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Escambia Schools Parents Can Choose Student Access Restrictions For School Library Books
April 26, 2023
Parents of students in Escambia County Public Schools will soon be able to fill out a form specifying what type of books their student can check out of the library.
The move comes as about 190 books have been challenged and a handful have been banned from school libraries.
The library access form will be available in the school district’s Focus Parent Portal on May 1, and it will allow parents to choose their student’s level of access to library collections.
If parents decide that unlimited access is best for their child, they need not fill out the form. The default for all students is unlimited, unless a parent makes another choice.
With unlimited access, students will have “full access to check out grade and age appropriate books that are available at their grade (elementary, middle, high) school library to include same grade level inter library loan as well as classroom libraries”.
Other options are:
- Limited: Students may check out books from the library media center, but there is content that a parent would like their student to not have access to in the library media center including the classroom library.
- No Access: Students are not permitted to check books out of the library media center or use classroom library books.
If a parent chooses “limited” on the form, they will be able to specify which type books they do not want their child to check out.
NorthEscambia.com file photo.
Comments
12 Responses to “Escambia Schools Parents Can Choose Student Access Restrictions For School Library Books”
@mnon
This isn’t a conspiracy to “out” conservatives. It’s common sense.
If you removed every book from the library that could potentially offend someone, you would be left with nothing but empty shelves.
If you don’t want your kid to read books that contain black people? Or women? Or magic? Or penguins? Then feel free to either tell your kid that they are not allowed to go to the school library, or fill out the form so the librarian knows what you do/don’t consider “offensive”.
Just remember parents: whatever books are banned, your kids can likely find online for free one way or another. But keep up that pointless culture war, I guess.
This is so funny and so typical.. instead of putting the 190 books on a special list and them being off limits unless a parent signs off on them. They want to make everyone NOT wanting their kid to read that material sign papers. You know why? They will know who all the conservatives are to target.. and I’m sure the books confined to a media center your kid can pick out is right in the middle of the room as to make a spectacle of the child who can’t check out the sexualized books.. kids pick on each other for anything, this is just one more set up for a kid to get picked on and this time by primarily liberals, you watch and see.
There’s free speech in America, and calling books garbage is simply one person’s opinion.
So, if parents are able to limit their children’s library access to books that do not have LGBT characters, can they also limit their access to books that have black characters? Or strong female protagonists? Or religious themes?
Not trying to be contrarian, just trying to establish if librarians are going to have to start telling kids “Sorry Timmy, Aslan is an allegory for Jesus, so I’m afraid you aren’t allowed to check out any of the Narnia books”.
How bout putting the questionable 190 books on an “opt-in” list instead of the default permissions being unlimited access to all students.
there are no books in any library that compare to what kids can just easily look up on their devices. this is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. keep fighting that culture war, though.
It’s absolutely a SHAME that it has come down to parents having to make a choice of what their students can and can not check out in a “school” library. It all falls back on the School Board Superintendent and School Board Members “allowing” garbage placed into “school” libraries and Board members NOT allowing parents and citizens to vote on who they want as a School Board Superintendent. We as parents and citizens should know something about the running Superintendent and “what they say they will do” before taking the position….NOT appointed. After all, we “vote” on who will be our next U.S. President by “what they say they will do,” and that’s the highest office in this Country!! SO, why is the School Superintendent less important??
I like that this will be done on FOCUS by the parent. The objections to so many of the books by the Northview teacher were just homophobic and filled with right wing rhetoric( books being “anti-white”). That she felt so entitled to object to books for the whole district that spoke to topics she didn’t like personally makes me wonder how she has treated all of her gay students and gay parents over the years.
As the article states, of the 190 (out of thousands in a library!) only a handful were banned. Now parents get to decide, not special groups and politicians with an agenda.
Parents, check what your children are reading; don’t put the responsibility on librarians.
How hard will librarians WORK to keep our kids values safe from degenerative content? These are our libraries. It starts at home. Parents don’t let up
But will the age and content inappropriate books be removed by then? With any access, isn’t the assumption that someone has vetted these books to make sure they are appropriate? What happens if they are not? Who is accountable?