Delaware School District Will Not Implement Restrictive Book Checkout and Assignment Rules

Peter Hart at the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) reports that the Appoquinimink School District in Delaware will not implement new rules that could have restricted students’ access to books with “mature or explicit themes.”
Background about the policy in the complete NCAC blog post.
Hart’s post also includes a link to this Delaware Online article.

The proposal centered around “Young Adult” books that contained “mature or explicit themes,” including excessive violence, offensive language, adult content and sexual content. It would have allowed parents to sign forms barring their children from checking such books out of the library or discussing them in school groups or after-school activities.
Under the proposal, if a teacher wanted to assign a book with mature content, he or she would have needed to send home permission slips explaining what the book was, why it was important for students to read it, and what the “areas of concern” were. If a parent did not sign off within a week, the teacher would have to assign an alternative book for that student to complete independently.

The complete article points out that ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom was one of several organizations that wrote to the school district asking them to not implement the rules.
Finally, the NCAC post includes info about a, “battle” over the health curriculum at Indian River public schools also located in Delaware.

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Libraries, Reports, School Libraries