Nicole Wheeldon
The Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. board has plans to discuss its policies around library books at an upcoming work session.
The school board met on Monday, with about 60 people in the audience at the beginning of the evening. Twenty six individuals signed up to provide public comment, but only 16 spoke, as board president Nicole Wheeldon decided to enforce the 45-minute limit, with a maximum of three minutes per person.
The board also received two written statements. One was a petition with 500 digital signatures that called for the school board to implement standards for “appropriate” library books at the elementary, middle and high school levels. The other was a letter from 14 BCSC librarians and library assistants, who feel that calls by some to create a subcommittee on library materials “undermines our professionalism and shows a sincere lack of trust in our abilities to perform our jobs.”
The school board has set a public work session for 5 p.m. Sept. 11, prior to the board’s regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. During this time, the board will continue to discuss some pending policy updates.
“We will also start to move into policies regarding books,” said Wheeldon. “…We will start, as a team, familiarizing ourselves with current policies regarding books and decide as a group how we want to move forward on that very important topic, as it seems, in our community.”
She added that actual decisions would be made at a regular board meeting and not a work session.
Superintendent Jim Roberts said the current process for lodging complaints about library books can be found in BCSC’s policy 9130.
“I am working on a revision that will include any necessary changes due to state legislation,” he said. “However, the changes won’t be significantly different. I have found it interesting that there is a demand from some for a new policy to screen the purchase of new library books; however, the same individuals appear averse to policy as they choose not to follow the one already in place regarding a complaint about a book (9130). We can’t really pick and choose the board policy to which to adhere.”
Library materials have been a hot button topic over the past couple years, with the Indiana General Assembly passing a law in the spring that requires public and charter school libraries to publicly post a list of books in their catalogs and establish a formal complaint process for parents, guardians and community members who object to materials in these libraries. BCSC already had a complaint process in place prior the law being passed.
Additionally, under the new legislation, schools and librarians are no longer able to argue as a legal defense against criminal prosecution that materials deemed to be “obscene” or “harmful to minors” in their libraries have “educational” value. The proposal, however, still allows them to argue that the materials have literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
Eric Grow — who ran for the school board’s District 4 seat in 2022 but lost to Dale Nowlin — has repeatedly expressed concerns about inappropriate materials in school libraries during the time for public comment at school board meetings and has been vocal about the subject on social media, creating a spreadsheet of books that he considers potentially “problematic” and which BCSC school libraries, if any, contain copies of these titles.
Grow recently shared a petition on social media, asking individuals to provide a digital signature if they agree with the following statement: “I ask that the BCSC Board implement standards on profanity and vulgarity that is appropriate for each schools’ audiences (Elementary, Middle School, and High School). These standards should not discriminate against any group of people, however will hold the bar of decorum for what our children read and its appropriateness within common society.”
Board member Logan Schulz shared the petition with the board, stating that he had received it electronically prior to the board meeting and that the document included the first 500 signatures received a week prior to the board meeting. He added that by signing, individuals are affirming that they have a relation to the school corporation as either a student, parent, resident, taxpayer or combination thereof.
Some members of the public have also called for the creation of a committee to address the topic of library materials, with Schulz voicing his support for the idea at the board’s Aug. 7 meeting.
In addition to the petition, the school board also received a letter from 14 BCSC librarians and library assistants, who said that the climate of recent board meetings has caused feelings of “frustration, hurt, and angst for simply performing the tasks for which we were hired.”
The letter includes a description of some of the factors that go into choosing library resources, such as age appropriateness, “levels of engagement,” literary value, district and state standards, student requests and relevancy to students.
“We, the librarians/library assistants of BCSC, feel that the assignment of a subcommittee, as mentioned in the Aug. 7th meeting, to create a set of standards around what is ‘appropriate’ undermines our professionalism and shows a sincere lack of trust in our abilities to perform our jobs,” the staff members wrote. “BCSC has already created criteria which we use when determining the placement of any book in our collection, taking into account appropriateness based on age and maturity of our students.”
The letter also argued that, for such a committee to be truly representative, it would need to be made up of a diverse group of people from all races, genders, sexual preferences, demographics, employment and personal histories. Working with that many people would make it difficult to reach a consensus on what is appropriate, library staff wrote.
The subject of library books hasn’t been the only source of friction between BCSC and the public.
In addition to various comments from the public on books, one member of the public, Mark Niemoeller, spoke at both Monday’s board meeting and the Aug. 7 meeting on the subject of pedophilia.
“I was going to comment on the ALA (American Library Association) and the book situation, but since it’s already been done and since you’ve announced that a book policy — an actual, official book policy — is in the works, I’d like to instead speak against teachers forming close, personal relationships with students,” he said during Monday’s meeting.
Niemoeller then discussed statistics he had found on the prevalence of pedophiles working in public schools.
At the meeting’s end, Roberts said that he “cannot tolerate the continued statement about pedophiles.”
“It is one thing to have comments in here,” he said. “I do appreciate people stepping up and saying whatever’s in your heart, because we have to hear that, we have to work through that. And none of us, none of us are perfect. But to continue to hammer on that topic is just inappropriate.”
