Library Book Oversight Big Topic of LGISD Meeting
Library books were a big topic of discussion at Monday night’s school board meeting.
The discussion item on the agenda was whether or not the school board wanted to change the current policy on how the books are reviewed and who does that reviewing.
Jeremy Janda spoke to the board about the agenda item of library book policy. He encouraged the board members to take the discussion seriously. He stated, “There is a lot of evil getting its claws into our society, our schools, and our lives.” He continued by asking the board to “recognize evil when it is evil and good when it is good, right when it is right and wrong when it is wrong.” He concluded by saying, “Our children are children for such a short period of their lives. We can be an adult for 70+ years, but we can only be children for less than 10. Let’s not take that away from them.”
The current policy states: “A district possesses significant discretion to determine the content of its school libraries. A district must, however, exercise its discretion in a manner consistent with the First Amendment.”
There was also a policy about removal of library materials: “Students’ First Amendment rights are implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library. A district shall not remove materials from a library for the purpose of denying students access to ideas with which the district disagrees. A district may remove materials because they are pervasively vulgar or based solely upon the educational suitability of the books in question.”
In prior years, the parents had to “opt out” of certain materials in the library and classroom. This meant that the students were allowed to check out anything unless parents specifically said they could not. Now, parents have to “opt in,” meaning the parents must sign a document for their student to be allowed to check out certain materials and receive certain instruction as it pertains to certain sensitive subject matter.
The district has formed a staff committee and is currently in the process of forming a joint committee of community and staff to determine what books meet the criterion set by the state and the district. The committee will consist of staff, (teachers and administrators) and citizens of the community. The plan is for the committee to be balanced between the two groups so that decisions will be made that reflect the community’s views as well as the district’s.
There are approximately eight books under review right now, but there are about 36,000 books between the two libraries in the district. Many of them have been in the library for over 20 years without incident. The librarians have tried to pull books that have been determined to have known vulgar or sexually explicit content, but it is a long process to go through all of the books in the libraries.
Superintendent McHazlett said, “I am a father of three young men now, but they were once little kids and while they are kids, we want to protect them.” He continued to say, “It would be great if all the books had a label on them and we could just pull them off the shelves, but that is not going to happen for years so we need to self-police our libraries.”
He stated that the committee would concentrate on vulgarity, obscenity, and sexually explicit content, and that if there was something written in the book that the students would get in trouble for writing in class, then the books should not be in the library.
Mahazlett said, “We are not Austin ISD. We are a rural, conservative community and our library and policies are going to reflect that.”
He said, “I know we are going to have some ultra conservative people on this committee and we will also have those with other views, but bad is bad and is doesn’t matter where you are (politically), you know what vulgarity and obscenity looks like.”
Board member Calvin Mersiovsky asked, “The book most recently in question, (“Violet & Claire”) who is reviewing it?” McHazlett said “It is in the review system. Until we get a (community) committee together, we are not making that determination yet. Mersiovsky asked, “Is that book back in our library?” McHazlett replied, “No.”
Another board member, Mary Gunn asked, “What kind of time frame are we looking at” (for policy changes to be ready.) McHazlett responded, “In a perfect world, we will be presenting it at the next board meeting.” McHazlett added, “We all know what is right and wrong and all want what is best for our kids.”
As the discussion continued, Mersiovsky asked “How many new books do we get in on an average year?” Pam Keilers, high school and middle school library aide, stated that the school receives up to 300 new books in a given year. Mersiovsky went on to say, “I understand that you cannot review 36,000 books without a lot of help, but if you get in 1020 or even 50 books, we have got to come up with a system. Somebody has to be responsible. Those kids are being sent to us to learn – right things, not wrong things. Some of the books I have seen, even at elementary, do nothing but confuse them. They are not old enough to digest the information. As a librarian, you have a responsibility to keep filth out of the hands of our kids.”
The Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) recommended policy is to have two parents/community members on the committee, but LGISD is committed to having a balanced committee. Also, the TASB recommend-ed policy is to have the parents opt in (for content that is considered more mature) either in writing or by phone, but board president, Gary Drab said that he feels that LGISD should replace “or” with “and” to make sure that there is record of a parent “opting in” if that is what that parent wants. The local policy will be individual to LGISD. They can follow state recommendations, but can make the policy to reflect the views of our community and district.