The Willow Glen Resident

PRO serves trustees with recall petitions a second time

Group still wants controversial book out of classrooms

By Cecily Barnes

Dressed in a stiff, dark suit, a member of the Parental Rights Organization, the parent group that has organized against the controversial book Always Running--La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A., stood at the San Jose Unified school board meeting Aug. 20 and served perplexed-looking trustees Jorge Gonzalez and Carol Myers with recall petitions. Trustee Gary Rummelhoff would have also been served, but he was not in attendance.

This was the second time in less than a month that PRO members had served trustees with recall petitions. The first service came at the July 23 board meeting, but the PRO did not file a copy of its intent to recall with the county Registrar of Voters within the required week. The same time restriction applies to the group's latest attempt.

"I think the reason this has gone this far is because people feel like the board doesn't listen to the demands of the parents," PRO president Sheryl Taylor said before the meeting. "We have 2,000 signatures asking them to remove this book, and they didn't."

On May 21, the San Jose Unified school board unanimously voted to keep Always Running on the district's optional reading list, with the caveats that it only be taught to high school juniors and seniors and that a consent letter be sent home to parents, giving them the option of selecting a different book for their child to read. While many parents applauded this decision as a victory against censorship, the PRO argued that the board's decision condoned the teaching of trash.

"This is a basic fundamental issue of whether or not pornography can be sanctioned in classes," Taylor said.

Taylor argued that parental consent forms were not good enough, because often parents never see the forms.

Myers, the trustee who represents Willow Glen on the board, called the recall effort counterproductive.

"We went through a comprehensive process in evaluating the book," she said after the board meeting. "I find it offensive that [the PRO is] taking out graphic passages. You have to read the whole book to understand the author's intent."

SJUSD Superintendent Linda Murray agreed, noting the board's achievements, such as raising the district's high school graduation requirements to be commensurate with entrance requirements to the University of California system.

"When you weigh everything in balance and look at what we've been able to accomplish," Murray said, "it doesn't make sense to build a recall campaign on one area of disagreement."

Now the PRO is taking drastic measures. If the board members they elected won't recall the book, they will recall them.

"Really, what this boils down to is [whether] parents who support this material outnumber parents who don't," said PRO vice president Patrick O'Shea at the SJUSD board meeting, after the recall papers had been served. "What we'll have here is a good old-fashioned show of democracy. If the recall fails and Mr. Garcia and Ms. Lewis are re-elected, than I'm wrong. But I don't think I am. I guess time will tell."

The recall petition that will be circulated quotes passages from Always Running, a story about the author's teenage years in the barrios of Los Angeles. Quoted passages show the book's use of graphic sexual description, profanities, drug use and a rape scene.

If the county Registrar of Voters approves the PRO's petition, the group will have 120 days to collect the signatures of 20 percent of the registered voters in each trustee's district. This boils down to more than 4,500 signatures in Myers' district, 2,600 for Gonzalez and 5,100 for Rummelhoff.

Assemblyman Jim Cunneen has written a letter to SJUSD requesting that board members investigate the district's method of parental notification. "This is not censorship," he wrote, "just common sense."

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