At the June 11, 2026 Academy District 20 Board of Education meeting, Susan Payne used Brian Katcher’s Almost Perfect to tell a frightening story.
According to Payne, the book’s end-of-book resources could lead students toward hormones, Mexico, China, online drug purchases, counterfeit pills, fentanyl exposure, Adderall, and medical decisions outside parent, doctor, or legal supervision.
That sounds alarming.
It also leaves out the most important part.
The author’s note Payne was pointing to does not tell students to obtain hormones online. It does not describe illegal hormones as safe. It does not tell vulnerable teenagers to avoid parents, doctors, counselors, or other trusted adults.
It says the opposite.
What Payne Said
Payne raised the resource-list argument twice.
Before the board voted to hear the appeal, she said one of her concerns was the book’s end resources. She connected those resources to students getting drugs through Mexico for “transgender changes and hormones,” then tied that concern to fentanyl, drug trafficking, and youth deaths.
Later, during deliberation, she expanded the claim. She referenced “Mexico or China,” online purchases, counterfeit pills, Adderall, hormones, and students acting outside adult, medical, or legal supervision.
This was not a side comment.
It became part of the justification for removing a high-school library book from all district school library collections.
What The Author’s Note Actually Says
The photographed author’s note pages show something very different from Payne’s version.
They point readers toward a parent, counselor, clergyperson, family friend, and support organizations. They warn about online exploitation and privacy. They say illegally obtained hormones were ill-advised and dangerous. They describe hormones as medication. They warn against taking medication not prescribed by a doctor.
That is not a drug pipeline.
That is a safety warning.
And that is why the omission matters. Payne did not merely disagree with the book. She cited a source while leaving out the part of that source that directly undercut her argument.
Call it lying by omission if you want the plain-language version. The record-supported version is this: Payne gave the public a materially incomplete account of the page she was using as evidence.
That is not careful governance.
The Real Risk Does Not Prove Payne’s Claim
Counterfeit pills are real. Fentanyl exposure is real. Online drug markets are real. Adults should take those risks seriously.
But a real public-health danger does not automatically become evidence against a specific library book.
The meeting record does not show that Almost Perfect mentions fentanyl. It does not show that the book mentions Adderall. It does not show that the book encourages counterfeit pills, online drug purchases, or unsupervised medication use.
The visible author’s note warns against unprescribed medication.
That is the bridge Payne never built.
She took a real danger in the world and laid it over a book that warned against the conduct she described.
The Narrow Web-Link Issue
There is one limited issue worth acknowledging.
One old resource named in the author’s note, Transsexual Road Map / TS Roadmap, now redirects to Transgender Map. A current spot check found hormone-related pages on that successor site, including online-ordering content and a Mexico-listed pharmacy.
That is a legitimate historical question.
What did the site contain when the book was published? What did it contain when D20 acquired the book? What did the review committee examine? Which exact page did Payne rely on?
Those are fair questions.
But they are not the same as Payne’s claim.
Current website content is not the book’s text. Current website content is not proof of what a site said in 2009. Current website content is not proof of what the D20 committee reviewed. And the bounded check did not surface support for Payne’s added “China” claim.
So yes, there may be a narrow web-link issue to examine.
No, that does not turn Almost Perfect into a Mexico-China-fentanyl-Adderall pipeline.
The Committee Read The Book
The district’s own process matters here.
Staff told the board that the reconsideration committee reviewed the book under policy. The committee used the district’s scoring process. A score above 66 percent meant retention.
The result was about 88 percent. Prior packet work gives the exact number as 253 out of 288, or 87.8 percent.
That is not a close call.
The committee recommended keeping the book.
The superintendent or designee then reviewed the process and determined that policy had been followed. The board appeal was supposed to review the existing record. President Amy Shandy even said new evidence or new claims would not be considered.
Then the deliberation moved into current websites, international medical policy, fentanyl, Adderall, Mexico, China, and an obscenity rationale.
The committee read the book.
The panic won.
What Responsible Governance Would Have Looked Like
A responsible board member could have said this:
The author’s note warns against unprescribed hormones and points students toward adults and support organizations. However, one listed website may now redirect to current hormone-ordering content, so the district should determine whether that was part of the committee record and whether outdated resource links in older books need a clearer review process.
That would have been a serious argument.
It would have preserved the facts. It would have protected students without misrepresenting the page. It would have respected the committee’s review instead of talking around it.
Payne chose a different route.
She gave the public the fear and left out the warning.
Why This Matters
This is not just about one book.
It is about how public officials use evidence when they are asking a school district to remove material from student access.
If a board member can point to a page, omit the safety language on that same page, attach the book to fentanyl and online drug fears, and then vote to remove it districtwide, the public is no longer watching a careful review process.
It is watching a culture-war argument dressed up as child protection.
Students deserve better than that.
Parents deserve better than that.
And the district’s own review committee deserved better than having an 87.8 percent retention recommendation buried under a fear campaign.
The Question D20 Still Has To Answer
Susan Payne’s Almost Perfect argument was not just incomplete.
It was incomplete in the exact place where completeness mattered most.
She pointed to the author’s note. The author’s note warned against the conduct she described. She did not tell the public that.
That is the record.
So Academy District 20 still owes the community a basic answer:
Why did the board treat a warning against unsafe hormones as evidence that the book encourages unsafe hormones?