MARBLEHEAD — Anyone who wants to permanently take books off the public school library shelves now has a procedure to follow.
At a School Committee Policy Subcommittee meeting on Tuesday, the subcommittee had a first look at the official procedures for the Reconsideration of Library Materials.
The document, “reconsideration of instructional resources,” provides a standard procedure through which concerned parents and guardians may object to certain materials being in public school curriculum.
The process for challenging materials begins with the complainant speaking with the appropriate principal. From there, the complainant must fill out a Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials. A sufficient complaint will then be considered by a Library Materials Reconsideration Committee. They then will review and decide whether or not to keep the materials in use.
A document provided at the meeting explained School Board policies on religion, ideologies, and profanity.
The policy on religion is to retain materials that are “[f]actual, unbiased material.”
For materials concerning ideologies, “Libraries should, with no thought toward swaying reader judgment, make available a balanced collection of primary and factual material, on the level of their students on various ideologies or philosophies which exert or have exerted a strong force, either favorably or unfavorably, in government, current events, politics, education, and other phases of life.”
The board policy on profanity and obscenity is to subject materials to a test of literary merit and reality in context using the criteria established by the School Committee.
The subcommittee expressed that setting up these criteria for reconsideration allows them to have clear guidelines to reference when dealing with complaints.
“As we noted in the spring, this has been a long time coming,” said Superintendent John Buckey at the meeting. “[It] provides an opportunity for families now to have a clear goal if they have questions about materials or resources to have a procedure and the current policy references a procedure that hasn’t been there.”
“And so now, the procedure will align with the policy and if there is instructional materials, library resource materials that people have a question about or would like to review, there is a formalized process … so that we’re not on our heels saying, ‘Ok. What do we do now?’” he continued.
Emma Fringuelli can be reached at [email protected].
