From masks to book banning, conservatives take on educators

— A recent Wyoming school board meeting was again packed with opponents of mask mandates when things took an abrupt turn and a parent started reading aloud sexually explicit passages from a book available in school libraries. “I would never have known these extreme leftists that are controlling our school district had I not gone to voice my opposition to the masking.” The award-winning book Ashby wants pulled from Cheyenne high school and middle schools, “Monday’s Not Coming,” by Tiffany D. Jackson, is a novel about the mysterious disappearance of a Black teenager. Opponents of the books gained one school board member’s sympathy after district officials deleted Ashby’s reading of the sexual material from an online video out of concern YouTube could suspend the district’s account. “If we have books in our system that are not appropriate to be read at our school board meeting, then maybe they’re not appropriate to be read in our school district,” Trustee Christy Klaassen said to applause and cheers at a school board meeting Dec. 6. Mendee Cotton, a grandparent of seven local students, told the Cheyenne school board that what was in the books was “pornography, pedophilia” and parents wouldn’t stop until they were gone.