COLUMBIA — Ten additional books must be removed from school library shelves, the state Board of Education decided Tuesday, a month after questioning its own regulation banning “sexual conduct” from K-12 public schools.
The 15-2 vote brings the total number of books librarians have been required to remove from shelves to 21 since the regulation went into effect last June. Six other books have been allowed to stay, one with the stipulation that parents must give approval for their children to check it out.
The board hesitated to remove the books from shelves at its meeting April 1 amid misgivings from some members about the frequency and content of the book challenges coming before them.
Board members gave no public explanation for the sudden change of heart. The board took a single, voice vote to remove the 10 books with no discussion.
Tony Vincent and David O’Shields, the two members to say “no,” questioned the regulation during a meeting last month, saying it required the board to remove books from shelves based on as little as a few pages in novels of several hundred pages.
“Looking at these books outside of the arc of their full stories is a mistake, in my view,” Vincent, a minister in Seneca, said at the time. He declined to comment further on his vote Tuesday.
Before the public meeting began, members had legal questions about the regulation answered during a closed-door session, which seemed to assuage some members’ concerns, said Christian Hanley, who leads the committee reviewing the books.
Board members have an obligation to follow the regulation they passed, Hanley told the SC Daily Gazette after the meeting.
The regulation says any books containing sexual material, no matter how brief, must come off school shelves.
The question is not whether board members like the book or feel it has value. Instead, board members must simply determine whether it contains any sexual material, attorneys for the state Department of Education have told the board repeatedly.
“I think that made everyone more comfortable to say, ‘Our constituents sent us here to do a job, so let’s just roll up our sleeves and do what we’re supposed to do and stop delaying that,'” Hanley said.
Ken Richardson, who also raised concerns at the April meeting, agreed to approve this round of book removals, but he wasn’t sure whether that would remain the case if more come up for consideration at future meetings, he said.
Putting time and energy into vetting the books and voting whether to remove them has taken focus from the other issues the board considers, Richardson, former chairman of the Horry Georgetown Technical College board, told the Gazette on Tuesday afternoon.
The books that have come up for consideration, in many cases, are rarely checked out in his own district, he said. One parent in Beaufort County has brought 14 of the challenges the state board has considered, and she could bring many more, after bringing 97 requests to remove books to her local school board before the regulation went into place.
That means the challenges could continue until the board has considered all 97 books. And Richardson has heard from at least one other parent claiming to have found hundreds more books that could potentially violate the regulation, he said.
“At some point, enough is enough,” Richardson said.
Richardson stopped short of suggesting the board change the regulation. His concern lies less with the idea of the regulation, which the board approved unanimously last year, and more with its implementation, he said.
“When you’re trying to make decisions for the whole state, you need to think about the whole state,” Richardson said.
His concerns echo those of some opponents of the regulation. Josh Malkin, an attorney for the state American Civil Liberties Union, who said he worried the board is allowing one parent to make decisions for everyone.
“This is problematic and counter to the foundational democratic ideals of public education,” Malkin said in a statement soon after the vote.
Tuesday’s decision makes South Carolina the state with the most books removed from schools at a state level, according to PEN America. South Carolina is one of three states with a regulation allowing the removal of books statewide.
Tennessee, one of the other states, has removed no books at the state level. Utah has removed 17, according to PEN America, which tracks book removals across the country.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
