During last week’s Read Across America event an assistant principal in a Mississippi public school decided it would be a good idea to read a book about ‘butts’ to second-graders.
He’s now looking for a new job.
The school’s superintendent in Hinds County fired Toby Price, the former assistant principal at Gary Road Elementary School, after he read the book over a Zoom session, according to media reports.
Price was selected as a last-minute substitute for a reader who was a no-show.
He claimed he had the book “I Need a New Butt” by Dawn McMillan in his office and selected it for the read-in. He said that it was a favorite of his own children. He reportedly referred to it as “cute.”
The book is about a boy who discovers his rear end has a “crack,” and then begins a quest to obtain a “new” one.
Price proceeded to read the illustrated children’s book – its audience is reportedly 4- to 8-year-olds – during the March 2 Zoom session. After he was done, Superintendent Delesicia Martin called Price to her office. She said he was on administrative leave. Two days later he was fired for violating the state ethics code for educators.
Martin informed Price that he violated provisions about upholding general standards of conduct, and that he had subjected about 240 students to “unnecessary disparagement and embarrassment.”
Many media accounts focused on the fact that the book contains the word “fart,” and “described butts in various colors, shapes, and sizes.”
Left-wing activists, such as Pen America, a group that cites free speech to promote liberal writers, issued a letter to the school district. In the memo, the group maintained that it “strongly” objected to Price’s termination, even as it admitted some people may find the book problematic.
“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. 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. Such a precedent could be readily abused, enforced with unbridled discretion to censor the reading of books in schools,” Pen America said in its letter.
But Martin’s letter also noted that Price, while reading, “shared inappropriate pictures that depicted the boy’s naked butt.”
This was an aspect of the controversy that the conservative Twitter account Libs of TikTok picked up on. The account showed pages of the book showing the boy with his pants down, his bare rear end exposed, as others draw on it, color it and comment on it.
Price, who had 20 years with the district before being let go, said he plans to appeal. Price claimed students thanked him for reading the book.
“We have a lot of reluctant readers,” he told The New York Times. “I am a firm believer that reluctant readers need the silly, funny books to hook them in.”
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