“I want parental controls on district apps. This is insane what I just read to you.” – OUSD Mother
A mother went before the Orange Unified School District board Jan. 19 to demand parental controls on her child’s school-issued iPad after she discovered a children’s book detailing the rape of a minor by an adult – something the district considered appropriate for children.
Sora, a library app utilized by the school children on the iPads, makes hundreds of books available to children attending Orange Unified schools. The mother, named Colleen, discovered she was unable to set parental controls on the app for her children enrolled in the district. Her oldest child is just seven years old.
The book “The Music of What Happens” by author Bill Konigsberg was available as an audio book on the iPads making it accessible to children of all ages. It contained the very graphic description of the rape of a minor by an adult, and is featured on Twitter by its publisher Scholastic, as a young adult, LBGTQ, “Read with Pride” book.
“I think it is shameful and probably criminal that the previous administrator and district staff knowingly kept this app on thousands of kinder-through second-grade iPads, exposing them to sexually explicit material even though they were aware of issues,” she stated to the board, following her reading of explicit sexual acts, and disturbing dialogue with characters using the worst swear words.
The mother of three kids, all whom attend OUSD schools. showed obvious disappointment that the school district, despite admitting the Sora app had parental control issues, had failed to follow through to protect the county’s children.
“I want parent controls on district apps. This is insane what I just read to you is on this freaking app right now on my kids’ iPads in my house….District officials knew that this app was not working properly, it has no parent controls, and there’s book classification issues,” she said.
The Koigsberg book was not the only inappropriate literature available on the app. During her speech to the board, the mother noted there were other sexually-explicit books as well.
The Sora app chosen by the school is described as “A full-service, digital reading platform that gives students in 53,000 schools and districts across the globe an equal opportunity to succeed with literacy.”
Of the many publishers with books for children on Sora, Scholastic represents one of the largest. According to their website “Scholastic is currently in 115,000 schools, reaching 3.8 million educators, 54 million students, and 78 million parents/caregivers domestically.” The company is known to be one of the world’s largest publishers and distributors of educational childrens’ books.
They are the publishers of “The Music of What Happens,” the graphic book in question.
One Twitter user in response to Scholastic’s Tweet promoting the book remarked,
“This book has nothing to do with love. And a question for Konigsberg, why would a grown man write a book where an adult man rapes a child with vivid detail and vulgar language for children? You seem suspicious.”
“There is a lot from the past board and the past administration I do not agree with. I want change, I voted for change and I’m happy the new board is making change,” Colleen stated. “I want transparency, and if there are problems with an app it is removed immediately until it is fixed, and you inform parents of what is going on.”
