First, I want to begin by acknowledging the district for meeting with John Peters and me recently. We met with several media center leaders in regards to library policies, including the book challenge and book donation policies.
I really appreciate the engagement and definitely learned a great deal, especially the challenges of managing such a large collection of titles.
It was also encouraging that we found common ground to move forward together to increase transparency into the libraries, so that parents feel equipped to guide their students toward what is appropriate for their family values.
That said, there were a couple glaring issues that surfaced where much more work needs to be done.
First, the Destiny catalog software, as you would expect, is geared to help students locate books of interest based on a handful of genres. It is clearly not equipped toward helping parents easily discover content types, such as sexually explicit scenes, graphic language, drug use,etc. It is also challenging to identify books that discuss potentially age-inappropriate topics, such as gender transitioning for elementary students. A few board members have also insisted that parents can simply use the Destiny catalog to find out what is new in your child’s school. Other than a handful of titles in the Recently Added carousel, those mechanisms simply don’t exist.
Second, the media centers have zero visibility into teacher classroom collections. Classroom books are often used for supplemental curriculum. Parents have the right under PPRA to not only inspect that collection but also inquire in advance about any books to be used for instruction. Back to school nights and teacher conferences do offer parents a chance to get a cursory view of the classroom, but we need to find better ways to inform parents which books are on the classroom shelves.
I look forward to continuing the collaboration with the district and ask the board to support any measures recommended for helping parents decide what is best for their child’s education.
