Pennsylvania School Board Voting On “Draconian” Book Ban Policy

The Central Bucks School District, Pennsylvania’s third largest district, representing 18,000 students, is voting tonight on Policy 109.2, which restricts which books can be carried in schools based off vague rules such as “implied nudity.” This comes on the heels of the district forbidding Pride flags in schools, including “This is a Safe Place” stickers teachers had put up in their classrooms.

The ACLU has spoken out in opposition of the book policy, saying it’s “not just wrong, it’s probably illegal.”

A representative of the American Library Association also spoke out against the policy, saying that “it’s a policy not intended to develop a robust collection that serves a wide variety of readers’ needs, and in fact is designed to exclude materials that might well meet the information needs of students … by arbitrarily fencing out materials based on a very vague description of sexual content.”

The school board is voting on this policy today at 7 pm, and a group of community members is holding a CBSD Community Against Book Bans Press Conference beforehand, from 5:30-6:30, to show their opposition to a policy they say is “draconian.”

Speakers include the ACLU, NAACP, PFLAG, and the Education Law Center, as well as Central Bucks students, teachers, and parents. They are asking Central Bucks residents to attend to show that the “vocal minority” arguing for books bans doesn’t speak for all of them, and they ask that the press cover this conference to help make their voices heard.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.