King George School Board Votes to Retain Challenged Books
King George School Board Votes to Retain Challenged Books
Vote upholds superintendent's decision to keep the books but require parental permission before checkout. Board members also want to revisit the library book selection process.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
The King George School Board on Monday evening voted 4-to-1 to uphold superintendent Jesse Boyd’s decision to retain two challenged books in the King George Middle School library but require parental permission before they can be checked out.
The two books under consideration on Monday were Sold, by Patricia McCormick, and ttfn, by Lauren Myracle.
A community member had appealed Boyd’s decision to keep the books to the School Board, asking instead that they be pulled from school libraries entirely.
James Monroe district representative Matthew Roles voted against the motion to uphold Boyd’s decision. He offered an amended motion that would pull ttfn completely and move Sold out of the middle school and into the high school library, but his motion failed.
Sold, which was published in 2010, tells the story of a 13-year-old Nepali girl who is sold into prostitution in India. It is based on the author’s interviews with survivors of human trafficking.
ttfn, published in 2005, is the second in a series about three high school best friends, written in the form of text message conversations. Both books appear regularly in the American Library Association’s lists of most frequently banned books.
Though Board members supported the system Boyd has implemented—which places books that are deemed “sexually explicit” in a restricted section of the school library—most said they don’t think the two titles should have made it onto library shelves in the first place.
“My compromise here is we don’t order any more books like this and that we are careful with the books we order,” said Colleen Davis, Dahlgren district representative.
At-large representative Ed Frank said reading ttfn was “really, really painful for him.”
“I guess if you’re a 15-year-old and that’s your lingo … you get something out of it,” he said. “But as a 75-year-old, I didn’t get anything out of it.”
Matthew Roles, James Monroe representative, said keeping ttfn on the shelves is “akin to contributing to the delinquency of a minor” and that it is “not consistent with community values.
“These are the two darkest most age-inappropriate books in a children’s library that I’ve ever seen,” Roles said. “I sincerely apologize that for years, kids as young as 10 years old could access these books paid for by tax dollars.”
David Bush, Board Chair and Shiloh representative, said he wouldn’t want his grandchildren reading either book.
“I am very thankful that these two books …. [are] in a place where only parents can give permission,” he said. But he added that he is “happy to allow parents to have these conversations with their children.”
James Madison representative Cathy Hoover said that while she “doesn’t see any educational value” in the two books, she believes that “if a parent wants to allow their child to read the book and discuss the topics, for whatever reason, it should be up to the parent.”
Supervisor: “Those books were uncomfortable to me”
Many members of the King George community attended Monday’s meeting to talk about the books during public comments. Among them were three members of the county Board of Supervisors, which allocates funding to the school division.
“Those books were uncomfortable to me, so I don’t know what educational value these have on our youth,” said T.C. Collins, Board Chair and James Monroe district representative. “I’m speaking as a Christian. I get sick and tired of people villainizing people for their Christian beliefs. This is the fight for good and evil. We must stand up for what is good. Everybody in this room is a sinner. We all need to repent.”
Ken Stroud, the James Madison representative, said the presence of the books in school libraries points to larger problems with “our educational system.”
“Over 60% of the county’s budget is spent on education. There are clearly some problems with how money is being spent on books. We need to look at changing our whole educational system into an adaptive learning environment,” Stroud said. “We would still use schools but use online learning and adaptive learning … and save a lot of money.”
William Davis, Dahlgren representative, argued against the position taken by some community members that objections to the two books are informed by religious beliefs that don’t have a place in government or public schools.
“These same people don’t understand that our forefathers declared that our rights came from God,” he said. “The danger is if you take God out of it, men will decide what you can say or hear or read.”
Board discusses establishing a book selection/review committee
Later in the meeting, the Board discussed the possibility of giving the public more input into which books are purchased for the school libraries.
Staff provided the Board with an overview of current procedures, which state that the goal of the library collection is to “support curriculum goals and to provide for the diverse needs and interests of our students.”
“The responsibility for the selection and purchase of all library materials is delegated to the professional library media specialist(s) on staff through the superintendent and school administration” and is “based upon evaluation and recommendation by the professional library staff through the consideration of available resources and curriculum needs, and consultation of reputable, professionally prepared reviewing sources.”
Boyd said that typically, 300-400 new library books are purchased each year for the middle school and the same amount for the high school.
However, he said, “it’s important for those in attendance in our community to know that since this has become a question, we haven’t purchased books. There hasn’t been a library order of books at all.”
Boyd said he is hesitant to adopt a procedure that puts more responsibility on staff and teachers, but that he is “very comfortable with making sure we provide a list of every book up for purchase [by] the library” and giving the public a chance to review it and provide input.
School Board members said they would be interested in assembling a book review and selection committee made up of Board and community members.
“It looks like there is plenty of interest [in serving on such a committee] tonight,” Colleen Davis said. “If they willing to come out [to talk about the books], I hope they would be part of the solution.”
The Board decided to task Boyd with meeting with librarians to gather their suggestions for updating regulation IIBD-R, which governs school libraries and media centers.
Boyd will present their suggestions at an upcoming Board meeting.
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