Book ban brouhaha far from over

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/10/2023 (722 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s the controversy that just won’t go away and, once again, the Brandon School Division is ground zero.

Earlier this year, the division received national attention after a resident named Lorraine Hackenschmidt requested that the Brandon school board create a committee to review books in each of the division’s school libraries and remove them if that committee decided they were harmful to children. She equated books discussing subjects like gender identity and sexual health with pedophilia and sexual grooming.

At a marathon board meeting on May 23, the trustees adopted a motion (with one trustee dissenting) that rejected the formation of such a committee. Based upon that decision, many assumed that the “book banning” issue had been settled in Brandon, but that’s not the case. (Full disclosure: my son, Duncan Ross, is a Brandon School Board trustee. He voted for the motion.)

On Oct. 25, byelections will be held for two Brandon school board seats that became vacant after two trustees resigned. One seat is in Ward 1, which covers that part of the division within Brandon’s boundaries. The other seat is in Ward 2, which covers the rural part of the division.

To the surprise of some and dismay of many, book banning and “parental rights” have become the leading issues in the two campaigns. In Ward 1, there are eight candidates and almost all of them agree with the board’s decision to not create a book-banning committee.

One candidate, however — Kara Morrice — contends that the school board’s refusal to create such a committee doesn’t reflect the community’s position. She told the Brandon Sun that “I don’t think that the vote went necessarily the way that everybody in our community feels,” and that “when Lorraine made her claims, I know that they were backed up.”

On the issue of parental rights, she says that parents should be privy to information on changed names or pronouns, adding that “I don’t think that should be kept from you.”

In Ward 2, there are just two candidates — Lorraine McConnell and Henry Sieklicki. McConnell told the Sun that removing LGBTTQ+ material from school libraries is contrary to the goal of public education, which is to create an environment that is welcoming to all students.

Sieklicki takes an opposing view, telling the Sun that he is a strong believer in “parental rights,” meaning that a student’s parents must make “a final decision over their children and what their children do.”

With the byelections just eight days away, there is a legitimate possibility that Morrice and Sieklicki will both be elected, for several reasons. First, voter turnout is often quite low for school board byelections, meaning that the votes of a relatively small block of “issue voters” is often enough to elect a candidate.

Second, it is likely Morrice will receive all the votes in Ward 1 that support parental rights and the creation of book-banning committees, but the votes opposed to those policies will be split among the other seven candidates. Third, it appears that Sieklicki has secured the support of groups in Ward 2 that support parental rights and book banning.

If Morrice and Sieklicki win, it would mean that supporters of book-banning and parental rights will occupy three of the board’s nine seats. That would give them enough votes to keep the issues on the board agenda for the three years remaining in the board’s mandate. They would be two votes closer to having a majority at the board table.

What’s happening in Brandon right now could happen in any school division in the province. Three years from now, supporters of book bans and parental rights will likely run slates of candidates in most school divisions, seeking to accomplish what the Progressive Conservatives failed to do in the provincial election. They could win control of several school boards, creating islands of intolerance targeted at LGBTTQ+ children.

Such an outcome can be avoided, but it requires a provincewide policy, expressed in the form of legislation that protects our school libraries from book-banners, and our students from homophobes and bigots. That requires a government with the courage to take those steps, however.

Does the Kinew government have that courage? If it does, the time to act is now.

Deveryn Ross is a political commentator living in Brandon. deverynrossletters@gmail.com X: @deverynross