Spotsylvania school division superintendent Mark Taylor on Thursday evening sent out an email to the school community stating that it is “inaccurate” to call his decision to remove more than 30 titles from high school libraries “a ban.”
“Our actions, following school board policy and state law, empower parents to decide their children’s access to such material. For those who wish to access sexually explicit materials, they remain conveniently located in public libraries, so it is inaccurate to label their removal from school libraries as a ‘ban,’” Taylor wrote in the email. “Descriptions like this may attract attention in the media or on social platforms, but they are false.”
PEN America, a nonprofit that protects free expression, defines a school book ban as “any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.”
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