As the battle over inappropriate content in children’s libraries continues, one Llano ISD resident has been halted from challenging books by a new school district policy.
Bonnie Wallace, whose daughter graduated from Llano High School a few years ago, has a list of 207 books that she wants removed from the Llano ISD library shelves for vulgar or inappropriate content.
She submitted the paperwork to challenge 21 books at the beginning of the year. After being told it would take a month to review each book, she held off submitting any additional challenges.
Earlier this week, Wallace began submitting additional book challenges.
However, Llano ISD Superintendent Mac Edwards told her she had no standing to submit the request as the book review policy adopted in March specifically states that only “A District employee or a parent or guardian of a District student may request the reconsideration of a library material maintained in the District’s library program.”
Since Wallace does not have “standing” according to the policy, she is unable to file the paperwork to challenge the additional books. Wallace told Texas Scorecard she believes this policy was specifically created to stop her from challenging library books.
When I first tried to challenge a book, they told me that no one in the history of Llano High School had ever challenged a library book. So if I’m the only person who’s ever challenged a library book, and now they’re changing the rule so that this one person cannot challenge—obviously, it’s to keep me from challenging books.
“I am not here to fight for our children [who graduated in the same class a few years ago],” Wallace told Edwards recently. “I’m here to fight for the children whose parents do not even know there’s a battle. I’m here to fight for the children whose parents work two or three jobs, who, maybe their parents don’t speak English, they have no idea what they’re getting out of school.”
While Texas lawmakers passed a new state law—the READER (Restricting Explicit and Adult Designated Educational Resources) Act—last year in response to months of complaints from parents about age-inappropriate and sexually graphic books in campus libraries, the fight is not yet over.
The READER Act mandated new “collection development” standards prohibiting school libraries from obtaining or possessing materials that are sexually explicit, harmful, pervasively vulgar, or educationally unsuitable.
The new standards were adopted on December 14 and apply to materials in all Texas public school libraries, classroom libraries, and online catalogs.
However, parents, guardians, and concerned community members must still comb the libraries to challenge inappropriate books already present.
“There are hundreds of adult erotic novels in high schools,” said Wallace.
While Wallace cannot file any new challenges, the 21 books she originally challenged will continue to go through the district’s review process.
Her sixth challenged book, Crank by Ellen Hopkins, glamorizes heavy drug usage that she has argued is harmful to children. It is currently still on the library shelf after being reviewed. Wallace filed a grievance with the school district over the decision to keep the book, and her grievance is currently before the superintendent.
“I told him, doing the right thing is never the easy thing, ever,” said Wallace. “It’s hard to do the right thing. It’s a lot easier to do the wrong thing. There’s a lot of pressure to do the wrong thing, and there’s hardly any accolades when you do the right thing.”
But she said she does hope he will do the right thing.
Texas Scorecard contacted the superintendent, Llano High School principal, and all Llano ISD school board members for comment on the new policy, and questioned whether the policy was specifically formulated to hamper Wallace’s challenges. None responded before publication.