- April 25, 2024
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The Knights of Columbus presented their annual Drug Awareness Poster Contest winners at the regular School Board Meeting on Jan. 18. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Access to school library books will become more complicated with a new district procedure.
LaShakia Moore, the district’s director of teaching and learning, presented the district's three-tiered approach to the School Board at its information workshop on Jan. 18.
Each level will provide a limitation to students’ access to media center materials. Level one will provide open access with parents required to approve young adult books for elementary school students and adult books for secondary students.
Level two will allow parents to submit up to five books they do not want their children to read.
Level three will be the most restrictive. Parents would pre-approve which books their child is allowed to check out. Moore said this approach has already been tried out with families in some schools.
“For levels two and three we want families to first meet with a media specialist,” Moore said.
For those levels, a media specialist or media aide would help families set up a tidal wave account where they could read reviews and more information about the books and ideally have a conversation at home, she said.
“We want parents to sit with media specialists, literacy coaches, administrators,” Moore said. “We’re going to move forward with empowering parents with videos. We also want parents to know the media specialists and aides are available to meet.”
She said the district will push out information to families on the district and school websites.
“It’s important we make sure we inform our students so they can be part of conversation,” she said.
Board member Colleen Conklin asked that with the new opt-out procedure, will the controversial book “All Boys Aren’t Blue” be restored to high school shelves?
Superintendent Cathy Mittelstadt said the procedure will have to be up and running first.
Mittelstadt said she was pleased with the process so far.
