ST. GEORGE — School libraries faced historic scrutiny in the past year, and Washington County School District was no exception.

According to the American Library Association, K-12 institutions were at the forefront of a national trend that saw more books challenged in 2021 than any preceding year going back to 2000. In fact, more books were targeted for removal last year (1,597) than in 2020, 2019 and 2018 combined.

Students, parents, school employees, community residents, lawmakers and even nonprofit organizations have waded into an ideological battle that pits concerns over vulgarity and sexual content against authentic depictions of gender and sexual identity, historical and contemporary racism and trauma arising from abuse.

In Southern Utah, this controversy was on full display through the monthslong deliberation over two books – “Out of Darkness” and “The Hate U Give” – which led to a temporary removal of both until legal challenges raised by the ACLU of Utah caused the district to return the books to library shelves.

“The policy that we had before was actually directed at curriculum, so we really couldn’t apply it to media centers,” said Jeremy Cox, district director of technology and media. “We had to go through and create a policy that was actually legally defendable.”

Consulting with their own legal team and with the Utah Attorney General’s Office, district administrators drafted a policy for Media Center Library Materials (Policy 4211) that was shared publicly for the first time at the April 12 meeting of the board of education.

Six weeks and numerous revisions later, the eighth version of the document was approved unanimously at the May 24 meeting of the board. 

Book review procedure

The new policy defines key terms and outlines the process by which new material should be reviewed and how challenges to current library content will proceed. Everything from books and photographs to films and statues is subject to review.

To introduce the district’s position and responsibilities, the document states, “The Washington County School Board acknowledges the First Amendment principle that students have a right to access ideas through school libraries. … At the same time, Washington County School District is sensitive to the reality that a school library primarily supports the equitable access to information and the education of minors and does not serve the general public.”

For material to be considered “prohibited,” it must meet a narrow definition laid out in Utah criminal code that refers to explicit depictions or descriptions of sexual activity.  If it does, the material in question can be removed immediately without triggering a full review.

Other material qualifying as “sensitive” can include pornographic or indecent content not defined in Utah code, violence, vulgarity and content that promotes suicidal ideation, parasuicide or self-harm. 

If an individual finds objectionable content in a library book or other media, they can initiate a formal challenge that starts with one-on-one meetings with the librarian and principal of the school where the challenge originates.

The school employees may attempt to explain the purpose and use of the challenged material, but if the challenger remains unsatisfied the policy outlines the procedure for creating a nine-person media review committee to evaluate the material.

The committee – composed of administrators, parents and librarians from schools around the county – must read the book in its entirety and meet as a group to discuss its contents. Potentially sensitive content would be weighed against the material’s literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors.

Finally, the committee can vote to take one of three actions: retaining the material in all school libraries, removing the material from all schools or removing the material only where the content is not age-appropriate for that school’s student body.

If the committee decides to keep the challenged book or media, the decision is final and not subject to an appeal or a second challenge for a period of three years. Finally, any individual with standing is limited to three challenges per year.

Only parents, school employees and school board members have standing to initiate a formal challenge to sensitive material in school libraries – an element that was strongly opposed by a vocal contingent of community members and parents.

Sherry Clake, a local marriage and family therapist who also identified herself as a grandmother, spoke to the board at its May 10 meeting to share why she believes that standing should be granted to more stakeholders.

“I’ve directly worked with youth and adults who have been traumatized by pornography and sexual abuse,” Clarke said. “It breaks up families, causes mental illness and can have lifelong negative effects. I care about all of those things, so therefore I think I am a stakeholder.”

In response, board members reiterated their stance that, as representatives of the voting public, they could introduce challenges based on concerns shared by their constituents. The other limiting factor, said board member Terry Hutchinson, is that challengers may have to testify in court if a book removal ends in litigation.

Steven Dunham, communications director for the district, said the district has tried to incorporate suggestions offered through public comment, including revisions to parent selection for review committees and the requirements for students involved in a review.

“We’ve listened to community input, put changes in place where we can and tried to give the public and our legal team ample opportunity to review it (the policy),” he said. “We want to make sure we haven’t gone against the grain of what the fundamental policy was created for.”

While the new policy has been officially adopted, the review process will likely not face its first tests until the next school year begins, Dunham said. 

In the meantime, district librarians will begin the process of adding individual library catalogs to a district-wide platform that will be searchable and notify parents of students’ material checkouts. 

Public comment

While the origins of Policy 4211 can be traced to a relatively recent complaint, the circumstances that led up to this latest issue are all too familiar to district officials. National controversy making its way into local schools has become more common in the wake of COVID-19 and critical race theory.

“It’s definitely a situation that has come up more recently,” Dunham said. “I think it’s come from groups that have specific concerns or follow specific media channels that are suddenly concerned about this. In education, you’ll see this every five to 10 years or so, and it’ll kind of come and go in waves. I think it’s the wave coming back.”

At each of the three public meetings where the policy was reviewed and discussed, an unusually large and vocal contingent of concerned residents and parents offered comments.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever received so much feedback,” Cox said.

In fact, the district received so many suggestions at the end of the 30-day comment period that members voted to postpone the final decision on the policy until the last details could be worked out and community members notified of the latest changes.

The overwhelming majority of comments supported book removals and bans, citing concerns of overt sexuality in children’s books and social decay. Judi Madsen, a local parent, said she hopes for more transparency from the district and more cooperation with concerned citizens.

“I’m a mom whose son was subjected to pornography in school four years ago, so this is not (just happening) this year,” she said. “If we don’t eliminate access to pornography for our children, we will continue to accelerate the poison of sexual exploitation of our children.”

However, opponents of book bans and broad censorship as a whole, including the ACLU and ALA, contend that blanket bans based on public outrage are problematic and often unconstitutional.

In an op-ed published by Deseret News, the deputy legal director for ACLU of Utah, Jason Groth, explained why the organization challenged the Washington County School District over its initial removal of the two novels.

He wrote: “People who seek to ban books use the excuse that the material they target is ‘inappropriate’ due to violent or sexual content. But the real reasons these books are being targeted is obvious to anyone who scans their titles and covers: The common denominator of banned books is their focus on race and LGBTQ+ issues.”

Caught in the crosshairs of public ire and professional scrutiny are the curators of media center materials – library coordinators like Derek Larson at Desert Hills Middle School. While some members of the public preferred a quicker removal process, Larson said he and his colleagues generally favored the measured approach ultimately adopted by the district.

Now, the policy’s success will be determined by a number of factors, including public comment from parents as well as reading outcomes for students. Part of the mandate for maintaining a good library is that students learn, have fun and feel welcome, Larson said.

“I think it’s important for people to realize that once you allow anybody to willy-nilly pull books from a library, at that point, you’re crossing into very dangerous ground,” he said. “Libraries are places where every student in the community needs to find themselves. Regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity, background, socioeconomic status or whatever – they should see themselves in their library.”

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