This week at the library; Last week of programs

Programs

• Family Storytime
• All ages fandom (Pokemon Club)
• Autism presentation (EASD)
• Holiday cookie party (EASD)
• Teen D&D (hosting)
• Girl Scouts (hosting)
• Family Storytime
• Homeschool group (hosting)

Notes

  I came back half-time this week. It was our last week of programs, storytimes etc. although we have a few random outreach things still left. I gave us a long break because I didn't know how long I'd need to recover, because we're all tired, and because we have a lot of work to do for our big program in January.

  Starting next week, I'll go back to work full-time and really jump into the projects I have saved up. These include weeding the juvenile nonfiction, writing descriptions for all the winter/spring programming, writing content for the kids' section of the website, putting together a presentation for the Wild Wisconsin Winter Web Conference, planning and prepping for programs, including our big Land of Stories event on January 13/15, end of year reports, data, budgeting, scheduling, etc. and a myriad of misc. tasks like cleaning and checking all our sewing machines. I also had an unexpected project dropped on my plate, pulling data for a long list of challenged books.

A reminder that this blog is my personal property and does not reflect the views of my employer. My policy stated here. 

The school district where I work was hit by a book challenge and has pulled over 400 titles from the middle and high school libraries pending review. The documents are open record and can be seen here. Of particular concern to me (and any other professional librarian or teacher) is this section of the public announcement "Principals have been directed that when evaluating a challenged book for grade level appropriateness, they use Common Sense Media, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.com for age-level ratings."

In addition, the school had no current policy or procedure in place for dealing with challenges. The challenges were received on November 30, the school pulled books during teacher in-service on Monday, December 4, and families were not informed until Tuesday, December 5.

My personal statement regarding this ongoing event

I am deeply disappointed by the school district's handling of the recent challenges. First, that they had no policy and procedure in place, despite the obvious trend towards weaponizing materials challenges nation-wide, and the clear implications that such a challenge was coming. Secondly, that they have denied their own traditions of academic excellence, professionalism, and rigorous instruction to respond to the challenges with biased and for-profit sources. They have, essentially, stated that they will be doing their own research on Wikipedia and YouTube! Thirdly, that the lack of preparation ended in them accepting this challenge at all.

Having reviewed the paperwork, I note that, first of all, the forms are faked to look like official school paperwork - they are riddled with misspellings, obviously biased, and clearly cut and pasted from the internet. Secondly, the content of the "challenges" is again an obvious cut-and-paste job. There is no evidence that the person in question has ever read the books challenged and many of the challenges are incoherent and illogical, some being almost completely blank with a smattering of positive reviews and no actual reason given for challenging the books. It is clearly an effort to disrupt the functioning of the school district by burying them in paperwork.

This is a complete abrogation of the district's own commitments to academic rigor and student success, allowing a single parent, clearly working as a spokesperson for an organization outside our community, to remove resources from students, disrupt their education, and render them and the community powerless. It's an extremely negative example to give the students, showing them that one spiteful and illiterate adult, spewing hateful rhetoric, can exert a vast amount of control over their lives and the community without recourse to either the district's own promises or the civil liberties of our state and country.