Santa Rosa County Schools make book review changes
No board member or member of the public spoke at the public hearing that preceded the vote.
The decision rewrites Policy 4.22, which governs educational media materials, and voids the committee’s past decisions. District review “will be completed on all materials for which an objection has been previously received,” the policy states, including titles the panel voted to keep in school libraries.
How the process used to work
Until now, objections not resolved at the school level went to a Material Objection Review Committee appointed by the superintendent. The seven-member panel included two parents from the grade level where the material was intended to be used, the district’s library media teacher on special assignment, a literacy coordinator, a curriculum administrator, a principal or assistant principal and one additional school staff member.
Its meetings were publicly noticed and subject to Florida’s open meetings law. Any member of the public could submit written input up to seven days before a meeting and the person who filed the objection could offer written evidence. The committee’s votes were public.
That section is now struck from the policy, along with a step that required a principal to meet with the person who filed the objection in an attempt to resolve it informally.
How the process works now
Under the rewritten policy, the district’s library media teacher on special assignment emails the objection to the media specialist and principal at each school holding the book in question. Within five calendar days, books challenged as pornographic or containing sexual content are sent to the district’s offices on U.S. Highway 90, where they cannot be checked out until the matter is resolved.
Within seven days, the media specialist and principal review the complaint and peer reviews, determine whether the book should be subject to further review and report whether to keep or remove the book.
If every school holding the book removes it, the process ends there. The decision is provided to the person who filed the objection and posted it on the district’s website, with the removal lasting one year.
If any school declines to pull the book, the objection moves to the superintendent, who has 90 days to review it. The superintendent may remove the book, keep it at its current grade level, restrict it to certain grades, weed it for lack of circulation or refer it for further staff review. The superintendent can also dismiss the challenge.
The superintendent can also reject an objection as meritless, duplicate challenges aimed at already reviewed material. The superintendent’s decision can be appealed in writing within 30 days, which sends the case to the school board.
In layman’s terms, the public no longer has a guaranteed opportunity to be heard before a book is removed. Public comment now occurs only if the person who filed the complaint appeals to the School Board.
Board hearings still include public comments, and the person who filed the complaint may make a presentation up to 10 minutes before the board votes on a final decision.
What remains unchanged
The rest of the policy remains relatively unchanged. Any parent of a district student who meets residency requirements may file an objection using a form approved by the Florida Department of Education.
County residents who do not have students in district schools may still file objections, provided they meet the policy’s residency requirements, but are limited to one objection per month.
Parents have the right to read passages aloud from a challenged book. If the board denies that request because of the content, the district must discontinue the material for being used.
The grounds for filing an objection also remain the same: the material is pornographic or prohibited under state law, depicts or describes sexual conduct outside a required course, is not suited for student comprehension, or is deemed inappropriate for the grade level.
The new policy also includes several minor changes.
Requests to access library materials now go to the school’s media specialist instead of the librarian, and the one-year freeze on reconsidering removed titles does not apply to material found to violate obscenity statutes or found to be obviously pornographic or inappropriate for the grade level where it was used.