State Board Committee Considers More Book Bans
State Board Committee Considers More Book Bans
They include two award-winning novels, a state-adopted textbook, and a book previously chosen by the committee.
The South Carolina Department of Education’s Instructional Materials Review Committee is currently considering four books for removal from every school in the state. One of these, Ellen Hopkins’ CRANK, had previously been chosen by the Instructional Materials Review committee along with ten other books. The committee voted to postpone its decision on CRANK, while banning seven books from every school in the state and retaining three others.
The remaining books each come from Fort Mill Schools, where a single parent challenged them.
Unlike the last round of challenges considered by the committee, the texts listed on the committee website do not include staff recommendations. Instead, the three books challenged by the parent include low-resolution images of the parent’s complaints, while CRANK contains additional quotes from the text that were not included in the previous supplemental materials considered by the committee.
The new books challenged include an English textbook which has already passed the formal state adoption process (which includes public review), Nikki Grimes’ 2003 Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning Bronx Masquerade, and Sandra Cisneros’ American Book-award-winning House on Mango Street.
The parent testified about the books during the September 17 Board meeting, saying,
Parents put their trust in the school board, the administrators, and the teachers of Fort Mill Schools to protect their children from evil, not encourage them to follow the darkness. This textbook is full of poems, short stories, and essays that have been banned by many libraries and public school systems due to sexuality, racism, violence, and suicide to name a few.
She went on to discuss the novels. Her remarks appear to be very close to the language of her complaints. She also referenced a ban on The House on Mango Street from North Carolina schools in her remarks, and tearfully asked the school board to “do the same”.
Both novels have been commonly taught in high school English courses for many years.
For the textbook, a separate document on the website, presumably from the unnamed staff member who authored the previous recommendations, reads,
The complaint form includes allegations of inappropriate passages and poems but fails to identify any passages or excerpts with specificity. This material was adopted by the State Board following the textbook adoption process outlined in S.C. Code Ann. § 59-31-510- 610. Due to both the lack of specific allegations and the fact that this material has already been vetted by the State Board through the textbook adoption process, it is staff’s recommendation that this material be retained for the 8th grade.
The challenge forms for the novels, similarly, make broad statements about the content of each book, without providing specifics. For example, in the complaint form for The House on Mango Street, the parent states that the book includes “sexual content and profane language” but does not give examples.
During the same Fort Mill board meeting where the parent testified, a Board member told another concerned parent, “We do have a process if there are books in the school libraries that you are not comfortable with, there is a process.”
However, it’s not clear whether or not the board followed that process before it, or the parent, referred the materials to the State Board.
If it follows the same process as last time, the books will undergo a vote by the Instructional Materials Review Committee, and then go to the full State Board of Education for final consideration. In the previous meetings, a Department of Education staff attorney and Board members repeatedly stated that reading the books was not a requirement for determining whether they violated the regulation.
The selections of novels, whether intentionally or not, continues a trend of every book considered by the subcommittee being authored by a woman (with the exception of two classics which Chair Christian Hanley evidently preemptively planned to retain). While the selections by the committee were all (perhaps intentionally) written by White authors, both Grimes and Cisneros are women of color.
The majority of state and national book challenges have featured either characters and/ or authors of color, or characters and/or authors representing the LGBTQ+ community. Many have come from members of associates of the controversial “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty (which has also supported Chair Hanley in the past). The staff member who wrote recommendations on the eleven books previously considered by the committee used quotes which may have come from the Moms for Liberty-affiliated book ban website BookLooks.
In 2022, the national Moms for Liberty organization successfully endorsed Joe Helms for the Fort Mill School Board. He has since won reelection to the board. Another Fort Mill school board candidate, Ellen Abramo, was previously listed as “legislative lead” of the York chapter of Moms for Liberty, and was publicly supported by the group on social media during her run. Abramo lost her election bid.