Wake school board updates book challenge policy
Policy still blocks additional challenges for two years
The school board for North Carolina’s largest district of Wake County has presented updates to its book challenge policy, 3210 Parental Inspection of and Objection to Instructional Material.
The updates do not change the 2-year moratorium on challenging a book once a title has been ruled on and its lengthy challenge and appeals process does little to address parental concerns in a timely manner.
For example, the policy says the parents have to contact the principal of the school and meet with them about their complaints. There is no time limit described in this portion of the policy on the school’s end, yet the parent has to submit "a formal request for reconsideration in writing" within 10 days of that meeting or the complaint is considered closed.
The use of "days" in the policy means working weekdays only, does not include holidays or days the district is closed and the district only starts counting on the first day first full working day after the complaint is received. So, for example, if one emails their complaint on a Monday morning, the district isn't going to start the clock running until Tuesday.
The WCPSS board will apparently revisit the policy, ostensibly for a vote, in November.
More To The Story first reported on this policy in April. The WCPSS board passed its initial policy 7-2 in August. Catch up on those articles here:
The two-year ban on challenges is still in the policy, but an appeal can still happen:
The Committee shall provide a copy of its determination in writing to the parent. The determination will be binding for two years from the date of its issuance at the school where the complaint was filed, and no further challenges to the material at that school site will be permitted during the two-year period unless the determination is overturned on appeal.
The first stop in an appeal is the 12-member “Central Committee,” which is appointed solely by the superintendent. If the parent doesn’t get the resolution they seek there, it then goes on to a board of education panel - that panel’s decision will be final.
However, this tedious appeals process may be a necessary evil and I'll get to the why of that soon.
Let’s take a look at the amount of time a parent - we will call them Parent X - will spend on challenging a book or material in the Wake County Public Schools System (WCPSS).
For the purposes of this exercise and being very generous with typical response time, let's say Parent X emails the Principal on Sept. 1 and a meeting is set within a week on Sept. 7 but the issue is unresolved on that day.
The parent then has 10 days to submit their formal request for “reconsideration” with all the documentation to support it and let's say they submit that request on Sept. 8, the day after they meet with the principal.
The Supt. sets up a reconsideration committee, but the policy doesn't say how long they have to make the appointments to that committee. It could be days, weeks or months. Again, being generous, let's say the committee is set up within 30 days.
Parent X is now at day 38 of their challenge.
The reconsideration committee gets 30 days to read the book, and all the complaints and materials associated with it and then make a decision. The Supt. can double that and extend the review period by another 30 days.
Let's say the time is extended, now Parent X is at the three-month and 8-day mark trying to be heard. It is at this point a decision should be rendered and that decision will be "binding" for two years and no "further challenges" can be issued during that time period - unless Parent X appeals to the "Central Instructional Materials Committee," which is, again, appointed by the Supt.
Here comes the "lather, rinse, and repeat" part of the policy.
There is no time limit in the policy for the Supt. to appoint members to the Central Committee.
The Central Committee has 30 days to read the material and all the challenge documents that come with it.
The Supt. can extend the 30-day review by another 30 days.
The book can't be challenged again for two years and the Central Committee gives its decision in writing to Parent X.
Making the consistent time assumptions for this exercise, Parent X is now 128 days into their challenge process. But there is more road to travel.
If unhappy with the Central Committee decision, Parent X can now appeal to the school board itself and the policy again gives no timeframe for which the board must review the item. Given the track record the board has had of sometimes pushing an appeal back as far as 90 days, we're going to be generous again to bump Parent X's appeal out by another 60 days.
Parent X is having either Deja Vu or a psychotic break by now as they now hit 188 days or over 6 months in their challenge process.
The policy also doesn't say when the board has to issue its decision, so, again - being generous - let's add another 30 days.
Parent X has now spent the majority of a calendar year on their challenge by the time the board issues its decision "in an open meeting" that will be ''binding for up to two years at the discretion of the Board."
That's where the road ends, or does it?
Returning to why sticking it out through this overly lengthy process is a necessary evil - the WCPSS’ board decision may not actually be a final one.
WCPSS' policy makes no mention of the parent's ability to take that decision by the local board and file a complaint with the State Board of Education under the Parents’ Bill of Rights; Senate Bill 49, which is now Session Law 2023-106.
Related read:
Under "Remedies for parental concerns," a district has 7 days to address a parental complaint regarding a "procedure or practice,” and book and material challenges reasonably fall under those categories.
If that 7-day resolution of the concern has not been adhered to within 30 days, it looks like Parent X now has three options: Take their complaint to the State Board of Education and add a couple more months to their 7-month tally, sue WCPSS for not following the 30-day resolution cap in the statute, or they could arguably do both.
Session Law 2023-106 - § 115C-76.60. Remedies for parental concerns.
(1) Notify the State Board of Education of the concern and request a parental concern hearing. The State Board shall establish rules for parental concern hearings.
[…]
(2) Bring an action against the public school unit as provided in Article 26 of Chapter 1 of the General Statutes for a declaratory judgment that the unit's procedure or practice violates this Part. The court may award injunctive relief to a parent and shall award reasonable attorneys' fees and costs to a parent awarded injunctive relief
There are then "minimum" steps and rules to follow for the hearing.
The hearing is set up using rules still being determined by the State Board of Education.
A hearing officer is assigned, who has legal experience and has "good standing of the North Carolina State Bar with demonstrated experience in education or administrative law within the last five years."
The officer has 30 days to render decision recommendations to the State Board which will approve or deny those recommendations at the board's "next regularly scheduled board meeting held more than seven days after receipt of the recommended decision."
Something to keep in mind when filing challenges to pornographic and sexually explicit books, the materials a WCPSS parent submits with their complaint beyond their school’s principal is the ONLY material they can use through the whole process. Because of that limitation, one might want to make sure they include Senate Bill 579 / SL 2023-127.
Senate Bill 579 updated the law on obscenities and made it a Class H felony for "any person, firm, or corporation to intentionally disseminate obscenity knowingly in the presence of an individual under 18 years of age."
While the language doesn't specifically say "school" or " school district," it could easily be inferred that schools are included in the list of "person, firm, or corporation."
How is obscenity defined? There are four ways.
One, the material depicts or describes in a patently offensive way sexual conduct.
Two, it is something that the average person applying contemporary community standards relating to the depiction or description of sexual matters would find that taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest in sex.
Three, the material lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
And four, the material is not considered protected or privileged under the U.S. Constitution or the NC Constitution.
It is the fourth definition that school boards have arguably been using to reject the removal of certain books being challenged - many of which are clearly pornographic and sexually explicit in nature.
More To The Story
WCPSS’s board is also moving forward with reassignment plans and the plans are hitting some of the same southern Wake County area neighborhoods the board has previously reassigned at least once and, in some cases, twice, within the past four years which includes the pandemic closures.
Additionally, students facing reassignment can request to stay at their current school, but there's a catch - no transportation will be provided by the district.
The WCPSS board has been taking fire from parents over its latest attempts to reassign students.
"We feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football with Lucy holding it,” one parent who wished not to be identified told More To The Story.
Families impacted are not happy with few ways to communicate their dissatisfaction.
Other than writing an email to the board which will likely go either unread, unanswered, or both. WCPSS used a platform called ThoughtExchange where parents could leave messages for the board, however, the messages only allow for less than 200 characters, hardly enough space to leave a comment of substance.
Despite over 1,700 people sending in feedback, no real changes were made from the first to the second draft.
Who is running this reassignment show? Assistant Superintendent for School Choice, Planning, and Assignment Glenn Carrozza.
Here is what Carrozza told a media outlet about the family feedback and why the plans remain unchanged:
“Based on the feedback that was given to us, there wasn’t anything that staff felt that they should change based on that. There were a lot of recommendations to move other neighborhoods instead of theirs, and when you look at that feedback, that doesn’t add up with regard to the numbers of students in those neighborhoods, so we decided to stick with the draft that we had from draft one.”
Related reads: