19 books pulled from Mason City school libraries

MASON CITY — Books are now being pulled from the shelves of Mason City schools' libraries in order to comply with newly enacted state legislation that Gov. Kim Reynolds says will protect children from damaging and obscene material.

At their July 17 meeting, the Mason City school board conducted the first consideration of a series of policy changes that would bring the district into compliance with new law, most notably regarding the review of instructional materials and the district's policy toward students' gender identity.

The policy changes, as recommended by the Iowa Association of School Boards, were made as a result of a sweeping educational reform bill championed by legislative Republicans and signed by Reynolds in May.

Senate File 496 includes limitations on school and classroom library collections, requiring that every book available to students be “age appropriate” and free of any “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act” according to Iowa Code 702.17.

Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction at Mason City Community School District Bridgette Exman said in a statement, "Our classroom and school libraries have vast collections, consisting of texts purchased, donated, and found. It is simply not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements. Therefore, we are using what we believe is a defensible process to identify books that should be removed from collections at the start of the 23-24 school year. After this, we will continue to rely on our long-established process that allows parents to have books reconsidered. We are confident this process will ensure the spirit of the law is enacted here in Mason City; parents will always have a voice in their students’ education."

The district's policy already states that instructional materials, including teacher manuals, films, tapes or other supplementary material that will be used in connection with any survey, analysis or evaluation as part of any federally funded programs are available for inspection by parents.

Another policy calls for the removal of the requirement that two high school students, selected annually by the principal, serve on the materials review committee in the case of a hearing — complying with a new provision that forbids students from serving on such committees.

According to the district, "lists of commonly challenged books were compiled from several sources to create a master list of books that should be reviewed. The books on this master list were filtered for challenges related to sexual content. Each of these texts was reviewed using AI software to determine if it contains a depiction of a sex act. Based on this review, there are 19 texts that will be removed from our 7-12 school library collections and stored in the Administrative Center while we await further guidance or clarity. We also will have teachers review classroom library collections."

Exman said that the lack of clear guidance has many district teachers feeling uncertain and vulnerable. Some have asked for a list of books to look for in their classroom libraries. "We intend to help teachers make defensible decisions when they have questions or concerns about books, so they don't feel like they are left on their own to figure this out."

The district's statement added: "We have searched back 20 years and can't find a single formal challenge to a book by a parent of a student here in the Mason City School District. This tells us that our parents do trust that we are providing curriculum and other related materials that are age-appropriate. We always have and always will work with parents who have requests or concerns and want accommodations to be made for their child.“