I have had more than a few people ask me about the Desert Sands Unified School District’s (DSUSD) Sex-Ed curriculum over the past few months. I have also been asked about the availability of certain book titles in the libraries. I did look into the curriculum, or at least tried, my digging ended with the log-in screen to the digital company that the district uses, credentials I did not have. I do believe I saw the district will allow the public to go to the district office and view it there—I did not explore that option. In the days where site administrators are demeaning teachers who do not freely give away their intellectual property, I am sure the issue is not trade secrets.
What I did find, is that the district seems to allow access to, and perhaps encouragement to access, books that are both pornographic and pedophile grooming in nature. The books are Gender Queer by Maia Kabobe, Red, White & Royal Blue by Case MCQuiston, George by Alex Gino, and Lawn Boy Jonathan Evison. These are the same books, as you may have heard, that led a group of parents in Wake County, North Carolina to file criminal charges against the school district there. For more information on that, and for the content of the books (I really do not want to post those here—you will see why) please read this Gateway Pundit article. Seriously, please click that link, I do not want to post that source material here.
The point I want to make here, is that all of the books mentioned in that article (and I mentioned above) look to be available to DSUSD students, though they do hide from lower grades in the same manner as Wake County. I’ll show you. Start at the Follet Destiny resource page which can be accessed from any DSUSD school website (library/media center).
From here, you can choose a school and will be taken to their virtual library. It appears each school may be different with what they offer on their library page, but the following is at least in the virtual libraries of LQHS and SHHS. Look for the “social index” under “Contemporary Issues”.
This is where is gets interesting, for that link takes you to the website of Multnomah County Library, of Portland, Oregon fame. Once there you can search for books, hardcopy and digital. I would imagine the hard copy is not available to DSUSD students but it appears that the e-book is readily available for them. I was able to click all the way to borrow the e-book when I was stopped by a log-in page, which very well could be the student’s district username and password. Someone would need to try.
In the meantime, do a few searches, you will find all of the aforementioned titles at this site.
To reiterate, I did not check every school site and it appears that there are some differences to each school’s virtual library, so one would have to check for any particular school site.
In middle school, or at least at John Glenn, there is not a social issues link, instead click on the Riverside Public Library link.
The Riverside Public Library System also has all of the aforementioned titles available for check out. There appears to be a link to a google book preview and an option to buy, but again log-in credentials would be required to see if a student could actually access this book. On the other hand, the books are listed in a place the schools directed the students to, are they not?
If you go back to the school page, on top it says “Just click here or on the Catalog tab”—if you click on “here” you can search for all of these books at each site. George is available right down to elementary school, though none of the other titles appear to be—even at the high schools, students are instead directed to where they can find those titles, off of the DSUSD domain.
Parents, I am asking for your help here. Find your child’s DSUSD log-in information and see how far you go…can you gain access to the books? If you try this out, please leave a comment below or send me a message and let me know how it goes. If you do gain access take a picture, a screenshot, or save to a web archive.