By Mike McCombs
The Island News
Beaufort County School District (BCSD) book review committees are set to complete reviews on eight more books at 5:45 p.m., Thursday, May 11 at Okatie Elementary School.
The eight books up for review by the committees this time are as follows:
No. 47: Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher
No. 48: Fade by Lisa McMann
No. 49: Fallout by Ellen Hopkins
No. 50: Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin
No. 51: Gabi, A Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero
No. 52: Identical by Ellen Hopkins
No. 53: Push by Sapphire
No. 54: Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
So far, 46 of the 97 books have been reviewed by committees. Of the 46 books of which reviews and appeals have been completed, 43 have been returned to district shelves in some fashion, while three books – The Haters by Jesse Andrews, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, and It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover – have been removed from shelves and will be kept out of the Beaufort County School District for at least the next five years.
Elsewhere in the state, a school district that banned Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds is being sued by the families of high school students and the local NAACP chapter, with the help of the ACLU. (The book was also challenged in Beaufort County.)
According to The Post And Courier, the parties say the school board’s ban on a book that challenges racism was unconstitutional. Allen Chaney, general counsel for the ACLU of South Carolina, and attorneys with the NAACP filed the lawsuit April 26 in U.S. District Court.
“You know, it’s not just politics,” Chaney told The Post And Courier. “It’s also an all-white school board removing ideas about race on the basis that they don’t like those ideas. That sends a really clear and harmful signal to children of color in Pickens County that they don’t matter and that their experience as a racial minority in Pickens County isn’t worth exploring in the books that are provided to them by the school district.”
The book was removed from the shelves of Pickens County Schools for five years.
A recap
Ninety-seven books were removed from the shelves of libraries and classrooms in the BCSD in October and are to be reviewed for their appropriateness by the book review committees. The reviews were triggered by complaints that the books were obscene and inappropriate.
The original lists of books, submitted by former Beaufort County Councilman and Republican politician Mike Covert and Beaufort’s Ivie Szalai, are identical to each other with Covert challenging one additional book.
The book review committees must consist, per state guidelines, of a school librarian, a district teacher, a parent (other than the complainant), a school administrator, a district-level administrator, and a member of a School Improvement Council in the district. The BCSD added a seventh member to the committees – a community member.
Mike McCombs is the Editor of The Island News and can be reached at TheIslandNews@gmail.com.
