Can students serve on Wake book review panel without being exposed to ‘vile nonsense’?
Wake County school leaders are debating whether to have students serve on a committee that would decide on book challenges.
School administrators have proposed including students as voting members on a new review committee that would hear district-level book challenges, as well as appeals of decisions on book challenges made at individual schools.
Leaders say they want to get the input of students in the process. But they’re also concerned that including students could make the teenagers targets of people who disagree with their votes on book challenges.
“My argument, just to be clear, is not to not have student voices there,” board member Tyler Swanson said at last week’s school board policy committee meeting. “But to ensure that we do have student voices there (while) also protecting them from the nonsense.”
The inclusion of students is opposed by some of the people who are trying to get books removed from schools. They say that only adults should be involved in the process.
“Minors should not be on any review committee,” Becky Lew-Hobbs, who unsuccessfully ran for school board last year, tweeted last week. “Policy 3210 is poorly drafted and needs to be thrown out.”
School board member Monika Johnson-Hostler, the chair of the policy committee, said more discussion is needed before they decide whether to include students on this new “Central Instructional Materials Committee.”
Two-year ban on challenges
Wake is in the midst of updating its book challenge policy during a time of heated local and national debate about what books should be allowed in schools.
As of last week, parents had filed five book challenges in Wake since 2021, alleging that the books are obscene due to scenes that contain vulgar language and sexual content. All the challenges were rejected.
Parents who object to a book at a specific school file a challenge at that school. A school committee, which would not include students, would review the challenge.
Under the updated policy, appeals of school-level decisions would go to the Central Instructional Materials Committee. That committee would also handle district-level challenges of books.
Decisions made by the district committee could be appealed to the school board.
Administrators recommend that decisions be binding for two years before a new challenge against a specific book could be filed. In the interim, parents would be able to request that their child read a different book.
Student privacy concerns
The Central Instructional Materials Committee would be made up of administrators and parents. It could also include at least two students when the book being challenged is at the high school level.
The students would need parental permission to serve on the committee.
Swanson said he wants to “shelter” the student-members of the committee “from a lot of the vile nonsense” that board members have been getting about book bans.
Administrators told board members they had lengthy discussions about what level of privacy could be provided to the student-members.
School board attorney Jonathan Blumberg said it would be challenging legally to protect the identity of the students because the committee would be subject to the state’s Open Meetings Law..
Blumberg reminded the board that there is no legal requirement to have students on the committee.
“Ultimately the determination essentially is it’s very difficult to have them participate and not still be subject to public records and open records,” Drew Cook, assistant superintendent of academics, told the board.
This story was originally published June 1, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Can students serve on Wake book review panel without being exposed to ‘vile nonsense’?."
