School Book Evaluation in Bartow County: Progress.
An Update.
This group has been working for months to obtain and analyze the full list of school library books in the Bartow County School System. In September, subscribers were informed of our efforts and difficulties in receiving a list of books. In October, the School Board advised people to go to the school library websites to look up books individually, rather than provide a full list. Not long after that, a full list was provided based on a public records request that had been circulating since July.
Since that time, the list has been analyzed in detail. Thousands of books were pored through and compared to known books of concerns often present in school libraries. Many very concerning books were found that are clearly inappropriate for students and minors.
Based on this analysis, School Board staff agreed to meet with the Blog founder, Dr. David McKalip. Assurances were made that these concerns would be taken seriously and addressed.
In the interest of protecting children, at this time I am not publishing that list of concerning books. The images and text found in these books is not appropriate for public view by children and I don’t want to contribute to any harm that could occur to minors. If it ever became necessary to release this information, it will be done through a password protection method based on individual subscriber request.
Thanks to all people who have worked to insist that our Bartow County School Board take this matter seriously. I am cautiously optimistic at this stand point, but will insist on obvious and timely results.
I agree with parents monitoring what material their children are exposed to. If a parent has a problem with a particular piece of material in the library, then the school should take steps to make sure that the parents' wishes are respected and that individual student cannot check that material.
What I don't want is another parent making a decision to limit what my child has access to based upon that parent's moral code.
The material you deem objectionable, I may have no problem with and vice versa. Just because I don't want my kid reading Atlas Shrugged shouldn't mean that yours is prevented from doing so.