Elizabeth School District Bans Nineteen Books With "Temporary Suspension"

Another Colorado institution is flirting with book banning. According to the Library Research Service, challenges to materials and services in this state shot up 500 percent from 2021 to 2022, from 20 challenges to 120. The American Library Association estimates that 1,269 challenges were reported nationally in 2022, giving Colorado the dubious distinction of being home to close to 10 percent of all library complaints that year.

Now the state can add the Elizabeth School District, which serves nearly 2,400 students in Elbert County, to the list of places embracing book bans.

Of course, the Elizabeth School District isn't using that term; the word "ban" doesn't appear in the "Request for Board Action" issued by ESD Chief Academic Officer Kim Moore, asking the school board to approve a protocol for "flagging" books that include "sensitive topics."

"The board is trying to provide parents the opportunity to make these decisions for their children and empower them," says ESD Superintendent Dan Snowberger through spokesman Jeff Maher. "Parents who have no concern with their students accessing any such material may still allow them to do so. Parents who simply want to know when their students check out a book with such content will get an email and can have a conversation with their child. Parents who don't want their child to check out such material may 'Opt them out,' and the system will prevent them from being able to check out any books with such flags."

But that opt-out system applies only to books that have been "flagged," a list that currently consists of 130 titles. Nineteen others have already been removed from school library shelves in what Moore describes as a "temporary suspension."

The banned nineteen include popular and widely read titles like Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Bluest Eye, and Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, as well as #Pride: Championing LGBTQ Rights, which is a history of the civil rights movement of the LGBTQ+ community, one that specifically aligned itself to Common Core standards.

According to Snowberger, the nineteen books removed from Elizabeth school libraries "will be on display for the next thirty days, with some evening opportunities for parents who do work." Depending on what boardmembers hear from parents, this temporary removal could become permanent, and Snowberger notes that the list "could change over time."

Last year, the school district established a Board Curriculum Review Committee to "develop a protocol regarding handling books that may contain sensitive topics." According to the BCRC website, the committee comprises five people: three representing each educational level (elementary, middle and high school) and two members of the community. In addition to creating the list of nineteen books already removed from the shelves, the BCRC "flagged" over 130 titles as falling into one (or more) of seven categories: graphic violence, sexual content, religious viewpoints, profanity/obscenity, drug use, racism/discrimination, and ideations of self-harm.

The vast majority were flagged for either violence or sex, with a surprising third-place finish for "religious viewpoints." Flagged books in that category range from the King James Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon and the Bhagavad Gita to The Diary of Anne Frank. Also flagged were George Orwell's 1984, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Color Purple, The Handmaid's Tale and To Kill a Mockingbird — books many students were assigned to read back in the day when politics and public education were separate and distinct.

To determine the books to flag, Snowberger says the BCRC used a number of resources, including Book Looks, established in March 2022 by Emily and Jonathan Maikisch, after Emily Maikisch left the book-ban-loving Moms for Liberty to start her own website. There's a significant crossover between the books "temporarily suspended" in Elizabeth and named by Book Looks as containing "objectionable content."

While the board approved Moore's request on August 12, the ESD made one exception the next day. The initial request would have applied to classrooms as well as school libraries; based on initial feedback from the teaching staff, Snowberger says the classroom stipulation has been rescinded pending "further dialogue."

Despite the board adopting Moore's plan, Snowberger maintains that the ESD has no official policy on the removal of books. "It's not something we regularly do," he says. "Through this current process, we are instituting an opportunity to provide the community a chance to give feedback on books when they are identified versus the board making unilateral decisions. Again, these books surfaced through the review process, and no decision has been made until parents have an opportunity to review. They may very well be returned and labeled as sensitive material depending on the community feedback."

Or, you know, they may not. Nineteen are already off shelves; 130...and counting...to go?

These are the books "temporarily" pulled from the library shelves, according to the ESD:

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher
Pride: Championing LGBTQ Rights, by Rebecca Felix
You Should See Me in a Crown, by Leah Johnson
It’s Your World — If You Don’t Like It, Change It, by Mikki Halpin
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult
Speak, by Laurie Anderson
Identical, by Ellen Hopkins
Fallout, by Ellen Hopkins
Glass, by Ellen Hopkins
Burned, by Ellen Hopkins
Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
Smoke, by Ellen Hopkins
George, by Alex Gino