By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
The Rockingham County School Board voted Monday to permanently ban seven books from its library shelves, despite five of them being recommended by the district’s Content Review Committee to be kept in schools.
For each book that the Content Review Committee recommended be kept, board member Hollie Cave made a motion to remove them instead. Matt Cross, the board chair, seconded that each time. Five of those books were removed with a 4-1 vote. Jackie Lohr was the only board member to dissent.
The books the board voted to ban despite the committee’s recommendation included:
- “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher
- “Burned” by Ellen Hopkins
- “Glass” by Ellen Hopkins
- “Sold” by Patricia McCormick
- “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews
Two other books, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky and “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult, were also removed. The committee had recommended that, and the board voted to do so unanimously.
Superintendent Larry Shifflett said these votes depend on people’s interpretations of the material. That’s why, he said, while members of the Content Review Committee might say a book is OK to return to shelves, board members might disagree.
“There’s this element of subjectivity and how people read or perceive something,” Shifflett said, adding that the policy directs that a book should be removed if it describes sexually explicit content, but not everyone agrees on what constitutes a description. “Sometimes it boils down to, as a reader, did you read that as just a statement of, or did you read that as a description of?”
The school board created the seven-person Content Review Committee this spring as part of new policies about sexually explicit content in books. The committee reviewed the 57 books that the board temporarily banned in January. Of those, the board voted to allow 11 to return to library and classroom shelves. Seven books from the original list of 57 weren’t actually owned by RCPS.
The committee is nearly halfway through the review of those books with decisions on 29 titles remaining.
Until Monday only one book — a romantic fantasy fiction book, “A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas — had been permanently banned.
Cave said she’d read all of these books before the meeting and read aloud a list of every page number where sexually explicit material appeared.
“More Happy Than Not” by Adam Silvera and “Leah on the Offbeat” by Becky Albertalli were retained by the board. After Cave’s motions to ban them failed, 2-3. Vice chair Sara Horst motioned to keep them. Lohr and Ashley Burgoyne both voted in favor of that, while Cross and Cave voted against keeping either book.
Cross almost read excerpts from “Leah on the Offbeat,” but after a brief sidebar with Horst he said he wouldn’t because it wouldn’t be appropriate and he feared there would be legal ramifications of reading from it, although he didn’t elaborate on what that could be. He said he’d take to social media to share some of the content he refers to when voting to remove books.
“If there’s nothing wrong with the book, we should all be able to read it from the podium of what’s in those books, and I’ve got a big problem with that,” Cross said. “That part is very frustrating for me to see, that we can’t have a public dialogue in a public meeting but it’s OK to be in the schools where my kids are at.”
Lab schools under way at Broadway, East Rockingham high schools
Rockingham’s two pilot lab schools are in full swing after a years-long effort to get them going. Broadway High School and East Rockingham High School are each at their capacity of 50 students, and each has four teachers.
Lab schools are an alternative schooling method that promote innovation and interactive learning. They’re typically a partnership between a K-12 school district and a higher-education institution. RCPS runs theirs with JMU and Blue Ridge Community College. Gov. Glenn Youngkin has championed lab schools as a statewide initiative and advocated for funding for these programs.
Donna Abernathy, the assistant superintendent of innovation and learning, told the board that while the district is still working out kinks, students are enjoying the new model.
“I think it is actually really good and helpful because you’ll get more of a sense of how to communicate and actually how to work with real life and people itself,” said Anela, a student that Abernathy quoted in her presentation. “I think it’s good with all the teamwork and the projects that we do, so it does help a lot with all of that and very fun, too. It’s not bad.”
Potential dress code updates
After the school board discussed potential changes to the dress code at its previous meeting, Shifflett sent out an exploratory survey to RCPS staff, asking whether they agreed with various parts of the district’s existing dress code.
Out of 720 respondents — mostly teachers (61%) and classified staff (30%) — there was widespread agreement for certain parts of the policy. Prohibitions on clothing that exposes undergarments and see-through clothing received near unanimous support.
Eighty-two percent of respondents agreed that clothing should not reveal midriff, cleavage or bare chest; a smaller portion, 67%, supported prohibiting strapless and spaghetti-strap tops.
Only 39% said they agree with the current policy’s prohibition of tight pants like yoga pants, leggings and spandex shorts.
Survey respondents sent back dozens of pages of comments, which board members will look through before proceeding on any potential policy changes.
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