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As book banning becomes more popular, some experts predict some libraries will just close – Daily Montanan [1]

['Elaine S. Povich', 'More From Author', '- April']

Date: 2023-04-09  

Amid the national uproar about whether to allow students access to a wide variety of books, the superintendent of a Virginia school district this week proposed a sweeping solution: Get rid of school libraries altogether.

Mark Taylor, who leads the district in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, suggested at a recent school board meeting that eliminating libraries would be a cost-reduction measure, saving $4.2 million in anticipation of $18 million in budget cuts.

But parents were out in force at the meeting, and many decried the idea of cutting libraries, saying they are essential and eliminating them would be a disservice to children. None of the parents or community members were officially allowed to speak at the public meeting, but some stood in the back of the room holding signs with slogans such as “We Deserve Better” and “Fund our Schools!”

And just hours after the raucous meeting, veteran board member Dawn Shelley accused Taylor of using money-saving as a ruse to get rid of books.

“I think they think, ‘Well, if we remove the libraries, then we don’t have to deal with those books,’” she said in an interview with Stateline.

Another school board member, Nicole Cole, in a separate interview, agreed that closing libraries “is a further attack on our educators, our teachers and it’s banning books.”

Neither Taylor, nor the chair of the school board, returned calls seeking comment. But Taylor told a local television reporter that libraries are not necessarily vital, since “whole libraries are available on an app” on kids’ cellphones.

Librarians Decry GOP Moves to Ban Books in Schools One day after the meeting, Taylor ruled that 14 books that had been challenged by a parent as inappropriate and containing “sexually explicit” content must be removed from school libraries and declared “surplus” property. The 14 include Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and “The Bluest Eye,” as well as “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen, a historical novel set in a Great Depression circus, and “Nineteen Minutes,” by Jody Picoult, which is about a school shooting. Taylor suggested the books be donated to other libraries.

According to the local Free Lance-Star newspaper, all the books had been declared appropriate for high school ages after reviews by committees that included parents. But the parent making the initial complaint, the paper said, had appealed that decision.

Spotsylvania County has been a hotbed of book banning for a couple of years, ever since it passed and then rescinded a plan to remove “sexually explicit” books from school libraries. One board member apparently suggested burning books as well, according to news reports at the time.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, made parental concern over “explicit” books in public school curricula one of the elements of his winning 2021 campaign.

Anti-Book Movement

From July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022, 138 school districts in 32 states banned books, according to PEN America. These districts represent 5,049 schools with a combined enrollment of nearly 4 million students, the literacy group said.

PEN chalked up the effort to censor books as an outgrowth of both the fight against mask mandates in schools and the move against what opponents call the teaching of critical race theory, a graduate-level course of study that considers the role race has played in historical events and the direction of the country. The PEN report identified at least 50 groups involved in book ban movements, most of which formed since 2021.

The number of school libraries and librarians has been dwindling for decades. Between the 1999-2000 and 2015-16 school years, the latest comprehensive figures available, the number of school librarians dropped 19%, according to a School Library Journal analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data.

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