In February, the Upper Adams School District joined an increasing number of suburban Pennsylvania school districts in adopting a policy that critics say will facilitate the banning of library books and materials containing “objectionable” content.
On Feb. 22, the Upper Adams School Board voted 6-3 to adopt a revised version of Policy 109.1, “Selection of Materials for Libraries/Media Centers.” Under the updated policy, the district “will avoid library materials with sexually explicit content” and/or “excessive profanity.” It also states that materials that “disparage religious beliefs” will be avoided.
The updated policy will go into effect at the start of the 2025-2026 school year.
The Upper Adams School District is a small rural public school system in Adams County, Pennsylvania, serving the boroughs of Bendersville, Biglerville, and Arendtsville, as well as Tyrone, Butler, and Menallen townships in the state’s south-central region.
The vote has come nearly a year after the proposed policy revision was first introduced, sparking a strong response from the community. In the time since, parents, staff, alumni and students spoke against the proposal in several public meetings. Board meetings that were usually held in a small meeting room were often moved to the auditorium to accommodate crowd size.
At the decisive board meeting, resident Ellen Callahan voiced the concerns of community members opposed to the proposed policy revision.
“The majority of people oppose the change in the policy,” she said. “But the board seems intent to proceed regardless, with the attitude, ‘Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.’ The previous policy did its job, it wasn’t broke, it doesn’t need fixing.”
As is usually the case in such matters, the language of the policy is deliberately vague as to what materials are objectionable, and why. The policy itself states, “It is not the purpose of this policy to describe the specific criteria for each type of material selected.”
However, it is not hard to predict how things will shake out over time. In a recently released report by PEN America on the reasons books are banned, they say, “We took a close look at the more than 10,000 instances of book bans in the last school year and found that more than half of banned titles featured characters or people of color, themes of race and racism, or LGBTQ+ people or characters. That trend was even more pronounced for graphic novels and picture books; nearly three-quarters of all banned graphic and illustrated books featured those themes. For all the inflammatory rhetoric about ‘explicit books,’ only 13% of banned titles had ‘on the page’ descriptions of sexual experiences.”
When the new policy goes into effect, the district will begin to review library materials to ensure they are in compliance. Librarians will use a number of resources to evaluate books. These sources include, but are not limited to Common Sense Media, BookLooks, Booklist Online, Scholastic, Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database, Publisher’s Weekly, and the Library of Congress catalog.