Carroll County Public Schools recently announced (March 11th):
Instructional Materials on Display
The Board of Education of Carroll County is inviting the public to review instructional materials being considered for possible use in CCPS schools beginning in the 2024-2025 school year. These materials will be available (by appointment only) Monday through Friday during the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. from March 11 through May 31, 2024, in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, located in room 109 of the Board of Education offices at 125 North Court Street in Westminster. Members of the community and the CCPS Curriculum Council are encouraged to review the List of Instructional Materials for SY 2024-2025 being proposed and provide written comments using the Comment Form. Please contact the Curriculum office at 410-751-3046 to make an appointment to review materials.
In addition, the instructional materials will be available for review from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. at Carroll County Public Library branches on the following dates:
- Tuesday, April 23, 2024 – Eldersburg Branch, 6400 West Hemlock Drive, Eldersburg
- Thursday, April 25, 2024 – North Carroll Branch, 2255 Hanover Pike, Hampstead
- Tuesday, April 30, 2024 – Taneytown Branch, 10 Grand Drive, Taneytown.
See the full release here: https://www.carrollk12.org/about/news/news-posts/~board/general-news/post/instructional-materials-review
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Scheduled on March 13th at the Carroll County Board of Education meeting there is an agenda item for discussion: Consideration of Textbooks and Instructional Materials for 2024-2025. Here is a look at the published information for that agenda item:
PDF: Consideration of Textbooks and Instructional Materials for 2024-2025 (1) (2)
Note – the list of books in the PDF above is different that the link above in the press release from the school system…the books for Family Life Curriculum are not listed in the press release link and only on the agenda for the BOE meeting on the 13th.
If you scroll to the end of that PDF document you will see a listing of books for the Subject Area: Family Life Curriculum. Two books on that list have been noted with:
On February 8, 2024, the Family Life Advisory Committee voted not to approve these two books. The Committee’s comments and voting results will be provided for Board review and final approval at the June 12, 2024, Board meeting.
Those two books are:
- The Family Book by Todd Parr for kindergarteners
- The Great Big Book of Families by Mary Hoffman and Ros Asquith for 1st graders
A quick Google search revealed the following information about these two books:
The Family Book: (source – Wikipedia)
The Family Book is a 2003 children’s picture book written and illustrated by Todd Parr that details the daily lives of all kinds of families. Each unique family structure is depicted with vivid illustrations that complement the book’s themes of family diversity and inclusivity. The book has been adopted in various educational settings as a teaching tool to normalize the acceptance of various family forms. The Family Book has been challenged repeatedly and has sparked controversy in certain regions due to its inclusion of same-sex marriages as a family structure in the book.
The Great Big Book of Families (source – Amazon)
What is a family? Once, it was said to be a father, mother, boy, girl, cat and dog living in a house with a garden. But as times have changed, families have changed too, and now there are almost as many kinds of families as colours of the rainbow – from a mum and dad or single parent to two mums or two dads, from a mixed-race family to children with different mums and dads, to families with a disabled member. Mary Hoffman takes a look through children’s eyes at the wide varieties of family life: from homes, food, ways of celebrating, schools and holidays to getting around, jobs and housework, from extended families, languages and hobbies to pets and family trees – and she concludes that, for most people, their own family is the best one of all! With Ros Asquith’s delightful pictures, this book takes a fresh, optimistic look at families of today.
As noted above, the public will not hear or see the Family Life Advisory Committee’s comments and voting results about those two books until June 12th.
You can watch Board of Education meetings on the CCPS YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ccpsmedia1477
The March 13th Board of Education meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:00pm:
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