Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District teachers looking to test new books in their classrooms will now need such books approved by the district’s board.
The board voted 3-2 on May 9 to approve a new policy that requires board approval of a book before it is piloted in classrooms and requires that parents be notified of the book’s inclusion.
After the pilot period ended, the committee would review feedback to decide if the book should be a part of the district’s extended reading list. To be included on the district’s core reading list, board approval would be required.
The new policy keeps the same process but adds the step of board approval between the Literary Review Committee and the pilot period, according to Trustee Todd Frazier, who proposed the new rule.
“It’s a simple step,” Frazier said during the May 9 meeting. “I believe it’s a step to protect the students.”
Frazier’s policy was supported by trustees Shawn Youngblood and Leandra Blades, while trustees Marilyn Anderson and Carrie Buck dissented.
Ahead of the vote, Anderson said she thought requiring board approval was an “overcorrection.”
“I feel this policy was definitely lagging in the past without notifying parents, and I feel we’ve corrected that issue,” she said. “By doing this overcorrection, we’re basically cutting out parents and teachers out of the equation of what’s being piloted and not piloted.”
Buck agreed, saying “we’re circumventing the whole reason that we have educators in the process.”
Buck said the way the current system is—with the books coming to the board for approval at the end of the process—works “because it’s gone through a very vetted process.”
Frazier replied that the board is not cutting out parents and teachers, but simply “making the determination of whether submitted [books] should go to students.”
Blades said at the meeting she was concerned about the current process because of a book called “Internment” recently approved by the Literary Review Committee and piloted in classrooms.
“Internment” is a fictional tale set in the near future about Muslim Americans who are placed in an internment camp in the United States by conservatives.
At a previous meeting, Blades said she found the book to be politically divisive and biased.
“Some [parents] asked people on the Literary Review Committee who were pushing this book if they had read the book and they said they had not,” she said. “So, I’m wondering, do we have a flawed process? Are people pushing the book through who are not reading it?”
Blades said that the new policy is a way for the board to ensure materials are properly vetted.
“I’m going to do my due diligence when books come before me, I’m going to read it,” she said. “All responsibility always comes back to the board—and this is just something we’re taking responsibility for.”
