Last September, Anna Van Hoek was out of town for a family funeral when she received a concerning email. An unknown package had been delivered to her office in Higley Unified School District, where Van Hoek serves as vice president of the school board. 

The next day, her husband opened the package on her behalf. 

“Inside was one of the books in our district’s curriculum called Homegoing,” she told IW Features, referring to the novel written by Yaa Gyasi, “and a bundle of rope.” 

The box also contained slabs of cardboard, small plastic bags full of unidentified material, and a note that read, “Enjoy your gift.”

The book, which contains themes of suicide and sexually explicit material, was one of several Van Hoek had objected to being included in Higley Unified school classrooms. The package, she said, was a threat. 

Van Hoek contacted the Gilbert Police Department, submitting a warrant to ascertain the identity of the sender: parent Lindzie Head, who apparently disapproved of Van Hoek’s efforts to keep leftist and sexually explicit material away from impressionable children.

“This woman doesn’t live within the district.” Van Hoek said. “She lives in the neighboring Queen Creek, but brings her kids to my district.” 

At first, little action was taken to address the threat. Van Hoek realized she needed to speak up for herself. 

Van Hoek is no stranger to friction in the fight for children’s well-being and freedom. She started by advocating for medical freedom in her community, and soon found herself influencing public policy. This year, she joined her legislative district as a precinct committeewoman, determined to make a difference. 

“I wanted to get involved at the local level to help influence policy that would protect parents’ rights,” she said.

Her advocacy continued naturally into education after enrolling her children in a Higley Unified School District school. In 2022, she was elected to the school board, where she has fought to preserve parental choice and protect students’ innocence. This hasn’t been easy, especially when it comes to cultural issues such as trans-identifying boys playing on girls’ sports teams. (Van Hoek is involved in a state lawsuit to preserve the Save Women’s Sports Act). 

More recently, Van Hoek has been focused on keeping explicit, sexual material out of the district’s libraries and classrooms. She said one parent came to the board at the end of the last school year raising this concern, and what he revealed shocked her. 

The parent, Bob Parrish, is a retired officer from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. He informed the school board that in April of last year, his 17 year old granddaughter brought home a Contemporary Literature book survey assignment that required parental review. The questions in the survey were docile enough, including, “Do you believe that adults (28+ years or older) have an understanding of life as a teenager?” 

“For this next upcoming literary unit,” the survey continued, “we will be focusing on the young adult experience. There will be 5 young adult book choices that the class will be reading independently for the remainder of the year.” 

And, on the last page: “We value your time and commitment as a parent, and we appreciate you also value your child’s right to read complex and challenging texts. Thank you for supporting your child as they develop healthy, strong reading habits.” 

The survey required a parent’s signature, but included no content warning. 

Parrish looked up the five texts included in the class’s upcoming young adult unity and discovered that four of the five had previously been banned by numerous schools as inappropriate. One in particular caught Parrish’s eye. 

“The novel is titled 19 Minutes, by Jodi Picoult,” he told Van Hoek and her fellow school board members. “Excerpt is from Page 313: ‘He pinned her hands over her head and ground his hips against hers. She could feel his erection, hot against her stomach. It wasn’t the way it normally was, but Josie had to admit that it was exciting. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so heavy, as if her heart were beating between her legs. She clawed at Matt’s back to bring him closer. “Yeah,” he groaned, and he pushed her thighs apart. And then suddenly Matt was inside her, pumping so hard that she scooted backward on the carpet, burning the backs of her legs. “Wait,” Josie said, trying to roll away beneath him, but he clamped his hand over her mouth and drove harder and harder until Josie felt him come. Semen, sticky and hot, pooled on the carpet beneath her.’”

Parrish told the school board he had raised his concerns about the text to leadership at his granddaughter’s high school earlier that year, but was dismissed.

“I spoke to [Williams Field High School] Principal [Daniel] Fox about the assigned objectionable material prior to the consent form being due,” he explained to the board. “I gave Mr. Fox an opportunity to prohibit such sexually explicit material in the classroom and told him it was his responsibility to stop it. After two days to review, he refused my request, stating there was good messaging in the books and that the students had a choice on what to read.” 

In spite of assurances from David Loutzenheizer, the district’s executive director of secondary education, that Fox and the teacher who assigned the material had been disciplined and the assignment had been removed, a similar situation occurred in late July, when Parrish was contacted by another disgruntled parent. 

According to the parent, a Multicultural Literature teacher in the district instructed students to read Homecoming by Yaa Gyasi, a similarly graphic book, without informing parents or asking their permission. 

“I am not here to ban books. I am here to make sure that I, as a parent, have the right that is given to me under the law,” the concerned parent, Charles Villafranca, later told the school board. 

Higley Unified School District officials did not respond to a request for comment.

The problem is these schools’ actions directly violate Arizona state law, including ARS-1-602, also known as the Parents’ Bill of Rights, and ARS 15-120.03, which prohibits Arizona public schools from exposing students to sexually explicit materials unless they meet specific educational standards. The latter law specifies that such content must have serious educational, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, and that it must be approved through a public review process. 

Van Hoek was appalled that education officials in her district had ignored these laws, and she sided with the aggrieved parents. 

“We found out then that the district had never implemented” ARS 15-120.03,  she told IW Features. “For the past two years, students were given sexually explicit books, and at most, parents were just signing a syllabus without descriptions of the assigned material. Their parental rights were violated.” 

Later that summer, Bob Parrish went back to the HUSD school board after discovering yet another inappropriate text that had been assigned to the district’s students.  

“I … researched one of the assigned novels titled The Bluest Eyes. I again was appalled that a teacher would be asking minors to read such material. The book is about an 11 year old girl raped by her father. A simple internet search showed all 12 pages of objectionable content. I could not believe what I was reading,” he said. “It was more descriptive than a Hustler magazine.” 

Van Hoek again was the only board member to speak out publicly against the slew of explicit material. The Higley Unified School District school board did not respond to a request for comment.

“I will speak up for the parents who can’t, who are afraid to,” Van Hoek said. “There are certain individuals within the community that are loud and attack parents. They dox parents online.”

Little did Van Hoek know she’d become one of their next targets.

Van Hoek said the threatening package she received is just one of many ways leftist activists in the community have tried to silence her. In 2023, for example, she left a school board meeting to discover that her tire had been slashed during it. She’s also faced constant vitriol online. They’ve gone as far as attempting to break into Van Hoek’s personal email and Facebook account. 

Meanwhile, 2024 marked the lowest attendance rate in the school district’s history, said Van Hoek. Today, just 47% of students within district lines attend an HUSD institution, compared to 60% back in 2007. 

“All this, while our enrollment continues to decline,” said Van Hoek. “We’re down 400 students since this time last year.” 

It’s people like Head, the woman who sent Van Hoek the threatening package, who “are attacking people on social media and harassing them in other ways, that are driving people away from the district with bad publicity,” Van Hoek added. 

Regardless, Van Hoek continues to advocate for parent’s rights at HUSD school board meetings. 

“I tend to get outvoted 4 to 1 on any controversial topic that is brought before us,” she said. “People say I’m anti-public education. I wouldn’t be giving four years of my life to this district if that were true. I am pro-academic growth and achievement.”

Van Hoek also recognizes that her fight is bigger than politics. 

“My constituents voted me in to be their voice, and I will continue to do that as long as they’ll have me. We, as adults, have to protect the innocence of children,” she said. “If we don’t, why are we here?”