School Board Refines “Sexually Explicit” Policy

School Board Refines “Sexually Explicit” Policy
A second month of deliberation revises superintendent's draft, which still lacks board consensus

(Local residents attend the LCS School Board meeting on November 9, 2023. Source: The Spectator)

Officials with Lexington City Schools (LCS) continued their discussion on Tuesday, November 9 concerning a new policy that outlines the process to review and potentially remove books and material deemed “sexually explicit.”

During that monthly LCS School Board meeting, Superintendent Rebecca Walters presented her second draft of various policy changes that specify who can submit a “Request for Reconsideration” and whether contested material “may remain in use” during the reconsideration process.

These revisions follow the initial draft presented by Walters at the October 3 board meeting, which received a mixture of support and opposition from the nearly 100 parents, educators, and local residents who attended.

Attendance at the October 3 meeting, however, was abnormally high as both progressive and conservative organizations in Rockbridge County rallied supporters to attend after Lizzy Braman submitted an open letter to the board on September 10.

Braman, a local elementary school teacher and mother of seven, had urged the board to remove a controversial, award-winning graphic novel – Kiss Number 8 — from Lylburn Downing Middle School (LDMS) for content she believed was not only anti-Christian but sexually “graphic and degrading…with complete disregard for the value of any child’s innocence.”

Critics of Braman’s letter, however, asserted that the book was not sexually explicit or anti-Christian, and that a parent’s view should not override the professional opinion of the LDMS librarian.

Around 25 people attended the November 7 meeting, and of the six people who spoke during the Public Comment section, only one expressed support for the removal of Kiss Number 8. Neither Braman nor her husband attended.

“I would ask,” said LDMS Librarian Theresa Bridge, “that the book Kiss Number 8 be reconsidered using the review committee per your own school board policy, which was not followed during any of this.”

(Theresa Bridge (right) addresses the LCS school board during the November 7 Public Comment section. Source: The Spectator)

Bridge also critiqued LCS officials for not consulting her while drafting these new policies “until Wednesday of last week,” and for ignoring the “library collection development and selection policy” she made last year.

“I was repeatedly told by the administration that they did not agree with everything I included” in the policy, Bridge continued. “Had that policy been in place, our school system would not be facing the onslaught of public commentary into how books are selected for our school libraries.”

Bridge said that “there are approximately 25 books currently being withheld by the administration for no reason other than they were listed on a political party’s poster.”

Furthermore, she said that “I have had over 100 resources to add [to the library collection] that students have been continuously asking for,” but due to a September directive to temporarily cease adding new material, “I do not feel I have been adequately permitted to do my most basic job as a librarian.”

Tinni Sen, an economics professor at Virginia Military Institute (VMI), said that “education is really under attack in our nation,” and urged the board to “please have the librarians make the decisions” about what content is appropriate for their library.

Rockbridge resident Hugh Henderson, meanwhile, said that the “October 3rd book policy drafts were impressive in the scope of their practical detail and power to safeguard children from age-inappropriate books regarding explicit sexual content.”

He then transitioned into a general rebuke of LGBTQ content. “There is another issue just as harmful to children, if not more: namely, the persuasion of young children, ages four-to-ten, to model LGBTQ+ behavior,” Henderson continued. “Should the next draft protocol also defer the teaching of gender fluidity, alternate sexual lifestyles, and transgenderism to children until they are past the sixth grade or later?”

Superintendent Walters clarified in her report that the phrase “excessively graphic, vulgar, obscene, or violent” had been removed as parameters used to prohibit material. Board members had debated the subjective nature of this classification during the October 3 meeting.

While Professor Chris Gavaler commended the board for their revision efforts during Public Comment, he emphasized “the need…[for] very clear terms and very clear definitions.”

“My sense for the policy right now is a tendency to want to avoid the real specificity,” Gavaler said, “and I think that’s a problem because … if a policy is open to interpretation with subjective adjectives,” the policy’s meaning might change from one administration to another.

Walters also introduced a section that describes who may file complaints against instructional and library materials. Complainants must now be a resident of the City of Lexington, “a parent/guardian with a child enrolled in the school,” or an LCS employee “who has professional responsibilities within the school.”

Kimberly Anderson, another Lexingtonian, told the board, “I really appreciate the way that you have limited who can file a complaint in the first place.” She did, however, state that all complaints should go directly to the review committee and not the principal and teacher, as this causes what she calls “an extreme power imbalance.” Anderson continued, “More eyes need to be on the decision making process.”

Board members spent nearly ten minutes debating another revision to the public complaints policy (KLB-IM/LM), which Walters thoroughly outlined at the previous meeting. The second draft “[a]dded a statement that the challenged instructional [or library] material may remain in use unless the potential harm from the material outweighs the educational benefits.”

Board member Sandra Hayslette questioned the subjectiveness of that determination, which the superintendent and school principal jointly decide upon review. Hayslette also stated that “pulling a book as a potential harm does kinda reveal a hand in what you think of the materials” and that “the big concern is that if something is pulled while it’s considered, it takes a long time to be considered, so it’s actually just being pulled.”