An elementary-school administrator in Mississippi has said he was fired for reading I Need a New Butt!, a humorous children’s book about bottoms, to a class of second-graders.
The incident has spurred criticism from free speech advocates, who say the termination could have a chilling effect at a time of conservative-fueled pushes for book bans in schools across the US.
On March 2, Read Across America Day, pupils aged six and seven from Hinds County, Mississippi, were waiting for a school administrator to read to them in a Zoom session, the New York Times reported.
The administrator was unable to attend so Toby Price, an assistant principal at Gary Road Elementary School who was in his office, stepped in. He picked up I Need a New Butt! by Dawn McMillan and started reading to about 240 children.
I Need a New Butt!, for readers aged between four and eight, is about a boy who sets out to find a new bottom after seeing a “crack” in his buttocks which makes him afraid that it is broken.
Price, who has been teaching for 20 years, said Hinds County School District Superintendent Delesicia Martin called him into her office and told him he was being placed on leave.
Two days later, he was accused of breaking the Mississippi Educator Code of Ethics, and fired, Price said.
“I expected a write up,” Price told the Times. “I did not expect to get terminated. I cried the entire way home.”
In a letter to Price, the superintendent reportedly called the book “inappropriate,” pointing to references to flatulence and saying that it “described butts in various colors, shapes and sizes (example: fireproof, bullet proof, bomb proof).”
Price said school officials told him they feared complaints from parents and Martin said that he had been “unprofessional.”
Price told the Times that he had a lawyer and would fight his firing.
Neither Martin nor members of the school board immediately responded to requests for comment from the Guardian.
Authors’ organization Pen America urged school officials to reverse their decision.
“Certainly, the book in question is meant to be humorous for a young audience, and fellow educators might reasonably question if it was the optimal choice for this particular occasion,” Pen America said.
“But in positioning the act of reading a book as a violation of ethics, the district is implying that any educator could be terminated under similar circumstances, whenever an anonymous source feels a book read to students is ‘inappropriate’ for any reason,” it said.
“Such a precedent could be readily abused, enforced with unbridled discretion to censor the reading of books in schools,” it said.
Price told the Times that literacy instruction was crucial at his school, in a county where more than 21 percent of people live under the poverty line.
“We have a lot of reluctant readers,” Price said. “I am a firm believer that reluctant readers need the silly, funny books to hook them in.”
He has three children to support, two with severe autism, he said, adding: “I’m tired. I’m stressed. I’m overwhelmed. I need to work.”
Price received support on social media, including on the school’s Facebook page.
“My granddaughter heard him read the book and thought it was hilarious and not at all inappropriate!” one commenter wrote. “When they do have a hearing, believe me, me and Baby Girl’s gonna be front and center!”
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people
RSS