Board will also discuss capital improvement and one-time funding to implement “high-intensity” tutoring.
by Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
The Spotsylvania School Board on Monday will consider approving additional revisions to its policy and regulations concerning the selection and review of instructional materials.
On the whole, the proposed changes represent compromises arrived at by an ad hoc book policy review committee that met four times over the summer, according to committee member Bernadette Chimner.
In addition to Chimner, the committee included Jon Russell, the division’s chief of staff; Kim Allen, the division’s library liaison; and community member Wanda Stroh.
One of the biggest changes proposed to policy IIA is the removal of language that enumerates when library materials are considered instructional materials. Instead, the new policy would state simply: “All library materials are considered instructional materials.”
A law passed by the General Assembly last year required the Virginia Department of Education to develop model policies for ensuring parental notification of instructional material with sexually explicit content.
The law requires local school boards to adopt policies that are “consistent with but may be more comprehensive than” the VDOE’s model policies.
The model policies, and the policy initially adopted by the Spotsylvania School Board in December, state that library materials are only considered instructional materials “when used (i) for completion of an assignment, or (ii) as part of an academic or extracurricular educational program.”
However, division superintendent Mark Taylor has written in memos explaining his decision to remove some 30 books from high school libraries that since library books have been challenged using the existing process for challenging instructional materials, he intends to continue treating them as instructional materials.
Another proposed change to regulation IIA-R, which lays out how policy IIA will be implemented, is the addition of a statement clarifying that parents and guardians can opt their children out of being able to access material with sexually explicit content either in writing or on ParentVue, the division’s student data management platform.
If the parent or guardian does not explicitly opt the student out, the student will be able to access books with this content.
Another proposed change to the regulation would limit how challenges of instructional material will be considered.
“Requests for reconsideration of challenged instructional materials will be handled one at a time in the order received but will alternate between individual challengers, in the event more than one individual requests reconsideration of materials,” the revised regulation would state.
The revised regulation would also give the principal of the school where the challenged book resides 28 working days – up from 15 – to assemble an ad hoc committee to review the book.
It also would clarify that the ad hoc committee should include “no less than three people (a teacher, a parent, and a concerned citizen).”
A major change to the regulation is the removal of a phrase stating that the review committee must read the challenged book “in its entirety.”
However, the question “have you read this book in its entirety?” is still included on the form that the book challenger must fill out, and Chimner told the Advance that she expects that question to be added to the checklist that the school review committee fills out.
Finally, the policy spells out three actions a principal can take upon receipt of the review committee’s checklist: “removal; retention; or retention with content warning, making it available only to students whose parents have not opted their children out of accessing sexually explicit materials.”
Additional state funding and capital improvement
On the consent agenda for Monday’s meeting is approval of a spending plan for additional state funding coming to the school division as a result of the final General Assembly budget.
The division expects to receive an additional $12.6 million. Of that, $8.2 million is one-time funding for implementing the three pillars of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s ALL IN VA learning loss recovery plan, with $5 million going towards instructional materials associated with the expanded Virginia Literacy Act, $2.7 million towards providing “high intensity” tutoring, and $468,000 towards improving chronic absenteeism rates.
The state is also providing the school division with $1.2 million to give 2% raises to all staff effective Jan. 1, 2024.
The board will also discuss and approve the division’s capital improvement plan for fiscal years 2025 through 2029. The plan totals $158 million for the five years, broken out between $107.1 million for maintenance; $21.4 million for transportation and $30.4 million for information technology.
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Is someone tracking all the policies they have changed so that they can all be adjusted in January when the new board members are seated?
Both review committees that I was on commented that the form we were required to use in our evaluation of challenged books was quite inappropriate for the sort of review we were to conduct..We were told to do the best we could and note our concerns on our reviews. I am certain that our comments about the forms themselves were either never read or totally ignored. In other words, Taylor is criticizing us for doing exactly what we were instructed to do. His phony explanation is dishonest and inexcusable.