The ACLU busy defending the appearance of a Communist state again?
Posted on Thursday, 02.05.09

Court says removing Cuba book at Miami-Dade schools was legal


The cover of the Vamos a Cuba book.
Photo
Opponents of Vamos a Cuba pointed to several passages they considered inaccurate or misleading, including:

• A sentence describing the Cuban holiday on July 26 as ''carnaval,'' the island's largest festival, marked by singing and dancing. Opponents said the day is solely a commemoration of Fidel Castro's revolution, never referred to as ''carnaval,'' and is centered around speeches, not parties.

• A page that describes paintings on rocks in a Cuban valley, which the book says were ''made by people who lived in Cuba about 1,000 years ago.'' Opponents said the paintings were made in the 1960s.

• A section on food mentions white rice as the most common food and arroz con pollo as a favorite dish, but does not discuss Cuba's shortages and strict rationing.

• A section on Cuban people mentions Catholics and Africans who arrived on the island, but ignores Cuba's indigenous people.

• In the photo on the book's cover, the children are dressed in the uniform of the Pioneers, a Communist Party organization to which all Cuban students must belong.
BY KATHLEEN McGRORY AND JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the Miami-Dade School Board did not violate the Constitution in 2006 when it removed a controversial children's book about Cuba from the public schools' library system.

In a 2-1 decision, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said the board did not breach the First Amendment, and ordered a Miami federal judge to lift a preliminary injunction that had allowed Vamos a Cuba to be checked out from school libraries.

The majority opinion supported the School Board's authority to set educational standards in Miami-Dade, which said the bilingual book, part of a library series on 24 nations, presented an ''inaccurate'' view of life in Cuba under its former leader, Fidel Castro.

''This vindicates those board members who said the book was inappropriate because it didn't depict reality,'' said School Board Vice Chairwoman Marta Pérez. ``We faced a lot of criticism.''

Board member Ana Rivas Logan, who supported replacing the series with an updated version, said she was happy to see the court give control to the district.

''This book was inaccurate, and it was offensive to a whole community,'' she said.

The 177-page ruling, written by appeals court Judge Ed Carnes, also concluded that the School Board did not violate the due process rights of the American Civil Liberties Union, which had challenged the panel's decision to remove the book.

''Clearly, this can't be allowed to stand. We must take further action,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, saying attorneys met late Thursday to discuss what kind of appeal to file.

``We're going to take further action to prevent the shelves of the Miami-Dade school library from being scrubbed clean of viewpoints some people in the school find objectionable. . . . However much they try to evade the facts and bend the law into a pretzel, censorship is censorship is censorship.''

Board members voted 6-3 in 2006 to remove the book -- which had been available in some school libraries as extracurricular reading for children in kindergarten through second grade -- after Juan Amador Rodriguez, a parent and former political prisoner in Cuba, complained that the book failed to accurately depict life there.

In removing the book, the board overruled the decision of two academic advisory committees and the recommendation of former Superintendent Rudy Crew. Legal costs in the case have exceeded $250,000.

After the ACLU challenged the board's decision, U.S. District Judge Alan Gold ruled that the School Board's opposition to the book was political and that it should add books of different perspectives to its collections instead of removing the offending titles.

On Thursday, one of the appellate judges in his dissenting opinion agreed with Gold.

''The banning of children's books from a public school library under circumstances such as these offends the First Amendment,'' wrote Circuit Judge Charles R. Wilson.

But the Miami-Dade schools chief said he was pleased that the majority opinion sided with local board members.

In a prepared statement, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said he was ``glad to see the issue resolved in favor of the School Board.''

''As Superintendent, I intend to lead this school district with a sensitivity for the rich history and culture that make up our community, and to always keep those ideals in mind as I bring recommendations to the School Board,'' Carvalho wrote.

Miami Herald staff writer Jennifer Lebovich contributed to this report.

http://www.miamiherald.com/459/story/890251.html