001so good morning everyone is this working yeah the time is 8 30 and i'd like to call this special meeting of the belton independent school district board of trustees to order meeting has been duly called notice that the meeting has been posted in accordance with the texas open meetings act texas government code chapter 551 first item on the agenda is public comments i see that we have people signed up so in accordance with district policy bed local any person wishing to address the board during public comments must submit a public comment form public comments during a special meeting shall be limited to the items on the agenda in order to comply with the texas open meetings act board may not respond to comments or otherwise discuss or act upon any issues that are not posted
002on the meeting agenda each participant shall be limited to three minutes in accordance with the board's operating procedure speaking of board members in a disrespectful threatening tone is unprofessional and counterproductive to a cause we have a timer on the screen that shows you a lot of time and a sound will concur at the conclusion the first person to speak when you come to the podium please state your name and city of residence for the record so the first person to speak is tad smith and alex bruce you are on deck good morning can you hear me hello one two one two a little bit if we could should be great thank you my name is tad smith and i live here in belton first of all let me say that i recognize that each one
003of you are concerned about the well-being and the education of children or you wouldn't be on the school board and for that i thank you secondly in my years of living i've observed that there are two basic motivations for a person's decisions and subsequent actions those two motivations are fear or love when our decisions are based on fear the actions that follow are typically negative and stifle what is good true and beautiful it is said that the fear of man will prove to be a snare conversely decisions based in love bring life and hope it is said that love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth it always protects always trusts always hopes always perseveres fear or love i've come this morning to appeal to you to let love be the basis
004for your decisions please immediately pull the evil pornographic books from our libraries don't let the fear of a lawsuit or the potential actions of certain groups keep you from doing what is right some of you have said that you wouldn't want your children or grandchildren to read these books so then let your love for the children of this school district cause courage to rise up in your hearts fear or love cowardice or courage i close my remarks with the following caution but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea thank you alex bruce you are next and hillary hicklin you are on deck hello my
005name is alex bruce and i'm a resident of both temple and belton i'd like to bring to light the book banning and the rest in my opinion the restriction of the knowledge and experiences that children are not being able to have due to the restriction of these books the first thing that i would like to say is that seven of the 21 books meaning one-third of the books that are planning on being banned are lgbt books and a lot of there are a lot of youth that get a lot of community from having their experiences in books especially when they are not able to openly express themselves another thing that i would like to bring to light is that four of the 21 books are about people of color and their experiences especially with racism
006and with racism and police brutality which are both real experiences that happen in our life today and are important to have that sense of community of when things like that happen um a few of these other books are about so another one of these books is now that we're men which is talking about um combating sexism and sexual violence um which and the harmfulness the harmful expectations of masculinity and the age rating is 12 plus it's supposed to be for for people that are trying to learn and need to know these things of sexism and sexual violence which are things that happen day to day and are hard to go through um another book is bridge to terabithia which is a book that was written in the 70s and has been a part of many
007children's childhoods for years and years this was a book that i was had that i was told to read in fifth grade uh it's at an eighth grade reading level and taking this out of libraries would be counterintuitive uh due to the and the content in it has very mild and infrequent uh profanity and the child death in it but the child death is something that happens it's an awful thing that happens but it can give comfort to people that have experienced the death of a childhood friend thank you thank you hilary hicklin you are up followed by emily lantham hillary hicklin felton texas members of the board because no changes have been made to the policy i have to assume that you're moving forward as is let me first say i genuinely like this
008policy it is good and ensures that any book cannot be removed on a whim or based on one person's point of view and opinion i absolutely approve of the process including included in this policy and the policy itself for books of disputable matters such as bullying or heavy subject matter but that is not what we're talking about here and because the district continues to release public relations pieces to the community assuring that the issue was only seven books and only one school i have to assume that you are grossly uninformed despite the efforts to make the board aware of the scope and severity of the issue it is not just seven books and it is not in just one school sadly i testified at the policy as i testified at the policy meeting i've become
009aware of more books almost daily in every one of our secondary education libraries yesterday i discovered a book in one of our middle schools titled on the bright side i'm now the girlfriend of a sex god it is not my opinion but these books are clear violations of the texas penal code for these books no policy or detailed formal challenge is necessary we need a penal code committee to fast-track books alleged to violate the penal code and evaluated not by opinions but according to the code and removed from district circulation when i consider the role of the school board i think we would all agree that it's to provide a safe environment for students support educators and partner with parents with the book policy as it stands libraries are not safe for students parents are
010hold the undue burden with the policy to challenge books that are harmful to students and educators are vulnerable to the tea complaints that are sure to come consider the librarian who knowingly creates a display of books which includes sexually explicit material to minors this is grounds for a tea complaint and puts her certification in jeopardy of the 35 plus isds that have removed sexually explicit and age-inappropriate material from their schools how many have been sued in my personal research i have not found any now tell me how many children have been exposed to pornography in our schools because of the fear of the possibility of a lawsuit at our last policy meeting we heard our legal expert explain that the basis for inaction thus far hinges on a plurality scotus decision that actually does not
011hold as much weight as a majority decision and has only influenced decisions in cases where there is not solid reason for removing the materials we have the texas penal code thank you thank you emily layla followed by boyd le chiminet i want you to imagine that you were in front of every child who faces the consequences of these bands what would you say to them the children who will never gain the courage to come out to their parents the children who will never understand how to best support the lgbtq friends the children who live sheltered lives never to be exposed to these real world topics until it's far too late the religious children who grow up thinking that they are broken because nothing has ever challenged the ideals that they've been taught lgbtq youth are
012four more times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers more than 1.8 million lgbtq youth seriously considered suicide each year in this u.s those who experience the principal rejection of their parents are eight times more likely to report attempting suicide and six times more likely to report high levels of depression these children are not more prone to suicidal tendencies simply because they are queer but rather how they are mistreated by their classmates teachers and family on top of the stigmatization that they face from society growing up with this the idea that you as a person are fundamentally broken or wrong causes deep rooted mental issues within these children i ask you do you want to be responsible for these statistics could you look yourself in the mirror every day knowing that your actions could
013kill a child i hear many of you sit here and cry think of the children thinking you are protecting us yet the very children that you speak of protecting are here today speaking out against you are you afraid that exposure to queerness will turn your child gay are you afraid that it will help your child realize and accept the fact that they are already queer these books give us a way to see ourselves and others in a way that others could not possibly because when representation matters people feel like they matter thank you thank you next is boyd gemini with isabella kaepernick on deck my name is boyd le chaminant belton texas and i appreciate this opportunity and i want to talk about two different families i know them very well both of them have
014daughters 15 to 16 years old the first one her mother is monitors her watches her cell phone watches the clothes that she wears the television program she watches and she went into high school as a freshman this first time and one of the big things about in high school is that's what you're going to see what you've invested in this child that's going to make a difference and she put it in and the peer pressure is really great in high school and to see her come back and not fall into that peer pressure was amazing to me so garbage in garbage out so they put good in goods going to come out the second girl not so lucky she had parents that didn't pay any attention to her and she ended up in the foster
015care system and we don't know everything that took place but she ended up with sexual abuse in her life from those that were to watch over her she was finally adopted by parents that are exactly like the the first that i told you about they are watching over this monitoring her but she is a different person and it is a nightmare trying to bring her down to the level to where she can even be in school without being kicked out very disobedient very angry all the things that has to do with his sexual abuse which i have read some of those books that are in the public or in the high school libraries and it's as though they are leading them and this is a normal thing so we don't want to put any more
016of that into this that makes sense to you so in their attempt to try to do this she'd been kicked out of school several times i just want to bring us some key words it's called deposit what you deposit into these children is what's going to come out of them and if you monitor them then you will know exactly what's going on and you need to put the right and wrong and these books that are in these libraries is rather they can be there or not we need to get them out and there's a potential in every child that goes into this high school and it's our responsibility as parents and grandparents to teach them the right thing and it's your responsibility to help us to get this information that is like a computer garbage
017in and garbage out and i just want you to know that we are here to join forces with you and not to have division the unity thank you thank you last up is isabella snaptic sorry if i butchered that last name you honestly got it on the last at sapnik but close enough um my name is izzy and i am a resident of temple but i go to the belton school district and as much as i would love to talk about my own experiences with books some of those on the list to be banned among our bisd libraries most of my own statements and beliefs have been made by my peers who spoke today instead i would like to compare the banning of books in a communist country in the 70s that my dad grew
018up in to our 21st century technologically advanced town my bro my father was born and raised in poland under the communist bloc he lived as many people imagine one would live in a country so heavily controlled by their government with little money and food much little freedom but he describes his experiences with books as something that gave him freedom he was able to escape into a narrative that had many stories of fun just imagination filled with it as i told him about this book man last night because i was extremely upset about it he was amazed he thought in a place that was so filled with freedom as he didn't experience that growing up we would have such a harsh ban he told me that he had no band the only band in these communist
019countries were books that spoke out against communism blatantly he was able to get bridges to terabithia um that was made in the 70s this is the 70s i'm talking about in books as an australian family member sent a letter to him speaking of this book he actually stole money from his parents to go to the public library in his little town to get this book and when he read it it really brought him to a world full of love and imagination in a place that he wasn't able to experience out in a world that the government so heavily controlled when i told him that this was one of the books that was being planned on not having children not having access to immediately in their libraries he was amazed he was amazed that um the
020maturity level was seen seemed too high for children of middle school or high school ages as all it discusses at the very last three pages was in a like witchcraft in a way that was just the imagination it wasn't actually witchcraft and also there was a child's death in it but he made a statement about how at a young age starting in kindergarten we learned about events such as 9 11 or a lot of terrorist attacks where people die that's not too mature for us but however one child dying in a book was deemed too mature for a lot of libraries and people of this town i just wanted to bring a light to the fact that in a country so controlled they were able to have books that are being planned to be banned
021now thank you very much next item on the agenda is policy committee report dr smith i'll turn that over to mr alkozer and our policy committee to do a review of our last meeting thank you dr smith just one comment about the investments policy uh that was in in line with um what tasby had reviewed for us and i think we changed three words in there nothing nothing of any substance it was more for clarification purposes so we didn't have a whole lot of discussion about that and incidentally this was the meeting that was held on september the 6th most of our most of our meeting uh was addressing ef local of course ef local this meeting was it was was a culmination of a lot of meetings that took place a lot of discussion
022um and i know in our packet today it says that we started this back in april actually it started back in last fall and if you'll recall we had someone come speak to us i think it was by it was virtually we had an expert talk to us about what the law is as it relates to first amendment rights and then of course governor abbott wrote his letter to tea i believe in november of last year and then tea responded with a model policy i believe in dr smith was april or may april of this year and then after that tasby came out with its policy with its guideline i believe it was right before school was out right right around that time so we've been having discussions uh going back to the fall about
023essentially about ef local and the meeting that we had uh september the 6th was our first reading of the policy that was brought to us by dr love smith and she's going to speak to us uh here this morning and and go go through that policy with us i'm sure there'll be some questions about that but one of the things that i want to stress to you is that we also had a discussion about ef legal and i want to read a couple of sentences to you sentences to you about ef legal or that's in the if legal that you need to know about because we discussed it in just a second here now this is this is the legal policy that we have in place right now that's not something that we draft that
024comes from austin and of course you know there's a federal flavor to it because there's actually a u.s supreme court decision that's mentioned in this in this particular policy and an ef local when it addresses removal of library materials the the ef local states as follows students first amendment rights were implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library a district shall not remove materials from a library for the purpose of denying students access to ideas with which the district disagrees now one of the things that we've learned through this process through legal counsel is that when there are legal challenges the legal challenges stem from primarily the process and how strong your policy is so if you've got a weak policy then you've got a problem because if your district's
025policy is challenged you have a significant chance of losing that legal battle and these legal legal battles are very very very expensive you can tell for just from the comments that we've had today that that people in our district are on on both ends of the spectrum okay um that's just the way it is all right so what what we did and incidentally ef local uh has been the policy of this district for many many years right so when we looked at uh ef local we looked at the process that was in ef local and we thought we need to improve this we looked at what other districts have done uh we took pieces from the um from the model that the tea had provided us and uh we've talked about what we think that
026our local district wants okay um i think that in reviewing this policy course you can't draft the policy that's going to please everyone all right but i think we have a policy that addresses the concerns that have been brought to us about certain books and i want to stress to you that we've included parts of the of the model policy that was promulgated by tea and we've added a definition of harmful material which is in the penal code 43.24 a2 and obscene material which is uh in 43.21 a1 of the penal code and when you hear dr love smith talk about this uh she will mention to you that if there are uh if it's brought to the attention uh through the process that we've that we've outlined in this policy that there is material
027that potentially violates these these one one or both of these provisions that that material can be removed where a child does not have access to that unless there's parental consent and then that material will go through the process and then ultimately i mean obviously if it's removed it's removed but at least at least a child is denied access to that material unless a parent specifically allows the child to have access to that material we thought that was very important i think it's a good provision i think it addresses a lot of concerns for folks the other thing about the model policies the model policy it is an onerous burden that that policy puts on districts because we simply do not have the resources to read every book that that's put on the shelf it's just
028it just can't happen okay there is a limitation as to the number of books that a committee is going to review if it goes up through the appellate process uh ultimately if there's an appeal it ends up in a at a level two and ultimately of course it can end up with a level three um the other thing that that we discussed is that and i think janet had brought has stressed this at one of our meetings is that she wanted an informal process to be done so for example if if you have a student at belton high school and the parent comes and talks to the principal and says look i have a problem with this particular book uh what are we going to do about it so the the principle is to talk
029to the parent tell the parents look this is this is how we do things um you know maybe we can work something out um you don't have to keep going through this process if you want to simply deny access of this book to your child then we'll do that and and the process ends there okay understanding though that there could be there could be one parent that doesn't want uh their child to have access to a certain material or a certain book but there may be a hundred other parents that may want that so we have to be very careful in that maybe one parent and i think jeff even stressed this in a in a video that that he had uh put out discussing this there may be one parent that doesn't want their
030child to have access to a certain book but there may be a hundred other parents that say no i want my kid to read that book or have access to that book so there's competing interests here okay but in short i think the policy is i think the process in the policy is strong i think i think at least according to legal counsel i think there's something that would pass legal muster um it does provide an appeal process and it does provide a process by which parents and ultimately parents have control okay every single title that is in our library in this district parents can look it up so if there's 400 books that they read you know some article that came out on the internet and they said well there's 400 titles here that
031your child shouldn't have access to well go on there and look and if you don't want your child to have access to them all you have to do is call the library librarian for that particular campus and say look i don't want my kid to have access to this it is that simple okay and if you want to take it further well the policy allows you to take it further okay uh and i want to stress to you again and and and dr love smith will mention this about the the penal code provisions that are mentioned in the in the tea policy those penal code provisions are are in our policy and we've and and we're going to adopt those if we if we vote today um in our as our second reading today uh
032i think it's important to have that um and lastly there are a couple of exhibits one for um efa and an efb there are some exhibits that a the complainant would have to fill out and point out to uh to the district what parts of the material you consider to be either obscene uh or if they're inappropriate for whatever reason you have a right to do that you can point that out and and there needs to be that process in place because otherwise if if you didn't then it's going to lend an opportunity for abuse if someone says look i want these 400 books removed well i mean what's wrong with them well i don't know i just heard they were bad okay so we can't we can't have that all right um so we
033have to balance a lot of interest here uh to include the the district's ability to even review these things okay um so i think that after dr love smith gets done with her presentation if we have any additional questions um i think we should ask him because this is this is something that uh is very important to to all of us okay it's important to our district it's been something long overdue um and we've tried to do the best we can in terms of pushing this thing through so uh today's the day that we need to come together ask questions and really discuss it um janet you and chris want to add anything to that that we can do it now yes i'm sorry that the students left because i wanted to be able to
034address some of the things that they're concerned about um you know one of the the battles that we've had from the beginning of this whole situation is misinformation on both sides it's been difficult to rein some of that in and a lot of that is because people want to believe a certain thing is happening and that's not what's happening what i can tell you is that we are weighing very thoughtfully and very intentionally first amendment rights with the texas penal code and trying to make sure that we do the fairest and most just thing we can do to give parents rights access to students on varied topics which our district has always allowed and will always allow from every background and walk of life but also protect children from vulgar or harmful or obscene material
035we will not break the law we will not ban books indiscriminately we will make sure children are protected we're going to do what's right and i do believe that this policy is the fairest thing we can possibly come up with also considering and always remembering what manual said parents have the bottom line choice they've always had the bottom line choice and they can get in there right now today and tell the librarian all the books you do not want your child to have access to even if this process moves slowly and you think it should go quicker you still have a right as a parent to not let your children read those books i think that's all i've got to say chris yeah i'm also a little disappointed the students left but um i think
036it's important that this policy isn't actually banning any book but it's also not keeping any book in the library right this policy is a framework right that allows for the appropriate review of material right either library material or instructional material between the two we did hear some some comments and concerns in the committee meeting around why is it that we have to review a material in its entirety why is it that we have to put why is it that we have to have a form right that you see on here it's a you know two-page form the penal code does lay out a requirement to take the work at its whole and so that's it at the top of 43.21 uh 1a you got to you have to review the material as a whole and
037so the requirement to have the form right is is to really ensure the robustness of the process so that if a material is is by the committee is deemed to be excluded or if the material is deemed to stay in what that form allows us to do is to document the justification so that we have something that we can stand on for better or worse right this isn't on either side of this thing right but it's to give us the it is to give us what we need to keep ourselves from from death by whiplash right like what we can't do is have a you know have what we don't want to do is have a decision that gets made as we go through this process that then you know gets turned out you know
038get get gets overturned one way or the other and then you know a year later it gets overturned the other like we can't do the whiplash thing right we have to we have to have a process in place that will stand and that will provide stability based around that um based around that decision and i do think what we've put in here does bring the best of the tea model policy the parts that are achievable to actually implement it does bring the best of the tasby policy and it does bring local flavor uh to what we have um and so i you know maybe we talk more when after dr love smith's presentation but um i think we've hit a lot of the but we've got a framework in place that allows the concerns to
039be addressed all through the process um and in particular you know the piece of it where um at the top of page five of six of efb local right i mean if a material is harmful you know as deemed by the penal code in a materialism scene as deemed by the penal code we do have the ability to pull that upon review and pull i mean off to the side with requiring parental consent right so that it is not available um and so i i think that's a good provision to have in here so so i think the framework that we've laid out before you really does address a lot of the questions and concerns that have been out there so go ahead uh and one more thing um some of the books that the
040students mentioned i just i do want to say that we don't have a list of those books that are being they're up for banning that's that is not not on the table at this moment we there's a few uh books of concern that some citizens have come forward with there are a couple few parents have come forward with um that that could be challenged but some of the books mentioned here are not not on that list i think there may have been some confusion that we are we're making a decision today to ban all these books and that is certainly not what we're doing i don't want you to think that's what we're doing please make sure your friends understand that we are we are here to be fair um to students as well and
041chris i want to reiterate something that you mentioned um when we have these forms that you have to fill these exhibits that exhibit provides us with a with a basis for being able to defend a challenge in other words if a book goes through the process and it gets removed from the shelf and then some group comes in here and files suit against this district then we have a sound policy in place because the person who challenged the book was thorough and it shows that that the book was not removed and by some sort of arbitrary uh decision that was made along the lines of just simply pulling the thing off the shelf okay um so that's what the that's what the exhibit is there for is to is to allow the individual to provide
042us with the evidence that's needed to sustain a challenge um and and and someone says well i don't want to have to go through that well if you're saying that this book is inappropriate and you haven't even looked at it then how do you know it's inappropriate okay so um but at the end of the day though it also helps it helps helps us as a district to be able to sustain a challenge if if need be in the future which is incredibly important in this process so i don't think i have anything else to say other than we'll wait for dr love smith unless anyone else has any comments or questions if i could just say i appreciate our policy committee uh very much you have gone through this with a deliberate intensity to
043come up with the best policy for the school district you've done it by doing research you've done it by looking at sample and model policies you've done it by gathering guidance from legal counsel in in the role of a trustee i can't ask for anything more and so i appreciate our policy committee extremely because i think you are doing your best to make sure that we're crossing our eyes they're dotting our eyes and crossing our teeth i got to drink more coffee and dot in our eyes and cross in our t's but also that you're representing the over 13 000 students and families that we serve in belton isd so thank you for your work or melissa there's two policies there are um i guess dr love smith is here so we'll go with her
044first so i think we'll go i think you're asking move item five up next right and we'll do four afterwards before no no i didn't no i didn't see dr lo smith no we started we're i'm sorry i didn't see dr golden no melissa lafferty is doing uh number go ahead sorry my mind's on books right now okay i think jeff would like you to come on up melissa melissa you're going to talk to us about books no i'm just kidding sure i was going to let love smith present the investment policy okay all right good morning this is basically the second read to our local investment policy which is cda local and tasby has made just two small changes to that policy and their small revisions and the first revision is basically just adding
045a reference to the policy bdae which is hard for me to say for some reason but that policy addresses the collateralization of bank deposits that exceed the fdi's c insurance coverage which is a requirement for us on our bank deposits the second revision is just a small clarification in language that says basically that the board reviews not necessarily adopts the investment policy and strategy so it's not really an adoption you're reviewing that investment policy and once you have reviewed that investment policy you've been provided basically a a document in the form of a resolution which is the written documentation that you have indeed reviewed the investment policy in accordance with the public funds investment act and basically that resolution notes if there's any changes made really no significant changes in strategies or anything like that
046we're still basically sitting at about a weighted average maturity of one year in the overall portfolio which gives us a very liquid investments so that we're able to operate and then of course the primary goal of our investment policy is the safety of principal of course liquidity so we can pay the bills and then maximizing our financial returns those are really just all the changes to that investment laws any questions no okay so do we have a motion to accept the revision to cda local as presented mr al kosar mr taggart all right all those in favor all right thank you that passes unanimously now we'll get on to the next item next item consider discussing appropriate action regarding the following on second reading of efb local and structural resources library materials efb exhibit and
047structural resources library materials efa local instructional resources and efa instructional resources there now we got it right good morning i do want to bring to you today four policies for consideration many of the things i had planned to say were said by the policy committee members and i do echo dr smith's sentiments and and thank you for a deep thorough study of these policies it has taken time but it was time spent to do the right work and it was a great partnership and i do thank you as well so i won't repeat everything but what i will say is that yes we have studied the policies specifically beginning in april there was work done prior to that in the fall our original policy is e f local and e f local combines instructional materials
048and library materials and throughout our study and throughout and with our discussions and then also with the presentation of some tasby policies we chose to go with a route that would remove ef local and replace it with two separate policies one that would specifically address library materials that would be efb and one that would specifically address instructional materials and that would be efa tasby gave us an option we could have continued with a combined policy but as we discussed it we felt like there's differences in those two and then it would be best served to have separate policies we also decided to present different exhibits that would go with each of those policies allowing us to specify the questions that would be addressed for library materials versus those for instructional materials i'll first talk about
049efb that is an address in respect of our library materials and just to um in support of what the committee has already said spent quite a bit of time first focused on parental involvement and making sure that first and foremost we do have a policy that formally recognizes a practice we've had in the past and that is that parents have the ultimate right for what their child reads and while the policy does not specifically address the how of that we've put in place additional supports access publicly to our libraries on every campus so you can see the books in them and what the summary of those books are as well as individual access to parents to see what their child specifically has read and is checked out and that's in support of this policy and
050it's really important that that we know this policy is founded on a relationship with parents for what their child can read we specifically addressed and discussed selection material and we recognize in this policy the selection criteria that will be used not only for how we move to put put books in our libraries as well as what we look at if a book is challenged a book is only banned in a process if that's what the challenge committee or reconsideration committee considers as the option so it's not pre-banned in the first place i think sometimes that language gets interchanged a book is challenged meaning someone has a concern with it so we have specific criteria in our selection process for that then when a book is challenged that means someone does feel like even though there's
051been selection criteria there's a book that they have specific concerns with we have two very specific processes in place for that the first is informal because again we will sit down with the complaint and talk through that book why that book might have been there how long that book has been there and why it was chosen and we do that at the campus level if it's a parent so we'll encourage them to start with their principal if it's a community member one of our district representatives will sit down and meet with them and talk through through their concerns if it is a parent then the policy specifically will address again that that option to restrict that book for their child they have that process that option prior to an informal process but if they're still
052questions and they want to informally sit down and talk with someone then we certainly will offer that and then if they are wanting to restrict access to beyond their child beyond what their control is then we will go into a formal reconsideration process that formal we can reconsider preparation process we have in place will ensure that there is a campus administrator teacher parent on that committee as well as any other additional members that need to be there it has a five person minimum but that is a minimum so if there needs to be additional perspectives we will add that however we do want to stay at an odd number from within that process we will ask any committee member to review exhibit b as part of this policy and it's outlined for everyone to see
053what the committee will discuss they'll come up with their own individual consideration based on having read the book in its entirety and then from there they will make a decision through vote as to whether the book will stay in the library will be moved to a different grade level so example of that could be a middle school might go to a high school elementary could go to a middle school or the book will be returned during that process before it goes to formal consideration if the book is challenged in it in the informal process the the complaint does want to move it to formal there will be an opportunity for a district administrator a district librarian and a campus administrator to review the book if it is claimed to be in violation of the penal
054code if if they see reasonableness for for that potential potential violation the book will be restricted to having access only for parent permission otherwise the book does stay in within access to all students until it is finalized through a process um if a book is um challenged and removed from a library or if it's returned to a library so either way if a book goes through a challenge formal challenge process at the end of that process that book cannot be challenged for up for five years so we discussed that and what would be the appropriateness we've seen anything from two years to never being reconsidered and we felt like five years was a was a place where where we would recommend um and then then it can be reconsidered just one that is the the
055overall of efb i do want to point out the exhibit a for efb library materials is specifically the form that a complaint would fill out so we've made the questions public by putting in an exhibit so that everyone can see those will be the questions that a complainant would respond to with um specificity needing to be provided and where their concerns are so that so that um the committee upon reviewing the challenge pro will see that exhibit and truly understand where the complaint is coming from with specific pages and quotes exhibit b as i mentioned earlier will be the form that the committee uses from there we are also then proposing very similar policy for efa instructional materials that specifically addresses instructional materials the selection criterion answer questions are not um as ex as extensive
056as those in the library materials but follow the same process in addition the process follows the same we'll have an informal committee a formal committee and then a challenge of of over five years in an instructional materials the change would be five years before it can be reconsidered or if the materials and goes back for a state adoption so if there is a concern with a passage in a math book and we go through the process but in two years the state process reviews all math materials again then we would obviously be less than our five year process and we'll go through follow a state process and that just varies depending on some instructional materials go through a state process and some do not again with exhibit with um policy a and instructional materials it
057will also have the same two exhibits exhibit a is for the complainant and exhibit b is for the committee those are the the policies that we're bringing forward today after um again much discussion with our through our policy committee and our study um our study included policies from other districts the tea model and then the tasby proposals board i want to add one thing on there i know it's not common that we adopt exhibits you don't adopt exhibits with every policy these policies uh required some forms and that is why we did it just like this so there's a corresponding exhibit for both of the policies that deanna mentioned and both of those exhibits were heavily weighed in on from our board representation on the policy committee so there's a specific reason that we are
058bringing this to you like this today yeah so on that point right we were very intentional about putting these exhibits in the policy because if they're in the policy these these these exhibits cannot change without us so that that that's the reason really for that exception right um you know most you know usually something like this might be included in an administrative regulation or something like that but we were explicit that we wanted to make sure that we knew what these forms were and that you know a change would have to come through this body i do just want to add to that in order to be respectful of how often we do come on those both committees the only thing that we left open for change is the checklist from belton isd campuses so
059as we add a campus we will be able to add that name onto the form without coming back so just just so you know we did do that but that is the only area in which we could change without coming back to the board all right opening up the questions start with mrs mcdonald i don't have a question just have a comment really want to thank the policy committee you all are very been very thoughtful and intentional in your processes i really want to thank our legal counsel i know this has not been easy i've listened to you all today and i couldn't be more proud of the things that you all have done today so thank you sure yeah um you know i said a lot earlier um but i think just to clear
060up a couple things right so we have had a policy in place for almost 30 years or more and so this is a revision to what we had um when this topic really started to heat up last fall last spring and we had materials start to go through the process that we had we found holes they were holes right it was not a good process it was not a process that would stand up to the test of time and that's really what started us down this path you will you might have heard comments that these materials are in the library and able to be checked out by students and and that they've been in the library and able to be checked out the students the entire time you've heard comments that make it sound like
061there's hundreds of materials in our libraries um that fall into the penal code categories and i got to tell you that like that's not true um and so when these materials when the when the most controversial of the materials came up um is when we started going down the path of can we pull a material can we sideline the material the language you write sideline is maybe feels like a better term write a more accurate term can we sideline the material um until you know pending parent approval right like that we put that in place unfortunately the policy that we had at the time didn't really didn't really say we could do that right and so um so i think there's been some misconception that you know this material has been out in the libraries
062the most controversial of the material has been out in libraries and available that's just not the case but what we've done now is codify right what the right thing to do was uh what we believe the right thing to do was at the policy level and not at the administrative regulation level right which is i think really where that decision was made last fall and last spring um and so i just you know i don't know when i sit here and and feel like i get punched in the face for months after months and months and and and some of the folks who are making the comments know full well that the material is not in the library available for checkout by general student it just doesn't sit right and so i want you you
063want you all to know sort of what some of that history is that's leading to this policy i'll just be real quick um just want to echo the sentiment of the thanks to the policy committee and to dr smith and dr um love smith good gracious i need more coffee too um i i don't have questions because i feel like y'all have kept us well informed very well informed over the last several months that y'all been studying this um and so i i think when i've read through this policy i think it's fair like what janet has said it's fair it's thoughtful and when i when i say thoughtful you've thought about students you've thought about parents you've thought about our community and our values and beliefs and i think it's comprehensive and like you
064said uh when we go through this process we have something to stand on if we do end up needing to have something removed and so i think it's great and i think what i appreciate most is that parents are highlighted all over this that especially there's a line in there what says the ultimate decision lies with the parents on what they want their students to read or not read and and the fact that we've also we've also been able to provide access to any person whether you live in our district or not you have access to what we have at our libraries and i've really appreciated that because i've utilized that myself for my own kids and so i'm thankful for that i think that that you i think i'm proud of the work that's
065been done and so again just appreciate policy committee i know y'all done the most of the work here and i've done a really great job well when you're last everybody's already said all the good stuff so i can't follow what you guys have said and say anything better i'm proud of you guys but i'm glad we're here it's time i do want to make a special thank you to dr love smith you have really taken it on the chin in this and i pray for you i pray for all of us but i pray for you i know this has been really difficult you're still going to be at the forefront of this it's not that but at least now we're moving forward in a positive direction but i want to tell you how much
066i appreciate what you've done for all of us dr smith your team i trust you guys you guys represent our district in a way that i'm proud of every day i'm glad to be the part of the team of eight so i'm glad but i'm glad we're here well i'm actually technically last so i'm the one who has nothing left to say except for um what everybody has already said a big thank you what a balance you had to strike and it's hard you through this entire thing you put parents first and i think that that is something that belton stands next to it's the parents it's the kids it's the community but as i told somebody the other day even with all that you know the first amendment exists not to protect the speech
067that i like but the speech that i don't like and you struck such a balance and i think what's really important in this the way that y'all crafted this so much of the work that we do is to go forward when none of us are sitting up here anymore and you crafted a policy that i think i really believe that for the future coming um it's drafted the next boards that come on and and i hate to put it this way but if you were to get an activist board that wanted to start banning books who were doing no there's a policy in place and that is so women i'm not a big policy process person but that policy protects the kids it protects the parents it protects everybody involved it's fair and what a
068balance y'all struck you know they had teams of lawyers at tea put together their policy and i read through as much of it as i could i can say this you know we had two lawyers mr al kosar and our council that helped draft this we had two i'm pretty sure ta had many more than that i think this is so much more superior than what was handed down by the state i think that it respects parents it respects the first amendment and just thank you so with that do we have a motion to approve the replacement of ef local with efa local efa exhibit efb local and efb exhibit as presented miss mcdonald miss bass all in favor all right that passes unanimously thank you very much there being no further business