By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
The Rockingham County School Board banned six more books from its library shelves on Monday with no discussion, again splitting from several recommendations made by the committee that the board assigned to review those titles.
Board member Hollie Cave led the charge to remove books at Monday’s meeting, as she has in previous meetings. Most board members followed suit, except for Jackie Lohr, who voted in line with the committee’s recommendations.
The committee recommended keeping these books, but the board reversed those decisions by a 4-1 vote, with Lohr dissenting:
- “Felix Ever After” by Kacen Callender
- “Fade” by Lisa McMann
- “The Duff” by Kody Keplinger
The committee recommended removing the following books, and the board unanimously agreed:
- “Red, White and Royal Blue” by Casey McQuiston
- “Tilt” by Ellen Hopkins
- “Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins
The board did keep one book for the high-school level only: “Stars in Their Eyes” by Jessica Walton.
Cave read out the page numbers where she found explicit content for the books of which she had a different view than the committee’s recommendation. In some instances, the content she questioned was persistent or scattered throughout the book. In another, it was only three pages.
The board voted more than a year ago to temporarily ban a list of 57 books from school libraries, then spent months crafting policies prohibiting sexually explicit content in books and a review process for age-appropriateness. Superintendent Larry Shifflett created the Content Review Committee for that purpose.
The effort is now about three-quarters of the way done. The district didn’t own copies of seven of the titles the board initially banned. Since then, the board has voted on 37 of the 50 books on that list that are owned by RCPS, with 13 to go.
So far, the results have been mixed. Fifteen books have been reinstated as of Monday evening, and 19 have been banned – 11 of them against the review committee’s recommendation. Three other books have been partially reinstated, available at the high-school level only.
Special education snapshot
After an advisory group urged the school board to invest more in special education last month, supervisors in that department presented the board with a clearer view of the program.
Special education is growing, they said. Rockingham County has 42 more special education students now than in December 2023, bringing the total to 1,335. About 11% of RCPS students have a disability, with mental health needs becoming more and more common.
Staffing shortages make it difficult to handle that growth, which the district is legally required to accommodate.
Rockingham County has a considerably smaller staff and leadership team than other school districts in Virginia of roughly the same size. It has six people in special education leadership, compared to Bedford County’s 10, York County’s 12 and Augusta County’s 19.
Sarah Wimer, a special education supervisor for the county’s east-side schools, said some staff must take on several roles at once.
Student needs are “vast and more extensive than ever before,” she said.
She emphasized a need for more professional development among special education teachers.
“The needs of staff also require our attention as we’re fortunate to have individuals fill the role of a special education teacher, but not all of these teachers are coming into our classroom adequately prepared and have experience working with students with special needs,” Wimer said. “We are charged with equipping them with knowledge, skills and resources to educate our students.”
Special education leaders also told the school board there’s a “tremendous” shortage of school psychologists, for which they have a growing need. Only four Virginia colleges offer the degree necessary for that work.
Budget priorities
Board chair Sara Horst said she wants to prioritize hiring elementary curriculum specialists to help teachers with planning and literacy assistance, although she’s not sure if that’s possible this year. She said she hopes the board will make it work within the budget, if not this year then soon.
“I understand that it is really hard to add positions in this financial season, especially when I also feel deeply that we need more classroom teachers, more to lower our class sizes,” Horst said. “I could go on and on and on about all the wonderful things I think we could do, but we do have limited resources.”
Her top priorities with the 2025-26 budget, she said, are school safety and academic needs, something on which she said the board is “united.”
“There are always more needs and requests, and we can certainly justify every single one of them – they are all very important – but we have to continue to weigh them kind of in order,” Horst said.
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