By Delayna Earley
The Island News
The audience was a sea of white and “Support Educators” stickers during the Beaufort County School Board Meeting on August 1.
Thanks to the Families Against Book Bans (FABB) organization, dozens of parents, concerned citizens and school district employees came out to the 6 p.m. Tuesday meeting for one reason, to support the two teachers that had said they would be speaking during the public comment section of the meeting.
The two teachers, Kathleen Harper and Mardy Burleson, both teachers at Hilton Head Island Middle School, spoke to the school board regarding their personal experiences with Hilton Head Island parent David Cook.
Cook, who has been an outspoken supporter of permanently removing the 97 books that are currently being reviewed for content and appropriateness, allegedly began harassing the two teachers for different reasons due to things that happened in their classrooms.
Beaufort County School District held their August Book Review Committee meeting on Wednesday, August 2, and of the 68 books that have gone through the review process, four have been removed for the next five years, two are returning to the review process due to a tie vote, and 62 books have been returned to Beaufort County School District library shelves.
On Tuesday during the school board meeting, 13 community members spoke in person during the public comment session.
They spoke in support of the teachers, and they spoke out against the book bans.
Many of the attendees who spoke were members of FABB, an organization that was started in January 2023 to oppose the banning of the 97 books from Beaufort School libraries.
Following the community members who spoke in person, four additional community members spoke via phone.
These four people spoke in support of the book bans and several, including David Cook himself, spoke against the teachers saying they are not the victims that they claim to be.
A tale of two teachers
Mardy Burleson and Kathleen Harper are middle school educators from Hilton Head Island who spoke to the school board members during Tuesday’s meeting to inform them of the harassment and threats that they have allegedly received from David Cook.
Burleson, who spoke first, said that she has been publicly attacked by Cook “personally and professionally.”
Her encounters with Cook allegedly began after she issued an optional survey to her students and asked them to fill it out if they wanted to.
The survey asked questions to get to know the students better, one of which asked about the pronouns that the student prefers to go by.
Burleson said that the survey was “misconstrued and misrepresented” in a complaint by Cook, who had a child in her class, stating that the survey was secret, required, and that she was collecting the information for nefarious reasons to cause harm to her students.
“I am a professional educator,” Burleson said during her three minutes. “I have been trained by our very own district, as well as the state, to make connections and build relationships with our students by learning about them and how to work with underrepresented groups like LGBTQIA+ and trauma impacted students.”
Burleson said that she only sought to gather the information to be able to see and get to know her students so that she can serve them as their educator to the best of her ability.
She continued to say that since these accusations were made public, she has been accused of misconduct with her students and was placed on paid administrative leave for almost the entirety of the second half of last school year.
In an interview with The Island News, she said that she was put on administrative leave for her own safety while the school district investigated complaints made by parents and members of the community.
“People have called for me to be arrested, fired, my certification to be revoked and that my face should be on a billboard and worse,” Burleson said. “I’ve been physically threatened, my full name, face and where I work has been shared publicly online and across social media.”
Blu, Burleson’s minor son who identifies as transgender, was outed by Cook as well, according to Burleson.
“My students mean the world to me, not despite of their differences but because of them,” Burleson said.
Kathleen Harper, who is a literacy coach, spoke after Burleson and said that she began to be targeted by Cook in January 2023 after she answered a question based off a school-approved resource in an 8th grade class.
The question was about what female circumcision is, and she responded by saying, “It’s a barbaric practice that still occurs in some African villages.”
She said that Cook began to contact her demanding a meeting, he also had a student in this 8thgrade classroom.
Harper was told not to respond, and she alleged that when he couldn’t get a response from her on email, he turned to defaming her publicly on social media and in school board meetings claiming that she described genital mutilation in detail and is in violation of the law and claimed that she was verbally and sexually abusive to his child.
She told the school board that she has filed police reports against Cook out of fear for her safety.
David Cook did not attend the school board meeting in person, but he was one of the four citizens who called in to make a comment during the public comment session.
“The teachers who think they’re victims, they’re not,” Cook said as he began his three-minute time. “The students are the victims, so get it straight.”
He continued to say that he and his daughter have not made the claims against the teachers for no reason.
Cook said that the teachers should be expected to behave in a way that does not raise concern and claims that both teachers displayed misconduct in the class and said his daughter is a hero because she spoke out against the teachers.
“Now the district and the community want to retaliate against her,” Cook claimed about his daughter.
Cook’s daughter, Isabella, also called in to speak during the public comment section of the school board meeting and alleged that she and her classmates were forced to take the survey and read the article about female circumcision.
He claimed that both teachers had the opportunity to meet with school administrators and himself, but instead they chose to hide.
Burleson said after Tuesday’s meeting that she tried to meet with Cook at a time of his choosing, she even got a substitute to cover her class since he wanted to meet during the school day.
She said that she and school administrators waited for an hour for him to show up, but he never did.
Burleson also said that as she listened to David Cook speak, she did not feel the anger that she might have felt six months ago.
“I’m taking the high road,” she said.
Most of all, she was worried for her child, Blu, to speak because she thought it might be dangerous or traumatic for them.
When asked what they thought about all of this, Blu responded by saying that they felt sorry for David Cook.
“What kind of childhood could he have had to be filled with so much hate,” said Blu to Burleson.
Harper declined to speak with The Island News and David Cook responded with, “No comment.”
Reviewing the books
On Wednesday, August 2, Beaufort County School District held their book review committee meeting for the month of August and reviewed seven books.
Five of the books, Skin by Donna Jo Napoli, Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas, Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas, Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender and The Fixer by Bernard Malamud were all returned to grades 9-12.
One book, A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee, will go back into the book review process due to a tie vote.
Forever for a Year by B.T. Gottfried, was voted to be removed from circulation for the next five years.
The review committee that voted to remove the book from circulation only had three of its members in attendance, with two members voting to remove the challenged book in its entirety and one person voting to return the book to school library shelves.
Forever for a Year joins the three other books that have been banned during this process; The Haters by Jesse Andrews, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult and It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover.
The committee that removed the book Nineteen Minutes also only had three members of the committee show up to the review meeting and the challenged material was removed in a two to one vote.
Books that are removed during the review process will be removed from circulation for five years.
At that time, the material will be re-reviewed to see if it can be returned to school library circulation.
Delayna Earley lives in Beaufort with her husband, two children and Jack Russell. She formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She joined The Island News in 2022. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
