CCSD to consider revising book review policy
The Clark County School Board will consider revising its process of challenging the use of some books, according to an agenda item for Thursday’s meeting.
The revised policy would enable a school to keep a book available while it is under review, unless the principal, teacher-librarian and school-based library-media center committee all agree to remove it.
It is not clear what the impetus for the revision was, but the agenda item comes before the board a week after two former Moms for Liberty members were elected to the board. The trustees-elect, who will take their seats in January, have advocated for removing certain books that they have described as “pornographic.”
Moms for Liberty regularly publishes lists of books it believes should be banned in schools, and members frequently read passages of what they view as inappropriate material at school board meetings.
In the Clark County School District’s Regulation 6150, members of the public can submit a form of complaint against books. The school-based library media center committee then reviews the policy. If the committee decides to to remove the book, the central library-media center committee conducts a final review.
The policy also states that opinions about a book should be based on the material as a whole without judging passages out of context.
Critics of the book banning movement have accused advocates of cherry-picking passages and misconstruing the meaning.
At a high school visit last month, the frequently banned author Ellen Hopkins told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that passages in her books about sexual assault have sometimes been portrayed as a graphic sex scene.
If a person is not satisfied with the result of the complaint, the school district’s policy also has an appeal option. A person can contact the assistant superintendent of the curriculum and instruction division, who convenes a central content area committee to review the supplemental textbook. The appeal can only happen once.
The school board will discuss the option to approve the notice of intent to adopt, repeal or amend the regulation at Thursday’s meeting. It will be officially submitted to the board for approval at the Dec. 12 meeting.
Contact Katie Futterman at kfutterman@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ktfutts on X.