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Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
SC Board of Education at odds during latest book ban discussion
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WSAV) — The South Carolina Department of Education (SCBOE) will not take another 10 books off school library shelves, at least for now. The state board postponed a vote Tuesday on 10 books that were considered for a statewide ban. Earlier this month a review committee unanimously recommended the titles be banned statewide. The books the recommended for bans are: 'Collateral' by Ellen Hopkins 'Empire of Storms' by Sarah J. Maas 'Half of a Yellow Sun' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 'Hopeless' by Colleen Hoover 'Identical' by Ellen Hopkins 'Kingdom of Ash' by Sarah J. Mass 'Last Night at the Telegraph Club' by Malinda Lo 'Living Dead Girl' by Elizabeth Scott 'Lucky' by Alice Sebold 'Tricks' by Ellen Hopkins A final vote on the recommendations was scheduled for Tuesday but some board members expressed concerns about the wording of Regulation 43-170. That regulation was promoted by S.C. Department of Education staff that defines any book containing a 'description' of sexual conduct as age-inappropriate for grade K-12. 'I am concerned about potential abuses of a process that we intended to be fair and equitable,' said board member Maya Slaughter. According to the regulation, board members do not have to read the whole book but can make a decision based on passages only. 'Looking at these texts outside of the arc of their full stories is a mistake in my view,' said Board member Antony Vincent. It only takes one person to make a challenge to a book. So far, the majority of the 27 challenges are coming from one Beaufort County woman, Elizabeth Szalai. Szalai also spearheaded the previous review of 97 books by panels connected to Beaufort County Schools. 'I don't think somebody from Beaufort should make me drive here from Myrtle Beach every meeting to talk about more books,' said board member Ken Richardson. 'My question is, when does this thing stop?' After the debate concluded, board member Jackie Lynn eventually made the motion to table a vote on the 10 books. 'It is reassuring that the State Board of Education is prioritizing the rights of families, students, and educators rather than the handful of South Carolinians who feel scarily comfortable taking the rights of others. I hope that the board will take the time to craft a democratic policy that considers the full context of a written work,' said Josh Malkin, Advocacy Director for the ACLU of South Carolina. So far, 12 books have been removed from South Carolina school libraries since the regulations went into effect last year. According to the regulation, if the Board of Education rules in favor of a challenge, the books will be pulled from all school libraries statewide. Most schoolbook bans are limited to the school district in which they are imposed. South Carolina is one of three states, in addition to Utah and Tennessee, with a mechanism for statewide schoolbook bans established by state law. Utah has mandated 17 books banned for all schools in the state. So far, Tennessee has not had any state-mandated book bans. If all 10 of these titles are banned, as the committee recommends, South Carolina would surpass Utah with the most state-mandated bans impacting all public schools. There is no word on if the board will ask to change the regulation, or if these books will be up for debate again. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
No vote on removing books from schools as SC education board questions own rule
From left to right, state Board of Education Chair David O'Shields, attorney John Tyler, Chair-Elect Rita Allison, Joette Johnson and Joyce Crimminger hear a report during a meeting Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette) COLUMBIA — Amid state Board of Education members' misgivings about its own regulation banning 'sexual conduct' from K-12 public schools, the board held off on deciding Tuesday whether to remove 10 more books from school library shelves. The state board unanimously approved the regulation last year, sending it to the state Legislature. Neither the House nor Senate took a vote on the regulation, which automatically went into effect last June through an apparent fluke that surprised even legislators. Since the state board's first review in November, board members have agreed to remove 11 books from public school libraries and keep six others, one of which the board required parental permission to check out. Last month, a five-member committee unanimously recommended removing the 10 books up for consideration. Books considered for removal Tuesday 'Collateral' by Ellen Hopkins 'Empire of Storms' by Sarah J. Maas 'Half of a Yellow Sun' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 'Hopeless' by Colleen Hoover 'Identical' by Ellen Hopkins 'Kingdom of Ash' by Sarah J. Maas 'Last Night at the Telegraph Club' by Malinda Lo 'Living Dead Girl' by Elizabeth Scott 'Lucky' by Alice Sebold 'Tricks' by Ellen Hopkins Source: Instructional Materials Review Committee But ahead of taking a vote Tuesday, board members began to question their own regulation, including whether they had applied it correctly in the past. Many of their questions echoed concerns opponents of the complaint have raised. 'I'm not sure if we're shooting at the right target, or if we're shooting whether our range finder is accurate,' said board member David O'Shields, superintendent of Laurens County School District 56. The first seven books considered didn't come from a parent challenging a local district's ruling but by board members working with state Department of Education staff. Board members wanted to consider some widely questioned books to set a precedent for future rulings and hopefully clear up confusion, members said at the time. Since then, most of the books removed from school libraries, including the 10 up for consideration Tuesday, came to the state board through challenges from one Beaufort County parent. The same parent brought 96 books to the Beaufort County Board of Education for review last year. The local school board, which considered all the books before the statewide regulation went into effect, declined to remove any of the books from shelves. The same parent could feasibly ask the state board to consider every one of those books under the regulation, said board member Ken Richardson, former chairman of the Horry Georgetown Technical College board. 'When does this thing stop?' Richardson, who represents Horry and Georgetown counties, asked repeatedly. 10 more books recommended for removal in SC from K-12 libraries 'I think that's the question of the day,' replied board Chairwoman Rita Allison, a former longtime legislator from Spartanburg County. Board members raised concerns over a single parent being able to bring dozens of requests to the state board, requiring schools across the state to remove them from library shelves, whether or not local community members share the concerns about the books. O'Shields, Allison and Richardson said they had yet to hear complaints about any of the books they had considered in the districts they represented. 'I do not like to come up here every single meeting and vote on books nobody in my area is even talking about,' Richardson said. Five of the 10 books up for consideration Tuesday are in school libraries in Laurens County School District 56, where O'Shields in superintendent, he said. Libraries bought those books with the hopes that they would encourage more students to read, while 'understanding that children don't come from a cookie cutter world,' O'Shields said. He questioned whether the board should be considering books as a whole, instead of based on excerpts containing sexual conduct. In some cases, the sexual conduct that leads the board to remove books from shelves amounts to as little as a few pages in several-hundred-page novels, he said. 'Again, I am not in favor of it,' O'Shields said. 'I personally find those pages repugnant.' But those books can still be important for some students, he said. O'Shields held up a small, yellow tome entitled 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask),' which he deemed his own 'puberty book' — the book to which he turned to learn about the changes happening in his adolescence. 'However, this was all I had. You know what I'm saying?' he continued. For children who have experienced abuse or other struggles, reading stories similar to their own might be especially important, said Tony Vincent, a minister in Seneca. While he wouldn't be comfortable with his preteen daughters reading some of the books up for review, he also understood that every child is different, he said. The books 'could possibly save lives and help young people understand themselves and their experiences,' said Vincent, who represents Anderson and Oconee counties. SC teachers say new 'age-appropriate' rule is causing confusion. They're seeking clear guidance. 'Looking at these books outside of the arc of their full stories is a mistake, in my view,' Vincent said. The board originally approved the regulation in order to protect children from nefarious people looking to introduce them to sexual ideas with the intention of abusing them, said Richard Harrington, who represents Florence and Marion counties. He acknowledged that he didn't know whether that was actually happening in South Carolina schools, but out of an abundance of caution, the board should continue to remove books that include sexual conduct, he said. 'It would be ill-advised to have these books remain when they could be used for that purpose,' Harrington said. O'Shields and Vincent asked whether the board could consider a middle ground between removing the books from shelves entirely and allowing any student to access them. The board has already done something similar once, by requiring parental permission to check out 'Crank' by Ellen Hopkins. 'I'm asking for something so it's not, 'goodnight, sweet prince,' for these books,' O'Shields said. The board voted to postpone a decision on the 10 books up for consideration Tuesday until members can get more clarification on the regulation in hopes of assuaging some of their concerns or determining whether the regulation needs any changes. The next time the board could take a vote would be at its May 6 meeting.
