School board members belittle mother concerned about sexually explicit books in Kansas City-area district

Shocking video of male board members at a Kansas City school district silencing and ridiculing a mother concerned about obscene books in school libraries has gone viral.

Gardner Edgerton Board President Tom Reddin derided working single mom Carrie Schmidt’s Monday address to the board as a “performance” unfit for minors to hear – oddly enough due to the bawdy passages she read from the district’s own books.

Another board member, Greg Chapman, read a speech even before her remarks in which he actually insinuated Schmidt gets a kick out of describing the lewd passages in public.

“It seems like she just gets pleasure from reading books with questionable content to this audience,” Chapman declared. He seemed to defend the raunchy passages as being “out of context.”

The board had cut power to Schmidt’s microphone throughout her address, essentially censoring her.

Online excerpts of the exchanges posted by Libs of TikTok, a watchdog of wokeism on social media platform X, had attracted 1.7 million views as of Friday morning.

Yet, even Chapman acknowledged that “I don’t disagree that a good portion of the books on the review list are not appropriate for public schools,” and that “I don’t disagree that we can improve our libraries, make way for better and more appropriate books.”

Indeed, Chapman also had to admit that, of 42 books brought to the district’s attention, 15 had been removed.

But he implied that Schmidt – not the books, nor the district’s inattentive acquisition of them – is the problem – adding “how it’s being handled is costing this community valuable time, effort and unfortunately valuable people who didn’t cause the issue, but have been drugged through the mud by this continued and disingenuous rhetoric …”

Asked by The Lion how she felt about her treatment by the male board members, Schmidt said she’s not looking for pity or to play the victim – but that she’s a domestic violence survivor from a previous non-marital relationship, and the feeling left from board members’ treatment of her was reminiscent of the “numbness” felt during abuse.

“This was pretty traumatic. I’m not going to lie,” she says. “It’s a lonely battle. And I will say this, it makes me sick to my stomach.”

But it’s not just because of how she’s being treated by board members.

“I have gotten emotional reading the books, knowing that there are children who are exposed to this, and their parents don’t know because they’re trusting the district to make healthy choices for their children. I was that parent. Shame on me.”

A friend of Schmidt’s, Courtney Dunning, says there’s a growing group of concerned parents in the community that Schmidt is speaking for.

Why aren’t more people making noise?

“Basically I think that people don’t want to speak up and speak out and do what I’m doing with the books because it’s such a controversial topic,” Schmidt explains, noting that the Kansas City Star has been critical of her efforts to protect children.

“It’s not popular. If you go to the school boards and you speak out, people put hate on you. I have gotten a lot of hate. I have gotten a lot of negativity from doing this for the past two years.

“I mean, I just think people are scared to do the right thing right now.”

One likely reason for that is the disdain people have seen Schmidt be treated with by a board she says is unwilling to make difficult decisions on the behalf of the parents and students they represent.

“Well, they’re blame shifting, right? The school board has not done anything about this,” she says. “The board members are not acting. They are letting the administrators take all the heat for it.” 

An acquaintance of Schmidt’s who was there Monday, Allen Vonderschmidt, notes that none of the other board members said a word about how a concerned parent was treated by their colleagues.

Does Schmidt think Chapman owes her an apology?

“I think he does,” she says. “But I don’t think that Greg is going to give a sincere apology to me. He’s been doubling down on this and his stance about how he didn’t do anything wrong, I’m the wrong one. I think it would be an ‘I’m sorry, but …’”

The Lion has reached out to Reddin and Chapman for comment.

“I feel like both of them do owe her a public apology, especially Greg,” Vonderschmidt, a former school board candidate, says. “I know we’re supposed to say that women and men are a 100% equal, but I think it was wrong that a man was attacking a woman in a public setting like that.”

“Absolutely,” Dunning agrees. “I think at the very least, they need to put out a public apology for the way they spoke to Carrie, because it was very unprofessional. It was unneeded. And they’ve never attacked parents that way before.

“I feel like that’s what it was, was an attack on her because they’re tired of hearing about the books. But we’re tired of having to have an argument about why they don’t belong in our schools. And it’s not the first time that they have cut her off from sharing quotes from books.”

Ever since discovering The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian among the district’s required reading a few years ago – which has stunning racial and sexual verbiage unprintable here – Schmidt has been petitioning the district to remove such books.

But it wasn’t until Schmidt, out of frustration, started posting about the books on social media a few weeks ago that the board’s treatment of her went south.

Even after her treatment on Monday, she left petitions for 25 more reviews – and she says there’s another 16 on her coffee table.

District administration has actually been responsive to parents’ concerns, while elected board members have not, Schmidt says. She says it’s largely political that board members won’t actively participate in ridding the schools of books so indecent you can’t read them aloud in a public meeting.

“The administration has actually been the ones who have removed some of some of these books before it even goes to the book committee, and before it even goes to the board vote. So, they have actually stepped up and they actually give me answers. 

“The board members don’t. They are afraid to take a stance on this, and I can’t wrap my head around it. It makes absolutely no sense, why in the world we are allowing explicit sexual content in the schools.”

Schmidt says she has a large and growing cadre of support in the community – and beyond, now that the Monday incident has been publicized nationally. She says even educators elsewhere in Johnson County have been privately cheering her on.

What’s next?

“I’m just going to keep doing what I do,” she says. “I can’t turn a blind eye.”