001[Music] so [Music] foreign okay like to welcome everyone back i appreciate you being here again we're going to go ahead and get started um tonight i have asked for jamie parris he is the high school teaching and learning director and i asked him i sent him an email and asked him if he would come and walk us through the process of exactly what goes on when a book is brought into hamilton county how they find out about it how the administration deals with it and how that book lands on the uh shelves and after that jamie after you get through that process i would like to go on into uh how to continually monitor these books what does that look like and who is responsible for that so if you don't mind absolutely so good
002evening first off i am jamie paris i'm the high school teaching and learning director i also have uh becky covington with us over there who supervises librarians so she knows a lot more about some of this than i do so she's available also to clarify some things that i don't know uh the selection of materials in the libraries and different places the procedures manual really is the librarian's handbook that is the process that that administrators librarians that's what we follow in the selection process they're based on the ala school library selection criteria [Music] an objective stated in that library handbook i think that was emailed to everyone i believe we all received it uh some of the selection tools oh it also follows by the way the principle set forth by the library bill of
003rights uh the the librarian as they select books uh in coordination or conjunction under supervision of the principle there are some selection tools teachingbooks.net they look at reviewing sources from ala state and national awards reputable reviewing periodicals and common sense media is also one that it comes into play ultimately when it lands on a library shelf the librarians are responsible for the selection and the monitoring of those library resources under the direct supervision of their principles so the there's actually four selection and acquisition process procedures that's in the manual out and i won't read those unless you particularly want me to and as far as the so that's how it actually ends up on the shelves the librarian ultimately is the one who's making selection processes alongside the principal in conjunction with the supervision of
004the principal through the criteria specified in the in the handbooks everything is followed through the library and handbook and the monitoring process continues throughout through the as teachers use books as students use books as the as they are checked out as parents uh look at books as well so that monitoring process is continually happening from the librarian and their peers and as they become instructional materials as those come across as well okay becky did i miss anything okay okay as pertaining to our policy then the selection of materials on down on page 25 it says the director of schools or designee will establish an administrative procedure for review and selection of materials subject to this policy um okay the administrative procedure is just the librarian piece i said okay what goes in the librarian just
005goes by the american library association's uh recommendations [Music] because some of those recommendations obviously does not coincide with our policy because our policy says particular attention will be paid to addressing the suitability of instructional materials that include content which might be considered sensitive by parents or students for example materials that contain coarse language graphic violence explicit sexual content illegal drug use or alcohol the director or designee which i imagine that would be you or you becky okay uh we'll also establish a procedure for the reconsideration of approval because that's when the parents get involved on that end but i'm talking about on the front end is there something in this policy that is lacking that allows some of the material that we have seen some of the material that we are still looking over is
006there something in this policy that is not clear for these everybody says well the policy is good well the policy is either not being followed it needs to be made more clear exactly exactly where is the breakdown that we get some books like we heard at thursday night's meeting uh some that i have some some books that were given to us thursday night some books that i have personally gone over some books that have been sent to me how do those good books get past this process if this if this policy is being followed where is the breakdown what am i missing here well i do want to add that in becky you feel free to so the ala is not the only uh the only criteria i'm looking at the handbook right now there's
007actually at least a dozen bullets here they're in the criteria for the handbook as well yeah i've seen something there's a whole list of people that you go to i don't care where you get them when they get here is what i'm worried about how do they get past this policy that says coarse language and i think the word obscene needs to be added in their course or obscene language graphic violence explicit sexual content illegal address use of drugs or alcohol how do some of those books that we have been seeing and that we heard in very high fashion last thursday how do those good books get past this policy if the policy is being followed and the policy is a selection of materials right 4.402 is that yes okay so i'll speak to a
008little bit and then becky again feel free to add in the the books ultimately are selected based on reviews uh recommendations uh there's even a component for parent and teacher recommendations for the books as well so the books are vetted through things like common sense media all the different pieces and ultimately i mean that's as far as i know of my knowledge on how the books make the shelf right becky i don't know if you want to add to that or not but that's correct um again they look using the criteria from the american library association okay again i will ask if our policy says this and you say that that handbook coincides with this how do books get on our shelf that have this course in obscene language graphic violence explicit sexual content and
009illegal use of drugs and alcohol how do they end up in the library because i have been on the phone with attorneys for hours and they all say your policy seems to hit most almost all the bullet points somebody's not following the policy so i don't know if it's not clear i don't know uh if we need to enhance it to tighten up on it because they said that this should be sufficient to keep those books out of our library and i don't know where the breakdown is 4.402 i'm curious do we with the selection criteria in the process do we log in with that do we know for a book which of the criteria we believed it hit for to merit selection do we have a record of that say that one more time
010so as as you said you look at the policy it seems to make sense on paper but something seems to be disconnected do we have four books a record of which criteria for selection were actually the book believed to have hit so if there's a book and we wonder why it's there and somebody apparently thought that it met some of the criteria for selection do we have any record of which criteria those were that the person believed it was and who was it anyway they put the book in how do we know it wasn't just uh put in without going through the process do we have a record of that anywhere we do have a record of every book that goes it's through our system there's not a place to tell the criteria that it
011has we don't document that but every book that goes through the library it becomes a part of the collection is there and so the reconsideration process again is there for books that need to be looked at it could be that you know from a parent or a student that's the process so so i could clarify what i'm hearing you say there is of course a record of the book in the system the modern version of the card catalog but there is no recording of the criteria for selection we believe it hit also do we record who reviewed that book to ingest it into the system so that is recorded that the live no so we don't record that and we don't record the criteria which leads to mrs thurman's question of the policy makes sense
012but we don't seem to have any trust building uh records of why that happened or or how a book happened or so in the best faith scenario if it turns out that as the state language uses they say you know the work taken as a whole somebody decided the work taken as a whole merit merited its inclusion we don't have any record of that people are left scratching their heads and it makes it hard to facilitate a review if somebody does object so so but i'm so i didn't mean to get on my soapbox we'll get to that later i guess but just to answer your if i'm hearing your your response correctly we do not log any of the criteria that were flagged we do not log who decided who was the actual uh
013director principal librarian who put the book in that's all gone all we know is the book is there and of course we record it in the card catalog that it's there but we don't know any any of that process that has been put down on here on paper we don't have any record of how that went is that correct that is correct okay thank you david for clarifying that that's a good question so um back to this policy that you're reading from it's 4.402 line 26 it says particular attention will be paid to addressing the things but it doesn't i'm no lawyer but it doesn't seem to like say we will absolutely keep these things out it kind of allows for some subject subjectiveness subject because i'm just i've read harry potter not all of
014them but um it has course and i i'm not trying to go back to harry potter but it's a great example of a book that's well read and respected but it does in fact have coarse language graphic violence and illegal use of alcohol in it so that would violate it but i this does allow subjectivity correct meg miss thurman you're a sweet lady and i know you and i know that you have children and you know we're not talking about harry potter here you heard you heard thursday night what we're talking about i want to know how those books get past this policy okay harry potter making fun but how does that those books are not in the elementary school the books that were read on thursday night turns to being a woman okay i
015don't care i don't care whether it doesn't make it doesn't i didn't say it this doesn't say elementary school this says in our schools books that are are appropriate for 14 years old and up are a lot of what these books are and i brought with me a set of book reviews so you can see the effort that librarians make okay okay ma'am i'm sorry you know i can appreciate that and that is good and i'll be glad to see those i'm still wanting to i'm not going to get out of the weeds like we did the last time we're going to stick right here with this policy how does handmaids tell that is not suitable for any age group as far as i'm concerned that's yours but that is yours but how does it
016get past no i want to know how it gets past this that's not my opinion i just want to know how it gets passing it was suitable for any age group to reference our policy if we could hey if i could um i wasn't here last week but i have read the documentation and i'm glad you brought up harry potter my granddaughter attends dayton city school in ray county and she wanted to check out harry potter last week and they sent home a permission slip she's in elementary school but i did go over that bill of rights that you mentioned and it looks like it is written by the ala you can google this this bill of rights this is not written by hamilton county this is in every state in every city and every
017county it's just from the library association it looks like the librarians are encouraged to fight against censorship um i mean specifically that's not a legal document they can use it yes it's no one that i've made but maybe that's what that's where this is coming from because it looks like you know if they do get a concern from parents the helpful over viewing god says they should suggest an alternative if the parent still doesn't agree they need to go to the principal and get that policy for 403 in front of them so that they can fill out the reconsideration and the reconsideration process then takes effect so and we heard last last meeting that none of the books have been removed through a reconsideration process ever so because they were satisfied that maybe by just
018giving you another option why they haven't why they passed that i believe jd handles [Music] i would like to note that any book that's been called before the school board at this point supersedes anything that our district can do with their policy um so even though it's gone through part of the book review process once it's been called to the book board because or to the school board because they uh have authority over the district higher up they can't go back and address it in the district so that process stopped the moment it was called to the school board and the school board took over the matter the process can no longer continue um i i can kind of layman's term what i was told from jamie's office but uh or not necessarily jamie's office
019some of the administrative sorry um but that the quantity or amount of these actual reviews was so little that they don't even have really quantitative data to apply to it and the few that have come through this year have now been pulled to the school board so we've not even really seen this policy fully through an action and in the history i think there's maybe been one i don't know the book or any of the scenario around that but that was kind of before it was really popular culture attention at the moment so he might be able to address more of that if i'm not mistaken these books were sent in i'll have to see the date i do have some of these that they were put in for reconsideration and that was way before
020we got in touch with it got a hold of this because they said they would take care of it in how many days 15. 15. yeah well they had it way before 15 days before it came before it came to us we did because they were just we were just told about them we haven't really did this sub committee was just born what two weeks ago so they had them weigh they had 15 way more than 15 days with these books before well their reconsideration process they were turned in i suppose so what did they stop at and what didn't get complete speaking from high school i have not seen those forms come across what ends up happening a lot of times is the form has to generate from this local school so um sometimes
021those forms are sent back because they have to come out of the local school otherwise it's breaking board policy because it's bypassing the board policy so if community members or outside organizations fill out this form and they don't have they would still have to go through a teacher coming through the school it would have to actually be from an actual school where the book exists where we have the issue it would have to move forward do that to apply to policy because i have had these for at least at least over a month i guess i've had these at least over a month and they were given i'm holding a citizen's request for reconsideration of instructional material on the come up and the hate you give both of them were put in for reconsideration and
022it was way before this committee got formed because that's so that's a new point about when the school board took it up because the school board is just now taking it up so so were they from schools like what he said like was there a school i mean i'm not asking personal information the student i have no idea but if we're looking at the policy the policy actually has complaints who bypassed the review reconsideration procedure who initially seek action from the board or director of schools shall be informed the policy instructed to first seek solution their problem with the involved teacher librarian or principal right so the policy is meant to be housed at the local level uh and what's important about this policy and the one before the one we're looking at 4.402 is
023the alternative assignment part of it right so before it ever hits the reconsideration process the first stage is to seek alternative assignment or text from the local school but that's that's for required we're talking about library that's we're talking about two different things one you're talking about the requirements that they get alternates with library you don't get alternates you just get another book uh but if it's required reading that's one thing that if it's required class work is another thing but we're talking about these library books some of which have been requested reading not required reading but those those we're talking about two different things here they're optional i will read them excuse me there are optional texts that's what i'm saying but he's talking about he's talking about getting you an optional giving you
024some other class all of these books that we've got on that list that we got last time last meeting all of those books are optional books i know but he's that's what i'm saying we're mixing apples and oranges he's talking about if something is required in your classroom they will give you an optional right but if it's an optional book in the library getting another book should just solve that we shouldn't even be here having this conversation no no we're trying to figure out how they get there to begin with because all parents don't know to fill out this form and i really thank god even though you say they bypass going because this is what's happening they get at the school level and it just languishes there and parents never find out about it
025this way parents are being made aware now they know now they know there's a process now they know there's a problem up until all this happened no one knew and i think that's the way some people would like to have kept it that it stayed at the school level and nobody ever found out about it now they know now again my question is going to ask what about this policy do we need to fix to ensure that we do not have x just such terrible sexually explicit material in the class in this library for our students to get that's all i want to know i would like to ask dr parris a question to see if we if we have any evidence i am an attorney i'd like to see evidence i would like to
026see what is the problem we're trying to solve here so are there complaints from parents or students who have been upset their children have been exposed to things they weren't expected to be exposed to um you know are you seeing parents complaining or or is the process working that's my question they've been coming to the school board for the last remarks receiving comfort oh has he yeah so i i students i can speak only right i can speak only from my department i have not personally had that from my department that doesn't mean at the school level that people have sought you know an alternative text or sought to process at the school level it's just not gotten to our level yet what now could we get that information from the school level is that
027getting centralized i don't know that's centralized okay again i will ask i really don't care if it's only two parents or three parents or 10 parents or 50 parents really it should make no difference the thing is is our policy being followed we spend a lot of time making these policies we spend a lot of hours on the school board going over over almost 500 pages of policies if they're not going to be followed we might as well let's not have them so it allows for okay well that's what i'm saying how do we fix this to where a handmaid's tale talking about spreading women's leg and about masturbation and all these other things we heard about the other night are not there for students i have a suggestion or two on the policy if
028i may respond well i have some suggestions as well but go ahead dad um so uh first of all the part that you've already heard me beat as a dead horse is um but i think the discussion here just highlights how important it is to have a paper trail and uh so i suggest first of all accountability yes the on the selection side of the policy and and i understand that some of these things are things that the board may ultimately decide they're going to delegate dr robertson or people under him to decide but we're not here to echo received wisdom we're here to share our thoughts so with that out of the way i think it should as i've said when the book gets selected i don't expect every book to get thoroughly read
029all the way through as much as we'd like that but we should document the licensed professionals who okayed that book which criteria for selection they felt merited that book being in and then finally and i was pleased to see the state legislatures looking along this lines as well some sort of notation about what grade levels age levels it seems to be appropriate for and then finally if because this gets back to that stuff that's in the policy now that ms thurman highlighted the the sort of the disclaimer of it may turn out there's sensitive stuff in there and nobody saw it before but if we know when we're ingesting the book into the system that there is content which on the face of it may be taken ads and i'm using the state state definition
030here harmful to minors but the context the whole work is the context taken as a whole that's what the state uses taken as a whole suggests the book still should be included you know something for juniors or seniors it's got some difficult stuff but for that taken as a whole that book might be relevant that that should be documented too so the four things on uh including the book is the licensed professionals putting it in which criteria they chose to use what rough age grade levels they believe it's appropriate for and finally if they're aware of sensitive language in it but they believe the work as a whole should come in some kind of statement about yes we know this is there but this is why we chose it which would help that process along
031and so so then finally if i may finish finally then on the other half of the coin the part to fix in the review process as ms thurman said it seems like things maybe have gotten bogged down well i looked at the review process a it would be nice that if the the book we when we took it in we we knew that there was some sensitive language and we we knew this is why we want to keep the book then okay the the objection process will go through its normal process however if there is no statement so we've got a book in there and certainly that's the case now where the horse has already left the barn you've got a book in the library nobody's sure why it's there there's a question about the
032language that needs to be resolved this is the part where i'm probably going to make some of my friends mad but what i would suggest is you get an immediate prompt examination by the principal the librarian and the ela department chair they look at that specific quoted language that is on the face of it obscene or harmful to minors some of the stuff that was quoted at the board meeting and they make a quick call is this book going to stay on the shelf while we go through this whole process or are we going to temporarily sequester that book because we've looked at it and on the face of it it looks like there is a problem and that's the part where i could certainly see the board being like they don't know if they
033want to do that but anyway that's what i suggest for fixing the process documentation up front and then afterwards if there is an objection and on the face of it the language seems bad we get those three professionals the principal the ela chair and the librarian to take a quick majority vote to be like are we going to keep this on the shelf while we go through the process or we look at that and like yeah we don't know how that got in here and just for the record i've had parents and professionals come to me and be like yeah a couple of these things they didn't know about may not be appropriate for that age level okay mr thurman in front of you uh the house bill 1944 having to do with obscenity and
034house bill 2154 but i think 1944 was being voted on this afternoon probably right now as we speak was supposed to be voted on about four o'clock some of these others are in here okay now what you were just talking about david right here may be taken care of in this one bill house bill 2154 over in in the bill it says if a local board of education or public charter school governing body determines that material contained in the school's library collection is not appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials or is not suitable for or consistent with the educational mission i think we're all missing out on that some of these books have supposed to have an educational mission of the school then the school shall
035remove the material from the library collection it doesn't say can it says shale so is this a law or is this still a bill because i'm not sure that it's good business it's that's like i say i didn't say it was a law i said this is a bill that is being introduced into the house business to be changing policy based off of a proposed bill instead of a law excuse me i mean there are so many bills in proposition right now should we be making policy basically well no i'm not saying i'm telling i said if this gets passed this may take care of what he's talking about if this gets passed into law this will this will take care of that that's what i'm saying there's somebody else that thinks that besides david
036is what i'm telling him this is a proposed bill right now it has not been voted on yet so no it is not a law it is a bill and we're not making anything on anything i'm just telling david that there are other people that feel the same way he does so he says he's going to make a lot of people mad they may not like it but there's a lot of people obviously feel the same way you do that a lot of people feel different ways uh thank you um i want to take a couple of steps back because the first book that was read on thursday night is actually in my school in my kids school library which is a k-8 school well right this year actually they have ninth grade uh someone
037mentioned a minute ago that it's age appropriate for a 14 year old you know that book i understand that district 5 had a zoom meeting last night where a media specialist from a local high school said that the definition of obscenity has recently changed or changed over the time so my question is to you dr paris has the definition of obscenity changed and if so would you categorize these books that were read on thursday night to be obscene and sexually explicit i honestly don't know legally if it's changed i honestly don't know that i'm not trying to avoid the question i really honestly don't know and um as far as the at what was read i i wasn't at fully i was a part of it and all of it but uh some of that
038is uh i'll answer it this way um what is viewed and what i view of seeing from my children i have every right to think about that and to say that i don't necessarily have the right to say it about your for your children so it's it's i'm not trying to avoid the question i promise it's honestly it's a i don't know if the definition has changed okay and at what age group is is 14 the age group where that book would be appropriate i don't have a i don't have an age group answer for that becky i don't know if there's a set guideline for that i know because as we all know there's different maturity levels you may have a 12 year old that's more mature than a 16 year old a 16
039year old that's not as mature as in and vice versa if if there's a defined age 14 is it honestly the content that was read thursday night that i have a copy of right here i don't think is appropriate for any age okay i know that's subjective and that's my opinion but at the end of the day there should be policy and standards in place because when you look at the librarian handbook which a lot of people have mentioned many many times it is very subjective there's no standards in there in fact one of the individuals that chairs and is on the leadership team was on this committee two weeks ago and said that all high schoolers are having sex so that's very did not say subjective and she said i'm not saying all right
040she said we know some high schoolers have sex okay so would you agree that the librarian handbook is very subjective uh would i yes would you agree that there are no standards on the librarian handbook okay well we disagree can we all agree that pedophilia and bestiality shouldn't be read by high schoolers can we all i'm serious you you have to leave the bible out then this is a question of morality but this is a question of morality i wouldn't need to see examples where that is being taught from the bible the handmaid's tale was on a suggested reading list and the child the child brought it home and had to stop reading it because it was so explicit right like to me if it was suggested and my child comes home that parent wasn't
041informed before the child checked it out okay okay hope you guys started to say hold on policy whenever you do go ahead david's suggestion for the policy i've also read the policies and thought about what are some ways we can you know keep what's working and tweak what's not and so one suggestion i had i've heard a lot about individual parents objecting to individual books and that parents don't know what what is in the library and so i was thinking that maybe we could add i don't know that it has to be in this policy but maybe it's just a broader notice or some sort of procedure to let parents know that there is a very easy way that they can alert librarians to their personal family values and preferences and you know like we
042talk about meetings the child if the child tries to check out the hands mates the handmaid's tale which i've read enjoyed very much um it will flag it they will not come home with it and i think if parents don't know about that that seems like an easy fix just to more publicize that it already exists it's not going to cost any more money it's not going to have any administrative headache for anybody uh and i think that will solve the issue of appearance no no no books no that doesn't solve the fact that they're not following the policy if the policy is clear why are they not following it that is my question no one has shown that it's not being followed it's very well they're there and the policy allows for them to
043be there because it's subject for something like the handmaid's tale the policy allows for that well then we need to fix the policy we don't all agree that we want to fix the policy to keep those books out we don't all agree on that well okay then that's fine we don't all have to agree we're never going to all agree but the majority of parents will agree that those books don't need to be in our library so we have to see no evidence that that is the case so you know evidence that the majority of parents think these books should not be in the libraries you actually think that that they do i haven't seen anything to the contrary oh wow just since uh we've been since our last meeting since your last meeting what
044um hold on go ahead i'm no buzzworthy person but i i've had more people reach out to me and concerned that books are going to be pulled off shelves but they do they know what books make this is what i yes and actually some of them were telling me that they've read them or i've been meaning to read that now i'm going to read that book asking if there were specific okay well they can but still you can't tell me this book's following this policy am i crazy i i was told by attorneys that if those books are in your library they are not following your policy i haven't talked to the i wasn't in that meeting that when you met with the librarian but i think the key thing is is the board policy
045in the handbook allows for a lot of subject subjectivity meaning um some books are allowed and some aren't in different places according to the librarian's discretion so some books that are in some school libraries aren't going to be the same as in other ones and they have a way to flag students accounts in power school so when they check out books parents can block books that they're aware or don't want their kids to check out but maybe we cannot give the librarian that much autonomy that they can do whatever they wish even go above and beyond school policy i don't care what their handbook says their handbook has to go along with school policies it does it quotes if they're able to just put anything in their library we want they want without they don't
046they don't put anything that they want well when when we asked jay when these books have been a problem was it mr was it jay i don't know his name but he said over here in the back and he and he gave us examples of when books have become a problem no one has wanted to get them banded to the point of getting them pulled off the shelf he told us that when it has come a problem the child or the student was given another book as an option and that solved the problem so i think like miss boyd said it doesn't seem like it's a huge problem it is to some people but my moral code is different than my husband's moral code and we're pretty much the same person and it's hard to
047get us to agree so it's going to be hard for our moral compass in here to get to something so i want a policy that allows for subjectivity because i don't i don't think anyone wants me writing their moral code for them and i don't want anyone writing my moral code for me especially when it comes to selective reading and i i would love if my kid went to the library and checked out a book like that is just something i would like for him to do but we haven't gotten there yet in his grade level so this is a very small part of the curriculum and their day that they're getting exposed to these books okay well it's obviously a huge problem if the vote if we have a tenant if we have bills
048in the legislature it's somebody has gotten the attention of somebody and it's not just two or three parents that have that have caused all this because some of these are because i think that some of the tennessee lawmakers have really uh found out what's going on just like some parents have found out what's going on and so yeah there's a lot of parents have said about it or we wouldn't have all these three bill two bills well there's actually yeah there's two of them uh that are right now in the tennessee house and if these get passed i guess though it's gone yeah we will have to do something because um like i say there's there's obviously more than just a few parents upset about this okay i was just gonna comment on that obviously
049you're right because this isn't just happening in hamilton county it's happening in every school board meeting all across the country same thing different days same topic same subject parents who have been awakened parents have been awakened they they have came to realize that this material is in the schools and i've been contacted since our last meeting just the opposite of what meg had been contacted by my constituents in my district and they're absolutely irate because they had no idea this was going on in our schools okay so now okay i would be interested to know uh as maybe just as a show of hands or alternatively show of objections does anyone object to the principle of having this documentation when the book obviously we can't fix currently every book that's currently in there but at
050least going forward for the selection process does anyone object to the principle of having some sort of documentation whether it's my bullets or different bullets of the licensed professional who brought the book in and the criteria or how the process was fault a paper trail does anyone have an objection to that and if so i would i don't know jim to it my question is okay i'm sorry to interrupt but i'd like to hear the objections first okay a question which is can our current systems support that or are we talking about having to roll out a new record so that's still not an objection i mean i'm sorry to get a little bit more snippy but we're trying to actually make some policy recommendations and put if i may so right yeah and so
051we're not here to do the budget implementation procedures that would have to happen just a minute hold on just a minute he's talking to this lady over here let them finish their conversation there was somebody um i'll just pass it on to you because i think my i i mean the roll out and how we would carry this out is very important part and i feel like you have you can take it you can go for it it was like who's who's going to roll it out who is going to cover the extra cost teachers librarians people are already you know overworked in our school system and we keep going back to that it's subjective and if a parent does not want their child to read the book then it's already set up so that
052they don't have to anyway so why add more why okay so if i may respond to that objection so my point of view as as a parent and as a teacher first of all as a parent if you're trying to build trust and i trust the professionals in this county but if you're trying to build trust i can certainly understand a parent being worried if no one's willing to sign their name on this process then as a teacher i will add if you as a librarian a teacher any other professional you are putting a book even if it's optional into the school and you're not willing to defend doing that by having your name on there you may not be in the right business i mean we we know as teachers we get questioned all
053the time it comes with the territory you have to be willing to explain or document your rationale just as you would anything else that you do in terms of education if it's documented i mean so then what's the next step because the intention let's just be real the intention for people in this room many of them is just to put the books out anyway so why are we establishing new elements to the policy new additions if that's the ultimate goal this is not about individual choice your rights as a parent it's about just completely banning books and making decisions and and telling other families what they have access to and when you hand me a list of books that's all black all lgbt it's also about erasing communities so let's just be honest about 100
054false 100 following so if i may respond to that so part of it at the yes so part of it again is professionals the licensed professionals have to be willing to stand up for this stuff i have deliberately not gotten into the weeds about which books i personally think are great and for what age levels and because i guarantee you i might surprise you with some of the people i agree with and some of the people that i don't but it doesn't matter because there's going to be a variety of per of opinions but if the professional educator licensed person isn't willing to stand up for it that doesn't look good are there people who might complain about that are you going to be if i may finish are you going to be worried that
055later somebody's come back complain about your book yeah that is going to be a worry but i think that's a necessary worry because we should all as teachers we're always supposed to be lifelong learners self-critical and if we are getting ready as a librarian or another professional put this book in and we think for a second i'm a little bit worried about having my name on this maybe you better think about it more and that's fine if you then go in and explain your thoughts and that will help you but you need that paper trail this idea that you can't question it you can't document it that's not going to build trust that's why we're here now because again some of these books i think are already on it if we're being completely honest because
056when the librarian purchases these books and then they actually um i forget the name of the process when they actually get them entered into the system logged and put into the library with their system and numbers and categorization and how you can search for them on the internet when you go to the high school websites and search all through their soros system when they enter that that is stamped with that librarian's information so as far as accountability hold on may i finish please we if we aren't interrupting please the accountability measure is already in place they as far as their reasoning i would assume if we went through this policy process and that question came up they would be able to defend as to where in their bill of rights where in the librarian's hearing
057book they felt that this was an appropriate purchase or an appropriate measure for their student i'm not when i say that i was in objection to that to me the information that you're trying to receive is predominantly there i don't think accountability for that measure is there i think the policy is very very subjective and gives them plenty of opportunity to put that there for me it's implementation in order to try and detail and ask for every single item to be sat down if that's the policy that's great but i'm curious how many media specialists you're going to hire how much time you're going to apply to this and before i could vote positively toward that i need to see the dollar signs attached to it to be honest and rhonda honestly a budget line
058i mean no no if that's going to cost money you say it's not but it will an implementation no if the librarian is going to like he said if a librarian is going to put a book on the library she should be able to list the reasons why they teach them and also there has to be more than one person know that books there i keep hearing the principle the principles i talk to today some of them don't have a clue what's in their libraries they don't have a clue they didn't have any idea that some of these books were in their libraries because they said if that's in my library they didn't even know so this is what i want to say going back to the policy who is minding the store how are
059these books getting in the library to begin with we should not be having to get people to go back over and pull books out and ban books the books shouldn't be there to begin with nobody on this committee is going to ban books we want to fix the policy so they don't get there on the front end so we don't that's my that's why we have this together because of all the when i saw some of these books i was appalled i have been here since 2004. i had no idea none that some of these books were in our library and i know a lot of the other board members didn't either that's why this committee's here they wanted us to air out some of this bring back to them what we found and i'm
060going to take them all of the stuff that we have but the very idea that there are not a lot of parents upset about this that is not true it really doesn't make any difference because this is our policy and we need to fix it tighten it up i just don't see any way that this is pay a particular attention will be paid to addressing the suitability and instructional materials that include content i just don't understand how that is as subjective as you say it is and then two a minute ago it says if parents don't want their kids to have it just let them opt out well i say if you want your kids to have it why don't you go buy it right so we're on different ends of this it shouldn't be
061up to parents to have to pick up with their child's book and read through it at home to see they should be able to trust us here again david's thing the trust the trust that parents should be able to have in the school system to be able to say i trust that when my child goes into a hamilton county school library he's not going to bring home some of the books that we have seen and some more that i heard about today i mean parents everywhere now are starting to look at books oh my god i had no idea i had no idea my child was reading this i had no idea this was there so this is what i'm saying like i say the attorneys i've talked to today said either this either you
062need to you don't really need to fix your policy that much maybe a few words here and there and add a paragraph maybe but if those books are in your library somebody's not doing their job was the school board attorney able to attend tonight i'm sorry no he was not he is doing a mock trial tonight at his high school because sigma mountain well i'll just point out and i'm not a first amendment attorney but i've done a little reading and i would just point out that there was a lawsuit filed last week in missouri over a very similar ban to what we're discussing we're not banning and it was based on based on removing well those are the ones that are that have that people have sent to me and i'm giving you the
063list i can't help what people put on these lists we've had some more lists there's a lot about [Music] is ready to defend a lawsuit over a discrimination no well this is not discriminatory this is i don't see anything just i don't talk about this i didn't see any books on the list about heterosexual relationships about any of the clubs yeah they were there there were some there yeah because some of that some of that crotch rubbing stuff was heterosexual sex yeah yeah it was right you're going all the way uh the father and the daughter i didn't really care who it was i don't care who writes the books don't even know who these authors are don't go back and look and see what color they are what gender they are you're probably showing
064what sexuality they say no it doesn't make any difference to me that's immaterial to me no that means that means i'm being biased and i don't want to be biased i just want the content of the books because the kids reading them don't care what what color the authors are here's another one no they don't yes mr thurman here's here's another book that's in a k through eight school looking for alaska by john green that actually gives a tutorial on how to give oral sex do we have proof that these books are in these libraries according to the hcde.library so in sora because it's been catalogued does not necessarily mean that that book is accessible to your child at this moment so first off you asked if it was in the library you asked if
065we had proof if it was in the library yeah okay it is in the library so someone has physically seen that copy in the library i was told two weeks ago that the hcde.library.org would verify the books that are in the library is that true or false i'm not the authority on that i'm just asking a question so according to the acde.org library website looking for alaska john green is in a k-8 school that gives a tutorial on how to perform oral sex on a toothpaste tube followed up by the act really that's what some people would think that is insane that is that is totally insane it's grooming children it's period it's well okay let me tell you i have a principal friend who made this statement the other day and she said there
066are no redeeming value educational values to these books there are none and she said but there and she said there's no evidence that there's any redeeming educational value to some of these books however there is there are tons of examples and documented cases where exposing children to this kind of material early on in their life actually affects the way they think especially the way that young boys feel about young girls if you continually have this stuff in front of them for them to read and they get an appetite for it and they read it over and over it actually changed the way that their thought process works there's documented where do we have that documented form i don't know i will ask her because there's lots of documentation i'm asking genuinely okay because when i
067looked for that kind of information i found where um images and graphic images like that are on tv or in in photographs um where that quickly changes behavior and how that affects like that's why we use visual aids in education because it it aids in so much i could not find data on how text reading that at a at a age relevant age now i get it when you're talking about if you had something incredibly explicit or graphic to a just beginning reader or or something like that very big disparity i think that that is to be said that that we're not talking about that kind of material but any type of data showing that reading text creates those kind of behavioral problems and i would like to see that that if it exists well
068if it exists i'm sure it does or this this principle would certainly not have lied about it so i will get i will ask her if she would mind me sharing her information with you i'll be glad to do that it won't be a problem okay go ahead okay um what what would you like to see change about the policy okay the policy like i said there's a couple of things that i would like to see change uh first of all i didn't realize that this that one i'm gonna have to go back to and then think about that because i didn't realize that people saw that as so subjective uh that one a line there in 25 and 26 on the on the first page i think instead of just saying for example materials
069that contain course i think that needs to be or obscene language i think the word i'm seeing needs to be put in there because some people say that's not course that's obscene something that's i've seen that's just coarse language i think both of those words need to be in there also uh the last paragraph uh the last i mean the under library collection on the line i'm just not real sure about that whole paragraph even though there's parts of that that i like because it says these books will be continually monitored um it says however there may be sensitive content contained in these books that was not previously reviewed by the school personnel there should be no books there that have not been previously reviewed by school personnel i think that needs to be taken
070out yeah and because there should be no books there because that just you talk about opening up a whole can of worms there that way you could put everything in there says well they said there would be books in here that hadn't been reviewed by school personnel i think that's why we've gotten into some of the things we have now i would take out that entire part so if you take that out would that require a review of everything that's in every classroom and every library already well that will we will change the policy and if anything in this new policy if the whatever's on the shelves does not fit into this policy that will be up to them to do that yeah it will not be up to us it will be up to
071them to do that because it's like we change every other policy like when we put no smoking in on the school grounds we had to go around and it was up to the principles in our to implement that no vaping it's up to the schools to handle that it's not up to us it's up to them we change policies they have to comply that's just the way it is and then also another paragraph at the end i think uh since we seem to be getting around by this by some of the the books that are in classrooms this is a paragraph i would like to see added at the end schools are prohibited from adding any books or other reading material to libraries or other collections without first vetting the suitability of any such materials
072for the school students under the terms of this policy and policy uh 4.403 because that will take care of any reading material that any outside people come in because another thing i would like to do is to have a different policy it will probably require a different policy i'll have to talk to the school board attorney because there are some other groups now wanting to come in and put books in and some of our classrooms and so we're going to have to have a way to uh the school board's going to have to vote on this we can't just be letting everybody come in and put any books they want on from any any groups there's lots of groups that would like to do this now that they found out that this is happening want
073to know how they can how they can come in and put books on the shelves and library so uh pretty soon we may have see you have corner libraries we have four corners in a classroom we may have one in every corner i'm not real sure what's going to happen with this but we're going to have to have a way to get a handle on this so we may have to have another policy or add to this policy okay maybe um so you wanted to i'm going to start with the first thing you said you wanted the policy to read where it's not subjective um it's objective to keep out not coarse language but obscene language no i want to add add obscene course or obscene course or obscene language and graphic violence explicit sexual
074content illegal use of drugs or alcohol so you want all those things to be very clear they're not in the books of ours in our schools well uh i think that there is maybe a little bit of leeway in there but not to the point of what we're doing i don't know should we put gross uh coarse language do we have to put another word in there to make it more clear that we're we're differentiating between harry potter and handmaid's tale what does their need to be to make sure that people understand that that they can't slip through the cracks and say oh that you're you're now violating my first amendment rights which is absolutely absurd that's just crazy we we we violated kids first amendment rights in this whole uh sure we do the
075uh yeah code of acceptable behavior i did give you all that and here it tells what students are allowed to say what they're not allowed to say is this a violation of first amendment rights i don't think so well i think they're closed saying what they can speak yeah according to the law yeah there's a lot of books inclu again including the bible that don't meet the code of acceptable behavior but um so so how i guess um what i'm really having a hard time with is knowing i get there's like the harry potters and the handmade tail and all that i get that that's a spectrum but eventually if we're gonna make a clear policy that keeps certain books off the library shelves or the classrooms then it has to be very clear and
076trying to define that line as a public is going to be very unattainable well i'm not sponsored i'm not the board lawyer but i would guess and so he can correct me uh i would guess he would say the more that our policy explicitly uses the terminology in the tennessee state code the better and you know the section in there which ms thurman gave an excerpt of last time and i brought out the whole part but where they define obscenity and harmful to minors and and things like that i think the more that we just use those terms and let the state legislature then give the definition and i i thought the definitions were pretty good is because i mentioned earlier it's talking about that balance between the work taken as a whole artistic and
077scientific value etc and i feel like it repre to me personally i think it represents a lot of what parents and educators have as a concern about are we properly balancing at the right age levels the uh the value of the work versus a as the state would say the period interest yeah and right here in uh tennessee bill 1944 here again this is just a bill it's not a law yet but i feel sure that it will be uh it talks about the uh the obscenity law i'm not sure exactly yours is a little bit different from mine but mine reads like this it says the summary of the law is this as introduced it excludes local uh excludes local education agencies public schools and employees and profit contractors of lease or public schools
078from the exemption to certain obscenity offenses of the lea public school employee or private contractor possesses obscene material that is harmful to minors on public school premises prohibits an lea or public school from making obscene materials or materials harmful to minors available to students in school libraries controlled by the lea or public school so there is obviously a standard that they feel like that we have crossed because of things just like this that people cannot even agree that pedophilia and some of these other things just shouldn't be in our libraries because who's to say what's right and who's to say what's wrong somebody has to say what's right that's what we'd have for the schools would be in our schools if we apply if we if we apply that law to obscenity and you're applying
079it to the terms that you are objectively choosing to apply the word to like outside of the law because the law says a different thing kind of what he was alluding to that it's it's threefold you can't just take a word and say it's it's this i mean if you you have sixth graders with bible in the school learning about genesis and learning about seducing a stepfather to avoid birth and talking about you know outside of marriage sexual relationships and things like that and tribal rape and that's in the bible and that's for sixth graders that's not even counting what they go up so then you're talking about supplemental materials as far as what text they're supplying for that you're talking about curriculum it applies there then you get outside of curriculum you have things
080like the odyssey macbeth um and plenty of other classical it yeah that if we apply that law okay if we apply that law the way it reads you're going to have criminal non-exempt criminal issues for teaching his you know classic texts no this this law was these these bills are necessary because groups like this say say that books like that were read aloud at the thursday school board meeting were okay if we had not gone that far these bills would not be necessary at the state level and this is this we this is what we have wrought by allowing this to continue like i said because we cannot even agree that in hamilton county that we cannot have these books that were read at last thursday's meeting that they should have never been put in
081our libraries to begin with don't care who wrote them don't know who wrote them don't know what color they are what gender they were what sexuality they were i don't care it's not important who put them in there that's what i want to know dr paris so i know a lot has been said about the handmaid's tale and the list of books can you just reiterate if i'm a parent because i i did i raised my niece with my partner and the hate u give was one of her favorite books we actually went to see angie thomas at the decatur book festival so she could get her autograph and get a picture but if there's a parent who hates that book or who thinks that it's not appropriate for their child what do they do
082they go to the school say something to the librarian or the teacher and what happens it's an alternative text so they're providing alternative text at the same rigger level and same level of standards and that applies to the handmaid's tale and any book on the multiple lists that we've been given yes and here's to say my i apologize i feel like i just need to address this bible thing that keeps coming up there is a river of redemption that runs through the bible those topics are in there you're correct but there's a river of redemption that runs through the bible and there are books not the bible that change people's lives correct you are correct the hate you give what about an well in not an opt-out such as a permission slip i mean would
083you be on board with parents having the information about the book ahead of time before their child checks it out because a lot of the students don't bring the books home they leave them in their locker they read them on study hall they may get that book out of the hixson high school library that teaches you how to masturbate and look at it in study hall so what about an opt-in so like if they want the book you send the permission slip home then if you don't want your child to be subjected to any of that material then at the beginning of the year you as a parent needs to tell the librarian please do not allow my child to check out any books that have anything to do with any type of sexual orientation
084and that is your responsibility as a parent to do that but that requires 45 000 students parents to be engaged and involved and we know that's not the case here in hamilton county or any county okay back again if i say i'm going to stick to the policy we're going to stick to the policy how do we fix this policy okay then then let's talk about okay what are your ideas if some of you want to leave the policy just like it is that's fine you can say that and if you don't want to discuss anything else it's fine you don't have to come back to another to another meeting and talk about policies if you think it's fine like it is you can let that be your your vote and i will i will
085give that to the school board if that's what you think but however if you want to change it like david gave his ideas about what he would like to see and i think he was he was spot on but david i think more what you're saying needs to go in the procedure that they have because we the the tennessee state law is going to say that it's going to have to be a procedure and not so much in the policy because the policy mentions the procedure with this that has to go with the superintendent i think those are all excellent ideas that somebody's name has to be on that and whoever's name is on that then that's who's going to have to be accountable i think a lack of accountability is the problem that a
086lot of parents have who because like that was the question i had who's who took this book and put it there and said because i really didn't know the process okay so if you have ideas that you would like to see changed enhanced taken out whatever say i've i've told you what i would like to see and this is going to be my recommendation to the board if you would like to have something if you want to take yours and mark on it and give it to me that's fine if you would like to discuss it here fine angela um comment to rebecca's point i think there's a flagler school district that kind of has a good compromise in how they create a tier system for parents uh choice and content and i think that
087it wouldn't be very hard to give a form that's informative so that all parents have that piece of information level one is open access so you're consenting to that your children have open access to anything that would be on the shelf with the with the disclaimer that something could be there i think part of that is also a cya rule to also cover the district that if something that wasn't brought in through a librarian or a teacher ended up on a shelf that also protects the school district those books should not exist they shouldn't but it also it covers the you legally that it doesn't protect the children though she's talking about the pads here of the parents giving permission so but that disclaimer is just i think a protection thing there but level two
088would give parents or guardians the ability to submit this number could be discretionary amongst how many there in this uh representation here it was up to five titles so if there were very specific titles that you knew um that you absolutely did not want your child to have access to you give those five titles level three would be um pre-approval which is kind of similar to when we were talking about like a power school or in sora that would then be noted that in order to check out material is permission based and then that would be a communication process between the parents and the family and i think that's a good compromise for both i think it gives us all the information and we all get to choose and therefore someone's choice about what should
089be taken out doesn't isn't weighed heavier then my choice also my my freedom is the same as someone else's and so if i as a parent want my child to have the freedom to read any content they can get their hands on and also bring it home and that's between me and our parenting my parenting then that exists just the same as the right for a parent who does not want this content to be read they can easily say i want to be in this different tier no one gets to speak for everyone no they don't they don't get to speak for everyone but we do have a community standard that is expected of this school system we can't like for instance one of these books talks about killing police officers a couple of these
090books talk about killing police officers shooting them laughing about it thinking it's funny okay hold on just a minute i'm talking they they think that's funny do you think it what if it was about shooting teachers is that okay a book about shooting teachers is that cool why should it be any more right to have a book on the shelf about shooting police officers than it is shooting teachers it's a little bit different when it's you and so so we have to have community standards here about things that are going to be allowed and things that are not and we have those community standards like you cannot say things and do things just anything you want just open it up and let anything i want my kids to read everything what if i wanted them
091to read about bestiality is that okay what if i wrote necrophilia they want to know what that is give them a book about it you know is that okay no it's not okay we have certain standards that we have tier two i will still ask and i was told by an attorney to ask this question of the administration if our rules are being followed how did these books get into the library if the policy i'm sorry if the policies are being followed how did these books get into the library i think would be answered hold it i'm asking him meg how did these books come into the library no haven't answered they haven't answered because either somebody's not follow following the policy because the attorneys i've talked to said the policy was very clear these
092books should not have been there now but this attorney thinks so but that's why 50 of of people in the courtroom lose an attorney is wrong every day every every trial there's an attorney that loses attorney you're right so uh so uh i'm saying that it's what gossip without the attorney present you're speaking for them and that's here i'm not it's i'm telling you the information i'm not in on trial here this is not of course i'm telling you what i was told but and okay i don't care whether you believe that whether i talk to them or not i really don't care i believe that you heard okay okay you know i believe i was told that so they told me that either this attack either these were not being followed it was not
093clear or we needed to fix them so which which one did which one of those three is it is it clear and they're not being followed it's not clear exactly exactly what here do you feel like needs to be changed to change the way you do your job i'll answer partly and i'll let becky also speak to it but the the books are selected based on the criteria from the handbook right so if there's the procedures right right so there is no there are there are standards to selection in in the handbook right so um based on the selection criteria from the reviews provided from national peer articles from things like common sense media other things that are approved by the librarians that's how the books are selected so as far as how they end
094up on the shelf towards policy it's based on the procedure set from the handbook which is based on peer-reviewed common systems used by librarians all over the country so here they come to hamilton county they go before you to the books before they go in the library you get to look at them does becky look at them the principals look at them so it's strictly the librarian that gets them and does whatever she wants to with them so there's really not a procedure because that's one of the things that says in here there's going to have to be a definite procedure i don't know if we'll have to turn it into the state or what we're going to have to do at some point but so it's basically just the library and there's one person
095basically so there's really not a group that that continually monitors these books and here it's not a group that is the responsibility of the librarian if you look at their job description it's clearly stated that that is for them to do as part of part of the job and with that these are people that are highly trained they have to have a master's degree in regards to following the policy the policy is working because we haven't had anyone come to any of our libraries to express a concern about a book now i do know i can think of maybe three librarians who have reached out to me this year saying that there was a question over a text and they solved it by having the parent come in and talk through the process that we
096have in place in a handbook and that satisfied the parent and it stopped there okay well right here in the policy it says that they will establish an administrative procedure for review and selection so the administrative procedure is the library the librarian she's she's it so there's not an administrative other than the fact that she reads the handbook and she does she picks out the books that she wants and that's pretty much the administrative procedure no she doesn't do it all by herself she or he what they do is they take recommendations from students teachers parents it does go through administration it looks differently at each school elementary middle and high are very different however there there's processes at the school to where it's more than just a librarian doing all this on their own
097now in regards to monitoring leading again that's part of their job responsibility is that they do that so what i'm hearing is this policy is not really used at all in selecting the books is that what i'm hearing it's throughout it's it lays out several different credited procedures of how to pick the book it's not telling you so it's not using this criteria here that's all it actually quotes that criteria in the handbook so you're saying that you are following then this when you pick out the books so if you are i don't see how some of these books got that's what we're there about is very subjective oh so it needs to be more clear is that i guess i just want to know what we need to do here not everyone agrees that
098we want to objectively say that's why you get to make your recommendations and other people like to get to make their recommendations about how to change the policy yeah i just have well just three things i've written down very simple little things because we're trying to make something so difficult so confusing that no one can get anything done if you all the reading material outside of the textbooks would align with the established student code of conduct we have the student code of conduct and i think this applies to all children it doesn't matter what background or anything it's fair for everyone everyone is i think this isn't all aren't all the children subjected to the same code of content of the student so if we do that if we line up the material that's coming
099in to basically align with the student code of conduct we won't have any issues because why do you want and we won't have any books because according to the student code of contact you couldn't you can't call someone a dummy or you couldn't do something like that but that means that i couldn't throw a rock in a book i couldn't call someone uh something that's not profanity or say something that's maybe slightly rude i mean i think you get into the legalities of it if there's some text in a book that does not follow the student conduct set that aside and have it specially looked at to see just how far it goes against this the code so whether or not it has any subjectivity yeah yeah somebody's going to have to do it obviously
100it's not it's being done by the librarian but obviously they're not following the the standard that we have the policy i think they've been pretty clear that they've been following it and they've had three instances this year and it didn't even have to go to the um process of repeating like i said the parents are not aware of this of what's that there's a lot of things in my child's day that i'm not aware of that's right you're absolutely right that's why that's why we think it's more important to be more transparent so the parents do know then we can all go look at the books that are chosen but another thing i want to say go see what can you also let you all talk nancy still i just want to say one other
101thing and i'm through a child most of these children are under 18. they're they cannot go into an adult bookstore they cannot why are you bringing wanting to bring the adult bookstore into the school for them there is a law against that and these are minor children and if you want your child to go get something out of an adult bookstore you can do that but i don't see why we insist insist on having this type of material in our schools i don't see what benefit if you can tell me some of the stuff that was read the other night at the school board meeting tell me how that gives hope to any child it encourages any child or any of that miss patty i think some people do think that it helps them and
102some people choose to want their kids to do if you choose to read someone is you can cherish your opinion gang raped until they are dead you kill them and then you chop their bodies up i don't see how anybody would want to read that or why you would want as a parent would want your child to read that or what the obsession is about that's in the bible as well gang rape and dismembering is in the bible as well i appreciate your suggestions did you get a chance to say yes did you yes okay that's good i i think what we're getting at here because there was this question about parent standards and again we're never in this county all going to agree what we have to think about which mrs thurman is also
103brought up which the lost brings up is is contemporary community standards and i'm sure the board lawyer would say um you know we as teachers as professionals act in loco parentis in place of the parents more than once i've had a kid scream at me you're not my father and i would always joke i'm just your temporary father till your real father or mother or guardian gets back so obviously the parent takes precedence over the teacher but the teachers and the professionals have to act like parents in the meantime so the concern is what is that community standard and the struggle of when it's optional material what is the leeway there and what isn't i think multiple people have said that the policy on the face of it uh strikes a lot of the right
104tones but then we're not all happy with how that's being implemented some people are some people aren't so i will just make one more plea to documentation to save misunderstandings after the fact the more that can be documented and stood for upfront about why something was selected it is perfectly natural for us to be having this debate it's as old as time the ancient greeks some of the philosophers were extremely skeptical of written books because you can't argue back to a book um there's nothing new about that so i understand parents concerns that we're sending our kids off to professionals we want to trust them i trust them i've worked with so many great ones i haven't all agreed with all of them but um the more again that that that rationale can be put
105to paper to argue for itself rather than appeals to authority that is what i would suggest and so some of that may fall more on dr robertson dr paris what have you some of it may fall more on the school board but uh um i just hope we all come out of this without being too much of a soapbox speech i hope we all come out of this understanding that it's we're not all going to agree but the more i believe the more we can put transparency on the process accommodate all the different facets of our community the the sounder footing our school system will be on our board will be on and and possibly the less rancor down the road so thank you david okay another thing real quick becky are these school are
106our library books online some of them all of them none of them yes all of them not all of them okay because we do have a policy and that's something else i mean if we do have the responsible use policy for uh internet and uh so some of this this is just uh some of the things that are said that i didn't make we didn't make copies of everybody i didn't get this copies made did everybody have it yes okay a safety and security of students when used uh restricting students access to materials that may be inappropriate or harmful to them utilizing technology that blocks or filters internet access for both students and adults to material that is obscene pornographic or potentially harmful to students that's something else we made since some of our library
107books are online uh we might need to incorporate this into the policy i'm going to get information about that from our uh school board attorney uh because uh some of this stuff i don't know if it does it block some of the words i would hope it does i don't know if it does or not but that's something what i would like for everyone to do okay meg oh i um i'm also on the committee that's looking at the responsible use policy and this is actually the old policy okay it is the one that's on the um on our website but it's old and the new one is the student responsible use policy um that does have similar language but this is not it okay it was never what has it been it was approved
108and never distributed i started to say i don't remember opening it i couldn't before yeah i can send it to you it went through the lawyers and everything it just was never uploaded to powerschool or distributed but was it voted on is it the news i assume so because i was told it was actually because i was going off we'll find out okay so we'll we'll find out about it and then if we get in the internet you know i've talked to the board about this because the internet block is so low and i would i would love to guide the conversation that way at some point that's not what we're here for but i would like to say that needs dire attention okay well that's that's good so thanks for that okay kathy down
109there asking questions yes i'd like to say something i think you charged us all and thank you for sending this to us uh sherry ford the library handle this is very good i i think we have something good in place i felt i didn't know it was there and i was on the school board for four years um i think it's very good and it allows parents to communicate with the librarian if they don't want their child to read a book i think there is already a system in place for this to occur um you've already answered the question about i'd like to know how many parents have contacted their school library so thank you for telling me that i think that's very important to know one of the things that i did write down
110i think we talked about concerned about books that are donated by parents or community partners the books that are actually going into classrooms that we don't know about and a simple i think a simple solution to that it would be more work on the librarians is that any book if we are concerned with those lists any books that are coming to a school need to go to the library first and that librarian the librarian has the list of books that are approved by the ala so that librarian can say these books are on an approved list no they're not these don't get to go to the classroom these do get to go to the classroom it would kind of could kind of be a check measure but that would be something that the school board
111would have to decide on there is a national standard for all libraries and we are following it people decide if they should read a book or not the tennessee library association stated that every book is not for every reader but every child should have access to the books they may want to read there is a lot of language i don't use like i grew up with four boys in my family um older than me i they were told not to curse in front of their sister we read tons of these books we were avid readers until the day my mother died when she was 93 we read books all the time i don't use that language you use it as a teachable moment with your children if they come home with a book you know
112yeah this is that's how the author is explaining himself that's not doesn't go along with the code of acceptable student behavior hate behavior because an author is writing it that doesn't mean that it can't be read in school we all have different versions of what is acceptable um uh language i hate my husband curses like a sailor he grew up in new york but that's just the way they talk i don't there's nothing wrong wrong with that we have to kind of get over the fact that we all don't talk the same way but there's a message to be learned so we can talk to teachers like that if you're from new york it's okay well i don't i don't okay so okay go ahead i don't have an issue with language quite frankly but
113did you read a book growing up about how to perform oral sex in sex k-8 the issue that i have i read it that part didn't stick out to me the whole message of the book i'm more of picking out pertinent messages that the book is giving to me as a as a reader because i like to read okay okay quit i don't know what i'm what i'm going to ask is everybody to take their their and next time we come together have your recommendations ready i'm not going to keep beating this dead horse we're either going to fix it or not so i'm going to have my recommendations ready you get your recommendations ready and we will take them to the school board and this is the way that it works uh the members
114of this committee will make recommendations either enhance or clarify or or leave it alone the policy 4.42 will take it to to uh it'll be taken to the school board but first the recommendations will be conveyed to the school board attorney scott bennett and i will get scott to look over the recommendations to check for any legal issues is there something we can do can't do whatever the board will take the information and draft a new policy if necessary with the help of legal counsel the new policy will come before the board for a first reading and then the board will kind of tweak it if it needs to be tweaked then there will be a second reading and then it will become the new policy that's the procedure that it goes yes so i
115just want to just let everybody know i brought with me some materials to let you um have a glimpse into what it is like to be a librarian and to try to choose to go through the selection process i collected for all of the books that were on that list i've collected professional reviews and you can see how long it takes to go through all of those um you're not able to read thousands and thousands of books i also included the one of the foundational um like theories about children's literature and youth literature and how how that you build those collections and it's the idea of windows and doors are windows and mirrors and that windows into other people's experiences help you develop empathy mirrors help you develop the sense that you're not alone and
116that also included the age breakdowns and the um anyway so i wanted to give you an experience of what it is like to try to be a librarian and select materials under a time crunch and with um you know limited resources and what in one person and i also wanted to talk about that what i did is i gathered them from professional reviews or unbiased professionally prepared resources and i did this i brought them because i found out after our last meeting that some of the materials that we received in our first meeting were not professional reviews they were in fact taken from an outside organization's website and copied out and distributed here as if they were unbiased materials for us to consider in our process of making decisions so i wanted to counter that
117with what i have provided for everybody so that you can get the balanced unbiased perspective of what these books why these books might be valuable thank you thank you thank you for your work so sherry what about two weeks we're just trying to work around the budget