Great Barrington — At the Berkshire Hills Regional School District Committee meeting on Thursday, Jan. 11, residents, including students and parents, spoke out against the Great Barrington Police Department’s investigation at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School over a copy of the book “Gender Queer.”
The investigation, which took place on December 8 and was captured on bodycam, has led eighth grade ELA teacher Arantzau Zuzene Galdos-Shapiro, who was investigated by the department over a copy of the book, to take a leave of absence. It has also led to anger within both the school district and Berkshire County communities, with residents and organizations, including Berkshire Pride, the ACLU, and GLAD, all heavily criticizing the police department, the school district, and the Berkshire County District’s Office for their roles in the investigation.
Superintendent of Schools Peter Dillon said at the January 11 meeting that the police department did not have a warrant to search the school or to investigate Galdos-Shapiro and that he allowed Officer Joseph O’Brien into the school to conduct his investigation.
The school committee held a one-hour executive session at the beginning of the January 11 meeting, which was held at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School both in-person and virtually via Zoom. As listed on the meeting’s agenda, the reason for the executive session was listed as “Threatened litigation – book search.” It is not known what specific “threatened litigation” the meeting agenda refers to, and, as of press time, there is no record in the state’s court database of Galdos-Shapiro taking any legal action against the school district.
After the one-hour executive session, the committee members moved into the public portion of the meeting, which was held in the school’s auditorium. At the beginning of the public meeting, which lasted for over two hours, Superintendent Dillon once again apologized for his role in the situation. “I’ve previously apologized for this incident, in particular my role in letting the police into the school for a warrantless investigation,” Superintendent Dillon said. “In addition, I recognize that this was likely a targeted racist and homophobic attack on a colleague and teacher, the GSA [Gay-Straight Alliance for the School], and the LGBTQ+ community. I’m sorry that I didn’t see all of that at that moment. I hope we can work together to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”
Committee Chair Stephen Bannon, who is also the chair of the town’s Selectboard, said that the committee will be looking into revising the memorandum of understanding it has between the school district and the police department. The memorandum, which is available on the school’s Google Drive, was put into effect on July 1, 2019, and expired on June 30, 2021.
Chair Bannon said that the district’s Policy Subcommittee will be meeting on Wednesday, January 24, at 5 p.m., to discuss revising the memorandum and that, per the district’s policy, the committee would have to review any proposed changes at two separate meetings to approve it. “We will consult with librarians, principals, the superintendent, and other staff and parents as we develop these policies,” Bannon said. “I don’t anticipate a change to our philosophy. Rather, we want to make sure that the processes outlined in our policies reflect our values.”
At the beginning of the meeting, the committee unanimously approved an independent investigation by Great Barrington law firm of Cohen Kinne Valicenti & Cook. Chair Bannon said that the report from the investigation would be made public “as soon as it is finished” and that it would be a “redacted version.” Neither Bannon nor Dillon said how long it would take to compile the report or what parts of the report would be redacted, nor did they give a dollar amount as to how much it would cost the district for the independent investigation.
Anger and frustration arise in public comments
The rest of the meeting was filled with comments from the public, starting with Monterey resident Dan Neilson, who is also a parent of a student at the middle school. “I do very much appreciate that an investigation is moving forward, and I do appreciate the apologies that we’ve heard,” Neilson said. “But I want to make sure that the district leadership knows that the attack which started in this district on December 8, is continuing today. Today, in this [elementary school] building, photographs from this book that we’re talking about are being passed around by kids in this school and being laughed at. It is a homophobic attack which continues today. It’s not a complete apology when the harm is still going on. When you say that we recognize that you’re taking steps, it is very far from being enough. The attack continues today on our kids.”
Nyx Tucci, a junior at Monument Mountain Regional High School, was one of the many students who spoke to praise Galdos-Shapiro for her work in the school district. (Galdos-Shapiro was an advisor for the school district’s GSA Club.) “I accessed a lot of helpful literature from her classroom, and it sort of made me realize that I was welcome and that I wasn’t a freak and I wasn’t a horrible person for being who I am,” Tucci said. “Around that time, it was the start of the pandemic, so it was a very isolating and fearful moment for me and a lot of people. Being a person who is queer, it sort of feels isolating when you’re in that environment and you feel like you are someone who is not appreciated, not valued, and not real. The existence of these books in classrooms is a net positive for children like me.”
“Frankly, the apology that we’ve received from [Police Chief Paul Storti] is not enough,” Tucci said. “All I expect from the people who are in charge is that they are here to protect our entire community. The way that this was handled did not feel like it was protecting multiple people, but just one person. To think that I went to a school that harbored someone who would complain about this to the police in a direct bigoted attack is horrifying. I don’t even want to think what that means to people who currently go to that school and identify as trans, nonbinary, queer in general.”
As Tucci and multiple people pointed out during the meeting, the police department still has not revealed the identity of the person who filed the complaint.
Throughout the night, students and parents all continued to point out that the police investigation and the controversy surrounding it had a very negative impact on the district’s LGBTQ+ community.
Via Zoom, a fifth grade student from Du Bois Middle School told the committee that they had to endure homophobic comments from other students. “I feel like I was being targeted,” the student said. “They repeatedly took pictures of me without my permission, which made me feel very unsafe.”
“This school committee apologizes, and we support you,” Bannon responded. “We will have [School Principal Miles Wheat] look into this very hateful act.”
One of the school parents who spoke asked the committee what the school is doing to mitigate homophobia and bullying among students. “This is sort of the root of all our work,” Dillon said. “For a whole host of reasons, people don’t treat other people the way we would all want them to be treated. It can come out in homophobia, racism, and in antisemitism. We have much more work to do because it continues to happen.”
The school is trying to create an atmosphere of “not just tolerance, but respect for all of the individuals that are here so that everybody who comes to school feels welcomed,” according to Principal Wheat. “Here in school is where [students] can be their full selves, their whole selves,” Wheat said. “We work very hard with [students]. One of the major pieces is our group program which strives to form connections so that every student has at least one and hopefully more adults in the building with whom they feel they can be themselves and can count on no matter what. That way, they can always have a stalwart ally. We also strive to be very responsive when incidents occur, so that they can be fully processed through a system that is restorative, in that it sees to the needs of the victim or the target to make sure that those needs are met, that person can feel fully comfortable.”
Later on in the meeting, however, a sixth grade student criticized Wheat for not being supportive enough to the students. “A couple of weeks ago the middle school had a walkout [over the police department’s investigation],” the student said during public comment. “We were surprised when we saw our principal walk out with us and didn’t think to come up in front of us and say something. The majority of the school was out there, yet I felt uncomfortable when [Mr. Wheat] was just standing in the back not even being seen. My question to Mr. [Wheat] is, when are you going to stand up to talk to us, the students?”
At the January 11 meetings, while the majority in attendance spoke out against it, there were also several public comments in support of the police investigation, including comments made via Zoom by Cheshire resident Lisa Baumgart, who said that her son attends Monument Mountain Regional High School. “We are all here tonight because we have a responsibility to protect children and support this mission that encourages children how to think, not what to think,” Baumgart said. “My husband and I attended the forum last week. We were shocked by the attacks against Peter Dillon for his role in allowing the police into the school. People making these comments are missing the point. This whole issue is about following the rule of law. Peter and Miles, you did the right thing by allowing the police to attempt to confiscate material in the school that is harmful to minors.”
Baumgart said that. (According to state general law, “… matter is harmful to minors if it describes or represents nudity, sexual conduct, or sexual excitement to appeal predominantly to the prurient interest of minors.”)
“It is obvious the pictures in the book ‘Gender Queer’ describe and show nudity and sexual conduct,” Baumgart said. (As reviewed by The Berkshire Edge, the book does display nudity and sexual situations.) “Keeping this book and others like it in the school is a clear violation of the law,” Baumgart said. “If we don’t take a stand against inappropriate material allowed in the school, we are abdicating our responsibility as administrators, teachers, parents, and community members. We are either protecting the innocence of children’s lives or we are complicit in their abuse. I want to be clear, we do not support book bans and censorship of any kind. We respect all people. However, school officials’ priority should be to consider whether material is age- and developmentally appropriate and work alongside parents to decide what books librarians and teachers keep in stock.”
Throughout the course of the meeting, attendees criticized members of the school committee for not speaking up about the controversy. Finally, towards the end of the meeting, committee members all took turns to comment on the situation.
“This is all not about one book,” Bannon said. “The book is just a symptom of a problem that we need to address. People are right when they say that inappropriate behavior in our community, in our schools nationally, does reflect what’s going on throughout the world. But we need to set a much better example for our students because it’s not going to get better if we don’t do that. One thing I learned growing up is that words hurt. I challenge each principal [in the school district] to cut some classes, change what you were planning to do tomorrow, and let the students know that [homophobic behavior] is unacceptable.”
The next school committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, January 25.