BREAKING: IN HIGHLY CHARGED BOOK BATTLE, ROCKWOOD HAS BEEN HIDING WHO'S MAKING DECISIONS AND, STARTING TONIGHT, IS NOW NAMING PARENTS WHO DISAGREE WITH THE DISTRICT.

 

We found the information in documents that will be presented at tonight's school board meeting. The parents (and one Rockwood teacher), who are named, are listed as complainants that appealed the decisions to keep certain books in the school libraries. Here are some of those books.

This would not normally draw attention, except:

* In the reports before now, Rockwood did not name parents who challenged the books (which showed they disagree with something the district is doing.) Now that parents have taken it a step further and appealed the decisions, Rockwood has changed course and started naming names.

Another about-face:

Rockwood has stopped putting names of committee members on the reports. The district used to put them on the reports, but, no longer does. 

Meaning: Rockwood is protecting the names of parents who agree with the district, and, publicizing names of parents who disagree with the district.

This move follows parent complaints during the appeals process that Rockwood was using the same parents over and over on the book challenge committees. At least 3 parents have been used on committees that decided the fate of at least 5 books. (Some committees reviewed more than one book.)

We only know this because the review committee meetings were held on zoom and people who submitted challenges gave brief presentations at the beginning of those meetings and could see who attended.

We were surprised to see the official reports from those meetings did not include the committee members.

Here's the page from one of those reports, where the committee names used to be:

Here's how that first page of how the reports looked previously, when they listed the committee names:

In the documents being presented tonight, the appeal for "All Boys Aren't Blue" shows Rockwood's intent to keep hiding names of challenge committee members: 

seen at the bottom

Some see this as an attempt to inject influence over the hotly contested school board meeting that is one month away.  The candidates endorsed by the teachers union agree with district decisions. Their opponents have said changes are needed.

One policy change parents want: Rockwood should be more accountable and provide more specific ratings of books (such as PG, R, etc.) before putting them on library shelves. The head librarian told us she did not know about the explicit sexual content in the challenged books before they were ordered and made available to students.

Note:

The only committee members now being named in the book challenge process are the school board members that reviewed the appeals. 

This is a developing story.