Book Challenges Come to King George County Public Schools
Book Challenges Come to King George County Public Schools
Staff have prepared a rubric for review committees to use. The rubric and the existing division policy on reconsideration of instructional materials are on the agenda for next School Board meeting.
by Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
At least 18 books are now undergoing a review process to see if they should remain in King George Middle School’s library.
Most of the challenges were submitted on December 13, 2023, and one on January 18, 2024. All were submitted by one individual who does not have children currently enrolled in the division, spokeswoman Amanda Higgins confirmed this week.
The books being challenged are ttyl, ttfn, l8r g8r, and Yolo by Lauren Myracle; Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher; Monday’s Not Coming and Allegedly by Tiffany Jackson; Speak, Speak: The Graphic Novel, and Shout by Laurie Anderson; Sold by Patricia McCormack; Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews; The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu; and Tricks, Tilt, Identical, Perfect, Glass, and Crank by Ellen Hopkins.
The challenges were filed using the school division’s existing process for “requesting reconsideration of learning resources,” as laid out in policy KLB.
This policy states that after a complaint is filed with the school principal using form KLB-E, “a review committee consisting of the principal, the library media specialist, the classroom teacher (if involved), a parent and/or student and the complainant will convene,” discuss the material, and decide whether or not it should be retained or withdrawn.
The complainant can appeal the decision to the division superintendent and then the School Board.
According to information provided to the Advance by the school division, the six books by Hopkins have been pulled from circulation in the middle school library without going through the review process.
Higgins said the decision to pull the books was “a collaborative decision with the school principal and the school librarians.” She said the books are still in the high school library.
The division has set up a schedule for reviewing the other books challenged by the complainant. Committees will meet to review and make recommendations about the books each month through September.
Superintendent Jesse Boyd told the School Board at its January 17 meeting that staff were working on developing a “common rubric” for reviewing the challenged books.
“There has been a policy on the books but it has not been practiced,” Boyd said. “We very quickly learned that we need to put some practices in place and be open-minded about the process.”
Boyd said the goal is to gather input from staff, the School Board, the community and “the individuals who have concern about the books.”
“We’re hoping that as far as the process is concerned, we can start to come to some similarities so there is some objectivity and we can arrive at a collective conclusion,” he said. “It is not, nor do we want it to be in policy right now, because it is going to be very fluid. We’re going to learn through this process. We’re going to figure out what works, is the metric sufficient, are there tweaks we need to make. We can do this fluidly with everybody involved.”
The school division provided a copy of the rubric used by the first review committee, which met on January 18 to review ttyl.
The rubric asks reviewers to answer the following questions on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being “strongly disagree” and 10 being “strongly agree:”
This book has material that meets the definition of sexually explicit material as provided in policy.
This book has material (language/images) that would be considered as profane or obscene for the intended audience.
The theme of the book is not significant or relevant for the intended student audience.
The content and subject matter of the book exceed the age appropriateness for the students.
The content in question distracts or deflects from the overall purpose and theme of the book.
After reading the editorial reviews, the book does not fall within the suggested grade levels or ages for the school.
The total points for each question are added up and if four questions have a score of between 0-12, the recommendation is to retain the book. If four questions have scores of 22-30, the recommendation is to remove the book, and if there are four questions with scores between 13 and 21, the recommendation is to retain it “with grade-level restrictions.”
The three-person review committee gave ttyl total scores of 12, 11 or 10 for all six questions. King George Middle School principal Casey Nice communicated the committee’s decision to retain the book in a letter to the complainant on January 22.
“When the points were added for each of these six questions, all six of the questions were within the limits to recommend retaining this book in the King George Middle School Library,” Nice wrote. “I would also add that age recommendations the committee reviewed for the book in question ranged from ages 13-17, 13-99 and Young Adult, which all coincide with the age of students who attend King George Middle School.”
The complainant submitted all challenges with printouts of reviews of the respective book from the website BookLooks.org, which was founded in 2022 by a member of Moms For Liberty, according to the publication BookRiot.
Many of the books being challenged in King George have been challenged in Spotsylvania as well. Sold was one of the dozens of books that were banned from Spotsylvania school libraries last year. (The School Board earlier this month “unbanned” all the books.)
According to the agenda for the January 29 meeting, the King George School Board will be discussing policy KLB.
Attached to the agenda item are the current policy, the review rubric, a policy on “sexually explicit content in library materials” from Madison County Public Schools, and the March 28, 2023, memo by Spotsylvania superintendent Mark Taylor—who is now on administrative leave—explaining his reasoning for removing the first 14 books from high school libraries.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit our website at the link that follows.
Weather and Traffic
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
In less than a year, FXBG Advance has become the news leader in Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, and Stafford through its innovative mix of:
Twice-daily newsletter - At 6 AM and 5 PM every Monday through Friday, the Advance brings the most important news directly to your inbox.
Education Reporting - Adele Uphaus has won multiple awards for her coverage of education issues locally and across the state. Now, she brings her experience, insights, and expertise to the Advance, providing our citizens some of the finest education writing and reporting in the commonwealth.
Political Reporting - From council meetings to campaigns, and fundraising to finance, the Advance is returning the Fourth Estate to its rightful place as a government watch dog.
Breaking News - From court cases to high-profile government moves, the Advance is the first to inform residents.
Investigative Journalism - Last year, the Advance broke major stories around improperly filed election documents, misleading sample ballots, disenfranchising Spotsylvania Count School parents, and book bans.
Election Coverage - The Advance offered the most complete coverage of the 2023 election, with in-depth candidate profiles, daily tracking of events, leading debates, and pre-dawn to post-midnight Election Day coverage. And 2024 brings even greater coverage.
Spotlights - From local businesses to nonprofit organizations and regional leaders, the Advance brings the people who make things happen to your attention.
Multi-partisan Commentary - Martin Davis is a 20-plus-year journalist recognized for superior commentary and political writing; Shaun Kenney has his hands on the pulse of political leaders across the Commonwealth. Together, they bring an unparalleled level of analysis and insight into the issues that drive debate in our region.
Political Cartoons - Clay Jones is a nationally recognized talent who draws weekly for CNN. He has returned to Fredericksburg to level his critical eye and razor-sharp drawing at the topics which make us both laugh, and look closer at ourselves.
New Dominion Podcast - Each week, Martin Davis and Shaun Kenney interview guests from across the region and the state. Growing to over 1,000 listeners in just six months, NDP has become a leading force in political, cultural, and social discussion.
We thank each and every one of you who have made the Advance a part of your day, and we’re excited to say that more-exciting announcements are just around the corner as we continue to innovate and expand our coverage of the region.
The donations of individual readers have made this year possible. Please join the hundreds who are supporting excellence in journalism by subscribing for just $8 a month.
Where does your money go?
It goes to support the great journalists we have - like Adele Uphaus - and the ones we look to hire in the year ahead.
If you can spare $8 a month, we’ll be both grateful, and reward your trust in us with more journalism, more stories, and more connections to organizations and people who make our region a great place to live.
If you can’t, thank you for reading the FXBG Advance!, and consider sharing us with your friends.
In 2024, let’s build an even better Advance - together!
Thank you for reading and supporting FXBG Advance.
-Martin Davis, Editor-in-Chief
As we see these policies be weaponized by those who seem to have agendas more than children, I'm wondering if some of the standards applied in other aspects of government should be applied by policy makers here.
The courts regularly demand that someone have standing before allowing them to bring cases before their jurisdiction. To avoid their dockets being filled up with activities, which if allowed, unchecked, would overwhelm them and take them away from their primary reason for being, to adjudicate crimes and civil matters for their citizens.
Is it wrong to apply a similar standard to complaints raised by those who have no children within the system?
Courts, local governments, agencies, etc. regularly charge a reasonable fee for time spent obtaining information for those requesting. To recover the costs of their activities.
If you're expecting librarians, teachers, administrators, etc. to read a book, compare it to a complaint and law, is it reasonable for the system to recover the money for that activity? Particularly when it is a complaint not raised by someone who is directly affected by the book?
Citizens have a right to redress. I get that. I agree with that. But if a citizen with their own agenda is using an unusual amount of other taxpayer's resources to further that agenda, should we be bearing the cost, just to be bearing it?
Our policies should have balance.
Time and again, throughout the nation, we are seeing where as little as 5-6 people for the whole nation, are creating untold work for already overtaxed jurisdictions to further their subjective opinions.
Maybe they ought to be paying for that, rather than the rest of us. If we can say the Governor's office can charge an hourly rate when releasing documents under the FOIA, or a court can recover court costs, is it unreasonable to charge similar rates for this?
Particularly when it involves someone not directly affected by a policy?
If you're gonna have culture wars, shouldn't you be the one paying for it?
Just a thought.
Quick question for posterity sake. Does FCPS operate with the same Rubric process? Like is there a form KLB-3.1415 that someone in the city could request that a book be evaluated with here?
Great article btw!! Keep up the good work yall!