Yes, parents can review instructional materials by contacting the campus administrator. Materials that cannot be sent home, may be reviewed by appointment.

A parent of a District student, any employee, or any District resident may formally challenge an instructional resource used in the District’s educational program on the basis of appropriateness.

Please contact your student's teacher and/or campus administrator to express your concern. Often initial conversations are enough to diffuse concerns, but if you wish to continue a formal challenge, contact the campus administrator.

The school receiving a complaint about the appropriateness of an instructional resource shall try to resolve the matter informally using the following procedure: The principal or designee shall explain the school’s selection process, the criteria for selection, and the qualifications of the professional staff who selected the questioned resource.
The principal or designee shall explain the intended educational purpose of the resource and any additional information regarding its use.
If appropriate, the principal or designee may offer a concerned parent an alternative instructional resource to be used by that parent’s child in place of the challenged resource.
If the complainant wishes to make a formal challenge, the principal or designee shall provide the complainant a copy of this policy and a form to request a formal reconsideration of the resource

Yes. All committee members are required to read the book or instructional resource.

Students’ First Amendment rights guide school districts on the removal of books from a school library. The committee, and the challenger, must read the entire book to obtain full context and determine whether or not the book meets the selection criteria.

The book or instructional resource remains in use. The challenging parent/guardian may request an alternate assignment for their student while the book or instructional resource is undergoing the reconsideration process.

Once a resource has been made available in a school library, removal of the resource implicates students’ First Amendment rights. While the school district has discretion on which books it brings into its library, once a book is in the library there are legal limits on what can be removed.According to the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1982 decision, the First Amendment rights of students may be “directly and sharply” implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library. Bd. of Educ., Island Trees Union Free Sch. Dist. No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982).The Court, in that case, informed us that there is a meaningful difference between the curriculum conveyed in a compulsory setting and the school library, which is a place for “voluntary inquiry.” The Court made clear that state and local discretion may not be exercised in a way that violates students’ free speech rights by removing books for partisan or political reasons: “In brief, we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’” Pico, 457 U.S. at 872.

Students’ First Amendment rights are implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library. A school district cannot remove materials from a library for the purpose of denying students access to ideas with which the district disagrees. A district may remove materials because they are pervasively vulgar or based solely upon the educational suitability of the books in question. Bd. of Educ. v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982) The committee decides if a book is educationally suitable or pervasively vulgar by working through a series of questions in the areas of appropriateness, content, review/evaluations, and purpose. When the book is non-fiction, the committee also considers the authenticity of the book.

Yes. The challenger may appeal the decision of the reconsideration committee in accordance with appropriate complaint policies, starting with the appropriate administrator, in accordance with policies DGBA, FNG, or GF.