A new policy in Fauquier County, Virginia, intends to keep books on school library shelves while giving parents control over what their children read.
All Virginia school districts are required to notify parents of sexually explicit content in any class instructional materials and give them a chance to seek an alternate lesson, but the same law does not apply to school library books.
In some school districts like Spotsylvania County, administrators have pulled books from libraries over the protest of some parents.
But in Fauquier County, a committee of administrators, librarians, teachers, parents and students spent five months developing a plan just presented to the school board.
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“Everybody has to have consent,” parent and committee member Natalie Erodssey said. “Parents need to know what is available to their children. They need to say, ‘Yes, that’s appropriate for this child, but it may not be appropriate for my other child.’”
“It was never our goal to remove books or to get into a censorship conversation,” Deputy Superintendent Major Warner said. “Our charge was to come out of this with some tools that we can give to parents who desire to have increased control over what their children check out in the libraries.”
Every school library will publish a list of books in its collection that contain sexually explicit content. Parents can electronically notify the librarian if they want certain books to be off limits. It can be handled online in the same system used to check out books or monitor whether they’ve been returned on time.
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“You’ll be able to check,” Erodssey said. “My student can only read grade level material. My student can’t access sexually explicit material. My student has free rein over whatever they like to check out.”
The new system will be fully implemented at the start of next school year. Erdossy said there will likely be tweaks and improvements along the way.
“I hope that what we have demonstrated is you can have conversation with people who disagree and find some sort of middle ground,” she said. There are new rules for book challenges, too. Only parents, guardians or students can initiate a book challenge. Outside special interest groups do not have standing.
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