Candidate profile: Stacie Norton Bennett wants to take a few things out of schools

Part of a series on the four candidates for Grafton School Committee in the May 17 election.

All five candidates for Grafton School Committee were contacted for in-person interviews with Grafton Common in late March/early April. Stacie Norton Bennett declined.

Bennett has two kids (one in the Grafton schools),works as a program director for a local non-profit, and runs an after school life skills program for at-risk kids. She has also worked as a high school English teacher.

“I’ll be a voice for some of the parents who have come to me wanting change,”  she said at the recent League of Women Voters debate.

Bennett has laid out her platform on her Facebook campaign page. While she talks about students spending more time on academics rather than social-emotional learning, she also suggests that parents need to be involved more in what their children are learning.

Sometimes, it can be confusing.  On Bennett’s campaign page, she has suggested removing certain books with “pedophilic overtones” from the Grafton schools’ libraries, despite the books not actually being in the collection. She also cited books with a gender identity theme (example: “Julian is a Mermaid,” a book for second graders) that “concerned parents are curious if they will be implemented in Grafton.”

“My personal opinion is that these books are of a sensitive nature, and are not related to content level knowledge at the elementary level and therefore should not be used as part of curriculum,” she wrote. “A better approach would be to allow parents the choice to check these out of a public library, read them to their children in an environment where they can process the sensitive content with a parent or parental figure. This precludes schools from getting involved with value setting which I believe is the purview of the parents and individual families.”