The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights reached an agreement with a Georgia school district over a complaint the district’s library screening process was excluding books by people of color or LGBTQI+ or those that contained such characters.
The department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on Friday released a letter of its findings from its investigation of the Forsyth County school district’s decision to pull 15 books from middle school and high school shelves after parents complained about the books’ sexually explicit and LGBTQI+ content.
According to the agreement, the district, which is north of Atlanta, said it will offer “supportive measures” to students affected by the book removals and to create a working group of staff members to monitor the climate at the district’s middle and high schools.
The working group will check for harassment based on sex, race, color or national origin; the willingness to report incidents of harassment to middle and high school personnel; the perception of each middle and high school’s handling of reports and complaints of harassment; and suggestions for reducing incidents of harassment at each middle and high school and improving those schools’ responses to such reports and complaints.
According to the OCR’s letter, in the fall of 2021, the district, considered the fifth-largest in Georgia, began receiving complaints from parents and community members about access to library books that parents deemed inappropriate.
“These parents reportedly pointed out explicit sexual content in books and many also complained about LGBTQI+ subject matter,” the letter said. “Around November 2021, a parent group reportedly asked the district to shelve LGBTQI+ books separately in school libraries and to place tags on the books.” In January 2022, the district removed nine books from all school libraries indefinitely, two were removed temporarily or restricted to high schools, and four were restricted to high schools. Six of the 15 books were removed from middle schools only because they were deemed age-appropriate for high school students.
The district created a committee that over the summer of 2022 reviewed eight of the nine books that were restricted. The committee that included teachers, media specialists and parents recommended that seven of the eight books be returned to library shelves.
The OCR commended the district for rejecting suggestions to handle books in ways that would target certain groups of students and for limiting its screening process to sexually explicit material. It also commended the district for posting a statement at its school media centers that they “provide resources that reflect all students within each school community” and “If you come across a book that does not match your family’s values and/or beliefs, and you would prefer that your child does not check that book out, please discuss it with your child.”
But the OCR said the district failed by giving the impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white, leading to increased fears and possibly harassment.
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