VICTOR JOECKS: The upcoming battle to stop grooming in Nevada’s schools

Last month, the Clark County School District reached a $25,000 settlement with Candra Evans. In 2022, she read aloud to the School Board an assignment that a district teacher had given her daughter.

“I don’t love you,” Evans read. “It’s not you. It’s just, I don’t like your d—. Or any d— in that case. I cheated Joe.”

Evelyn Garcia Morales, the board’s vice president at the time, interrupted her and scolded her for using profanity. Evans shot back, “If you don’t want me to read it to you, what was it like for my 15-year-old daughter to have to memorize pornographic material?”

District officials then cut her microphone. The board’s heavy-handed response made Evans’ point. If material is too explicit for a public meeting, it shouldn’t have been in a classroom. Video of the incident went viral, and Evans sued.

As part of the lawsuit, the American Center for Law and Justice, which represented Evans, took depositions from district administrators. “I do remember the first time I read it, being in shock,” one said.

The official continued, “What was written was not appropriate to be read and performed in a school setting. … And so it crossed the boundary. I know that we would never have been able to choose books that had that.”

Perhaps. But a 2022 public records request showed that district libraries, including those for middle school students, contain sexually explicit books. Late last year, the School Board took steps to make it harder to remove inappropriate books from libraries, too.

Even with this settlement and the precedent, there is work to be done. Fortunately, there are some promising signs on the horizon. To start, voters elected three pro-parent trustees.

Trustees Emily Stevens, Lydia Dominguez and Lorena Biassotti all campaigned against literary pornography in schools. The board has seven voting members, so they can’t change policy without another vote. But they have powerful platforms to object to sexually explicit books in schools.

Across the country, the left’s response has been to screech about book bans. But there are no book bans. Nobody seeks to prevent publishers from selling these books. The question is whether they’re appropriate for school libraries, especially in younger grades.

That’s a difficult case to make when trustees won’t even let a parent quote that type of language at a public meeting.

Senate Bill 59, which the Nevada Department of Education has proposed, would also help. It would prohibit licensed educators from sexually grooming students. The bill’s definition of grooming is extensive and maintains that teachers would be barred from “displaying, sharing or transmitting materials which are pornographic or sexually explicit and which lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

Allowing teachers to sexually groom children isn’t a popular position, but Democrats may still object. Look at Democrats’ support for allowing men in women’s sports. If Democrats don’t pass this bill, Gov. Joe Lombardo will have a great issue on which to run.

As Evans showed, the left can’t defend sexually explicit content in schools. Parents and their political champions should continue fighting to remove it entirely.

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on X.