Her recent victory in a southern California district suggests she's gearing up to repeat her success elsewhere.

The Daily Beast reported Friday that England, who is the executive director of the Capitol Research Initiative, has been leading a campaign dubbed "Take Back The Classroom." At the campaign's core is proposing a new policy that allows any local parent to act to have books available in school libraries removed for alleged sexually explicit material, along with material designated as teaching "CRT (Critical Race Theory)," "SEL (Social-Emotional Learning)" and other "progressive ideologies in the school setting."

England's policy would allow school boards to have the final say over whether a book can be available for students, as opposed to teachers and principals. She got her policy passed in the Chino Valley School District earlier this month, and is now leading workshops teaching participants how to do the same in their school districts.

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During a November 16 school board meeting in Chino Valley, both students and parents spoke against the policy. Local parent Bethany Saunders-Medina pointed out that the policy being discussed wasn't even written by someone from the local community.

"Your policy is lifted almost verbatim from a similar policy being pushed by Karen England, who is an unelected extremist from Tennessee," Saunders-Medina said. "I don’t live in Tennessee. I don’t want someone from Tennessee deciding what opportunities my children have in this school district. Your platform is all about ‘parent rights’ but as a local parent who actually lives in this district, all I see are rights for my children to have a rounded education taken away one by one."

Even though England insisted the "Take Back the Classroom" campaign was not about getting books removed from libraries for simply exposing readers to different viewpoints or telling stories from an LGBTQ+ point of view, the Beast reports that some of the books she targets for bans nonetheless include titles that relate to gender identity issues for teens. These books include Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, Trans+: Love, Sex, Romance, and Being You by Kathryn Gonzales and Karen Rayne and They/Them/Their: A Guide To Nonbinary and Genderqueer Identities by Eris Young.

England bristles at the term "book ban," and insisted in an October webinar that the books she's campaigning against are still available for purchase on Amazon and at county libraries. But PEN America's Kasey Meehan disagreed, saying removing a student's access to a book in school "most certainly is" a ban.

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"Schools and school libraries have been protected places for students and accessing information for accessing books, and the idea that you can restrict and remove books because of narrow ideological preferences doesn't mitigate the fact you're still removing access. And that in itself is a book ban," Meehan told the Beast.

The Beast added that the Chino Valley School Board's new policy puts it on a "legal collision course" with the state of California, as Governor Gavin Newsom (D) signed bills into law in September that prohibit local book bans and textbook censorship.