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00:00 Here's and here's one more concern that comes back to procurement, which I still haven't received an answer to. And I'd like an answer. And if it's not today, if anybody that that knows this can get back to us. Are we physically procuring our order forms for the books that come to our libraries? Or do we receive procured orders that are delivered automatically to the schools?

00:36 If that if the second is the case as a standard in our working relationship with these vendors, then in essence, it's the distributors that can't be on the committee. Okay, let's get some further information from Davina. What do you have to say to that? I think the standard generally is that books are being there. It's not a list or like a box of books that shows up at the library. It's the standard is that the librarians, educators, district people use the selection criteria of their policy to select books for their libraries and classroom libraries.

01:27 Do we know, do we, do districts ever receive orders procured from vendors? That they did not solicit themselves. I'm trying to think in my library, I had a local bookstore donate books to me, but I would go through that book that box differently than I would go through a box of books.

02:03 And that was rare, I would say in five years in that library, I probably got two boxes of books from them. There's no procurement, like I, maybe, this never happened to me, and as a district librarian, I never had any of my libraries that I knew of that were getting like boxes of books sent to them from vendors or publishers. Davina, what about the book bundles? I know a couple years ago, those were real popular, bundle a whole bunch of books and you bought a certain grouping. Are those not taking place anymore?

02:35 I'm not hearing about the, I never actually have ever experienced that myself as a district librarian, supervising library in the library. I have heard about what you're talking about, but I personally have not at, in a large district, that was not something that was commonplace. And do we give recommendation at the state level that that's probably not a really great idea? No. No. Okay. Okay. So it's safe to say then that in our, our local school districts, there are specific people that are physically procuring orders of books that are delivered and received at their schools.

03:19 As opposed to a publisher, is that what you're, you're referencing there? Yes, we have staff, educators, librarians that are purchasing books. I would say that's the norm. It's individuals at schools and districts that are purchasing materials using selection criteria policies to do so. Okay. Thank you. You bet. Okay. I'm good with the way it is right now. It may get a little bit of a tweak by next, by board meeting, but I think I'm comfortable with this currently.

03:55 Great. Let's talk a little bit. And I was going to say, Vice Chair Green, if you would like more, like further information on that question, we can get some before the next meeting. We can get with Adam heard as well about procurement or even with the librarians. Okay. Yeah. That would be great. I think it's, yeah, that would be very helpful. Thanks. Thank you. All right. So the next.

00:00 time, I'm reaching out to librarians to understand the procurement process. Like, what is it? What does it take to get a book? And if you stock your business shelves, you know that there are many, many, many levels that go into curating an order, picking that, shipping that, receiving that, inventorying that, cataloging that, placing it on the shelves, and then the process of that being used. So, this is not like it's accidental. It's not like we are completely

00:41 ignorant to, if we praise the specialists, you know, and our experts, then there is a job that, librarians are, have to undertake now. They need to understand the increase and desire, you know, for these industries to push these novels to the detriment of our children. And again, they have been unaccounted. There's no accountability to this happening. And we have seen champions in the state of Utah that have taken great effort to create systems that allow us to see and to filter through

01:24 novel upon novel upon novel upon novel of harmful to minors and pornographic materials. And it's got to stop. We are at a point, it has to stop. We should not be funding this in our schools. Parents should not be sending their kids to school, where they are exposed to this material over and over and over again. And we're just going to turn a blind eye. This is our product. This, the materials that we have in that setting is us. We are the adults in the room. And we know that there comes a point where we have to

02:03 figure this out. And the way that I see it as well, there is no recourse. And these adults that agree with this mock and spit in these parents' face and say, ha, grow up. Kids want this. They do this all the time. We should do this. It's a new trend. We want to be hip. Like all the arguments that are just so silly when we know parents that are, that want to send their kids to school, to learn, to get smart, to be protected, to become the best that they can be, and not be exposed to things that is harmful

02:39 to minors. And I will say at the beginning of this, it says harmful to minors. In the very last sentence, it says harmful material. I would argue that it's actually very cohesive throughout. It's time, it's time we take the next step. If the industry is, has open access, open season to the biggest market in our nation, which is public education and its libraries and millions of children, it is time that we do something about this. And I support this motion.

03:16 Amber Boggess.

00:00 do you want to do you want to do that right now mindful of can we just take five minutes or three or two let me just make it um if we want more time to think about it and then anyway and it might be it might need to be placed in a different space actually but let me just go ahead and make this motion and this is coming from our meeting last week or two weeks ago um just move that the standards and assessment committee direct staff to conduct a comprehensive review and audit and

00:33 again i don't know if that's appropriate here if this is what that word should be a public school library material selection and acquisition practices in utah including funding sources procurement procedures vendor and publisher relationships librarian qualifications and training collection development standards distribution influence and the role of professional organizations in shaping library policies and purchasing decisions and this is um i can speak to it real quick go ahead i i think that there is still um uh just that's that there's just still a little bit of a space that exists that i

01:08 think we're almost at where we can fully um understand the relationship between our our school libraries and you know publishers and distribution centers and all of that um at large you know vendor procurement i said again it's like an order is is procured it's picked it's created it's shipped it's received it's inventory and um i think that i just and the state of utah would really love to have an understanding of what this is um so that we are we don't have to continue to be reactive to an industry um that has full access to you know a

01:51 a minority population like we have a very important stewardship over this um institution that we are creating public education and so i just thought being able to kind of do a deep dive and understand what that looks like and what i want to do with that is to butt it up against you know our sensitive materials rule and and just uh see what we can see and we can fully speak to it so again like i i mentioned last meeting that it seems that it would be our librarians that are in the hot seat and i

02:27 don't i don't think any of us want our librarians to be in that seat i also um follow the you know the news article that came out that said oh it's just you know it's just parents that are doing this we have a rule that parents have to do the work but we also are trying to acknowledge that we have professionals that are doing their job and so we have a lot of kind of reactive and things that we need to really figure out and i just think that this would help us sort out the

02:57 complexities of this and hopefully simplify where um maybe things have gone wrong and we can kind of maybe even um communicate better to that um i don't know industry at large um and and protect that relationship we have with being stewards over people's children um offering the best that we can and encouraging an industry to be aware that um it's not it's not free reign anymore but also doing it thoughtful and educated way so just one clarification okay i agree i agree at this there's not going to be

03:39 time to get this ready for june no no no no okay okay i just wanted to make sure a backup is due next week and i can i'm not sure if it's going into panic mode or not because i am a little bit going on is it okay if we go for august on this information i think we're flexible like and you know how about some feedback okay the the other thing is like it might fall under an audit again i don't know if if this is the right space but i i am looking for a very thoughtful thorough kind of

04:11 understanding and investigation into those relationships okay okay what uh any other comments on that if not we will take a um do we need to put a month on it i don't i don't know i'm kind of thinking through this a little bit i need it to be done before i know i know that's that's why i'm like um i don't even see how this could be done by august because you're i mean i know davis school district is out on friday i don't know about other districts but now you're looking at librarian qualifications so you're looking at i have what 92 schools in my district in in

04:52 davis alone what are the library qualifications for each of those you're going to happen to do a survey into every school in the and and half of them won't be we'll have you know halftime secretaries for the next three months um i don't do you think davina could bring us back maybe a timeline of what she thinks this would take for next month and maybe start if there's pieces that could be done does that sound like a a timeline of what this might look like if we were to do more deep dive

05:22 that that would probably be better just because i'm looking at that just that single one alone that library qualification is is going to be a heavy lift um okay that can we put um maybe just at the end of that um staff will or somewhere their staff will bring up a timeline next month as to what they would think this would take does that sound do you think that's doable by next week to get a rough type of timeline for us okay see a thumbs up okay board member green does that work for you yes okay okay so let me just read

06:04 this out real quick we're trying to hurry so we can get sarah to her meeting uh moved to the standards assessment committee direct staff to bring back a timeline for conducting a comprehensive review and audit of public school library materials selection and acquisition practices in utah including funding sources procurement procedures vendor and publisher relationships uh librarian qualifications and training collection development standards distributor influence and and the role of professional organizations and shaping library policies and purchasing decisions all those in favor aye aye aye aye okay that passes unanimously

00:00 60 60 anybody got 60 I I would go as far as 45 but I wouldn't go beyond that because this is this is a book that's sitting now on but is it it's gone it's pulled you're under the subjective not the objective any longer is that true Davina Southoff library media specialist teaching and learning so once a initial review happens and the two individuals at the LEA review and think there's a plausible claim the book is removed from student access and the other thing I

00:36 would add is that when we are talking about days we might want to consider school days just because we have summer breaks and schools will be out of session and trying to pull people back in over a summer break might cause some concern there so you're saying it's still removed during this time even if it's gone through that I didn't remember that I thought once it went through the the initial process and the objective sensitive materials process that it could be if there's a plausible claim of sensitive materials it's removed from

01:08 student access okay okay I wonder and let's make it 60 days just kidding school days do you want to make that she didn't even hear it it wasn't even worth it I heard you I just know I'm just trying to figure out what that well does 30 school days make it enough because then that adds in weekends and that's like I think 30 school days how long is it and you you've been seeing this what is the normal how long is it taking to usually get that writing committee to meet this is this is their initial meeting on

01:46 that this is the subjective materials piece yeah I am not sure okay how long it is taking I hear just kind of bits and pieces from the field that it is difficult to pull a committee together parents are busy faculty staff are busy so I mean we don't want to drag it out forever and also being cognizant of the time schedules of everyone I wondered too I have just seen that rated books org is now free and open to the public is that a resource that our librarians and school districts can be made aware of so that they could more easily

02:23 look at reviews and content in books so I believe our previous a AG talked about rated books and I don't remember if it was in a committee meeting or if it was in an email thread just that potentially that the the perspectives that in which that this is not a you know industry standard website that is reviewing books based on the way that professional industry reviews titles and so they may be looking at titles in a different way through a different lens than what we would want a title to be reviewed at and does

03:01 anybody remember that conversation with our a AG I just think it was if I remember right it was that we that they're maybe using a variety of resources and not there was something and I can't remember the specifics but in you know an individual person versus an organization or something like that but that doesn't that doesn't prohibit someone from using several sources to review their content because if you know you can go to several sources and get different there's quite a few out there right now so and I think a lot of districts are aware of the different resources we have some on our page and there's some

03:36 others out there it's an it's an easy thing to go and kind of just get a general feel and then go through from there if you get something you're interested in I don't know where we are at 60 60 30 days yeah what do we I just feel like reasonable time needs a parameter and I'm I'm not sure what that parameter needs to be 60 school day or 30 school days something like that

00:00 The other thing, would it be helpful if I, like I've been trying to research, you know, organization influences and how this other realm works. I've come across a list of organizations that exist and are utilized and help, you know, make our public libraries functional. So you've got the School Library Journal, you've got the Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, National Council of Teachers of English, International Society for Technology and Education. Some major vendors and distributors are Follett Content Solutions.

00:36 You have Mackin Educational Resources, Permabound Books, Junior Library Guild, Ingram Content Group, Baker and Taylor. And then you've got the others like Scholastic, Penguin, Harper and Collins, McMillan, Simon and... Would it be helpful if I send those to you? Because those are, that's like the specific lane. I'm looking to see like what those relationships look like. And I don't know if you've rolled that into the supply chain and procurement part of what you've given us. And I'm asking, because if I need to make a motion now, I can.

01:14 If we're flexible on that, I'm more than happy to share what I've personally been collecting and researching, what would be best. I'm always open to more information. So please share. I'm very familiar with all of those names that you mentioned as well. So, okay. I don't know how the committee feels if, if I need to put that into any of, you know, make an amendment. Maybe board member Green, when you send something for it, maybe just send it to the committee too. Does that make sense? So that we're in the loop?

01:49 Yeah, absolutely. And if we, if we just want to look at...

00:00 So we might just set this because we have one more item to go to. We're going to set this aside for just a second. We're trying to make sure how we can ask because it wasn't cited. Does that make sense? So it was within the backup, yeah. Jenny? Yeah. What if to your point about asking leadership about it, but ask leadership to send it to law and licensing in July? Oh, okay. So law and licensing is having a July meeting. So we can request leadership just so that we can make sure it's an action item.

00:37 The problem we're running into is it's not, although it wasn't noticed, although we don't adhere to public comment. Yeah, okay. Okay, so we'll have to see if this can be on the agenda. Let's get what we want to go on and request that maybe leadership consider putting this on law and licensing so that it can actually have a vote behind it. So I think it would be moving forward, the recommended policy consideration, the monitoring. What did we title it? How did we title it?

01:14 Give me a second. Let me find it. The school library monitoring timeline? Yes, so I guess, Board Member Green, do you want to make that motion and then just ask that we consider using $50,000 to $60,000 of discretionary funds, and then we can hammer that out a little bit more with Scott Jones and make sure we've got the right amount there. And why don't you just do $60,000 and then what we'll do is if we can request that is amended if it changes. Okay, and just for clarification, last month's meeting, where that motion was made, why was that bumped underneath?

01:57 Was it because it fell underneath the sensitive materials or should it have been its own agenda item because the motion was made? Yeah, it was put under sensitive materials, but it wasn't cited as a separate action item as far as requesting funding for it. Okay, so I would move that we move that we move the comprehensive school library monitoring timeline forward to law and licensing's July meeting,

02:49 requesting, requesting $60,000 in funding. From discretionary funds? From discretionary funds. Okay. And then do I need to clarify and to move forward to full board in the August 2026 meeting? Yeah, I think that would be appropriate. Yeah, that would work. Okay, so the, well, let me read it and then if there's any discussion.

03:24 Yeah, after library we need the word monitoring, if you don't mind. Okay, so let me read it and if we need to adjust anything we can. That the committee ask board leadership to add the comprehensive school library monitoring timeline to the July long licensing committee meeting, requesting $60,000 from the discretionary funds and to move the timeline forward to the full board meeting in August. Okay, all those in favor? Okay, all those in favor? All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed?

04:01 Okay, board member Real is in opposition there were four before this, so okay, we have one more item.

00:00 of this motion she's trying not to make eye contact with the motion okay so let me go ahead and state state the motion and it and we're almost at dinner time so we'll get there okay the motion is that the board adopt the 2026 timeline plan draft one as amended on second and final reading and appropriate sixty thousand dollars from board discretionary funds for implementation include the usbe library review addendum revised and give staff the flexibility to adjust the timeline to meet the requirements and that the instrument would be a starting point and to include the memorandum to

00:38 the usbe library review addendum document august 4 2026 member green draft one as part of the 2026 timeline plan which clarifies that the amendment documents are included for staff refinement and committee discussion not as a final form yeah it's a quote from the document okay seeing no lights let's vote

01:21 okay that motion passes 10 in favor one abstention chair hymas and two no votes being member real and member lear

01:58 and with that going back to you uh chair carrie from the committee uh that was the last item to be uh discussed from law and licensing thank you okay thank you with that it looks like we are ready for a dinner break okay there's salads and sandwiches so help yourselves yep

00:00 that motion fails six in favor nine opposed those in favor are member Lear member real member Hymas member Wood member Bollinger and member Davis okay so the underlying motion then is is to include the USB library review addendum revised

00:00 hands here so go ahead hold on sarah is frantically there we go question really quick uh there was an edit on the minutes from last board and that was so we don't need to make that here we just sit now we're approving the minutes with that edit made it made right yes just clarifying that was emailed to board members for clarity there was uh jenny voted twice yes yeah yeah okay i just want to make sure that we're voting on the ones that are updated okay thanks that was a good

00:31 clarification member booth go ahead i would move that we approve the consent calendar there's a motion to approve the consent calendar there is a second um we have virtual and in person so let's go ahead and vote on that and i will look for um member bogus is she with us online remember bogus

01:07 not hearing member hall yes thank you remember kelly yes thank you remember green yes thank you and member brinton yes thank you joe and i'm a yes also oh thank you davis is online now thank you member davis yes thank you and one one more call for member bogus okay that passes unanimously with one absent that being member bogus

01:44 okay thank you board members uh now if we happen to lose enough

00:00 Thank you. Consent items. Board, are there any items that were requested to remove from consent?

00:38 If not, we're ready for a motion on the consent items. I move that we accept consent items 1 through 10. I second that motion. Thank you. We have a motion for Mr. Robison, a second for Ms. Hogan on consent items 1 through 10. All in favor of that motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed with a nay? Okay, that one passes unanimously.

01:29 The first group is consent items. Board, before we open that for a vote, are there any items that you'd like moved from the consent agenda to a business item? Okay. With that, we're ready for a motion on the consent items 1 through 9. 10? 10? What's that? There are 10. Oh, you're right. There's a more recent version. Mine says 9. Yeah. Okay, so it's consent items 1 through 10. Thank you. I move we approve consent items 1 through 10.

02:05 I'll second that. So we have a motion from Mr. Robison, a second from Ms. Gerrard to approve consent items 1 through 10. All in favor of that motion, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous. We'll move. We'll move now to our consent items. Board members, are there any items that you'd like to move from consent to a business item? President Mumford, I would like to move item number 2 to a business item, please.

02:46 Thank you. So I'm going to move item number 2 to the top of our business items, and that leaves the board minutes as a consent item. We need a motion to approve those minutes. I'll move that we approve the minutes. I'll second. So we have a motion from Ms. Gerrard and a second from Ms. Price to approve the minutes. Any discussion or questions? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. We'll move forward now to our business items and the board appeal committee recommendations.

03:32 If not, I think we're ready for a vote. If not, I think we're ready for a vote. We had a motion by Ms. Gerrard and a second by Mr. Robison. All in favor of the motion to approve the board appeal committee recommendation to reinstate the Bible in all DSD media centers, please say aye. Aye. That's unanimous by the board. Thank you, Dr. Taylor. Thank you, Dr. Taylor.

04:21 Great. Next, we have our consent items. Board, are there any items you'd like to remove from the consent agenda to a regular business item? Seeing none, we'll take a motion to approve consent items 1 through 8. I move we accept the consent items 1 through 8. I'll second that motion. So we have a motion from Mr. Lamb and a second from Ms. Price. All in favor of accepting consent items 1 through 8, please say aye. Aye. Aye.

05:00 I'm going to proceed on our agenda to consent items. Are there any items that a board member would like to move off of consent to a business item? Seeing none, we're ready for a motion to approve consent items 1 through 6. Oh, sorry. Ms. Powell. Yeah. Or just a question before we proceed? Well, like, so if I want a discussion, move it, too.

05:36 Move it? Yeah. Move it. So 5 and 6, the additional one-time compensation and superintendent contract, those are the two. Okay. Sounds good. So we need a motion to approve consent items 1 through 4. I move that we approve the consent items 1 through 4. I'll second that. So we've got a motion from Ms. Hogan and a second from Ms. Gerrard to approve consent items 1 through 4. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Okay.

06:14 So if there's no objections to items 1 through 6, we'll take a motion to approve the consent items. I'll move that we approve the consent items 1 through 6 with the small change.

06:52 I'll second that. So we have a motion from Ms. Gerrard and a second from Ms. Price to approve consent items 1 through 6, noting a clerical change to the minutes as noted by Ms. Powell. Any discussion? I just want to clarify for Ms. Powell over there. The other Ms. Powell. It was the October 3rd meeting and under board reports. Did you get what I said? It should say legislative priorities, not religious leader. I'm sure it was just a. Thank you. Okay. All in favor, please say aye.

07:28 Aye. Aye. Thank you. I'll move that we approve consent items 1 through 6. Okay. Next up, we're going to move to our consent items. Board, are there any requests to move a consent item to business?

08:04 Motion to approve consent items 1 through 6? I'll move that we approve consent items 1 through 6. Second. Thank you. So we have a motion from Ms. Gerrard, a second from Ms. Powell. All in favor of that motion to consent on items 1 through 6, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. That's unanimous. We'll move. We're to the portion of our meeting to the consent items, and hopefully you've had plenty

08:50 of time to look at those consent items. Are there any items that anyone would like to move off of consent onto a business item? President Gerrard. Yes. I'd like to remove Item 8, Sensitive Materials Appeal Committee Recommendation. Okay. Let me find that. Okay. We will move that to a business item. Do we have to vote on that, Mr. Lovell? We don't, do we? It's just a request of a board member, I believe. I think you would just vote to approve everything else besides that one. Yeah, but we don't have to vote to move it.

09:27 So, okay. Anything else? Do we have a motion to approve the consent items except for number 8, the Sensitive Materials Appeal Committee Recommendation? I move to approve Consent Items 1 through 7. I'll second that. Okay. So, we had a motion by Ms. Powell and a second by Ms. Price to approve the consent items except for an abrate. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so we have the motion on the floor to table the sensitive materials appeals recommendation

10:27 until February and until after some more information will be added on to the website. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. One opposed. Oh, no. Sorry. Was that? No. Okay. Okay. Unanimous then. Okay, now, consent items.

11:12 Okay, is there any piece of a consent item, any number that you want to move to business item? If not, I will entertain a motion. I move that we approve consent items one through six. Second. Okay. We have a motion by Ms. Hogan and a second by Ms. Powell to approve the consent items one through six. All in favor?

11:47 Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That passes. Hopefully you've had a chance to look at the consent items. Are there any items that you would like to move to a business item on that list? Ms. Hogan? Yeah. I request we pull number seven sensitive materials appeal committee recommendation from consent.

12:25 Okay. To business. Okay. We will pull that and put that on our business item agenda. We'll do that one first. Do I hear a motion on the rest of the consent items minus number seven? So, I move that we approve consent items one through six and eight. I'll second that motion. Okay. We have a motion to approve the consent items one through six and then eight minus number

13:01 seven. And it was motioned by Ms. Barber and seconded by Ms. Price. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you. okay we have a motion and a second on the floor I'm not going to read the motion again but all in

13:46 favor say aye aye all opposed to the motion no no no okay so help me vote raise your hand with the four to three okay four for the motion no you probably want to let's do a raise of hand all those in favor of the motion so there's one two three all those against the motion the other four okay that motion fails

14:43 so is there a motion on the other side I move we approve the sensitive materials appeal committee recommendation item seven in the consent items I'll second okay so all in favor of that motion to approve the original consent item say aye aye all opposed no opposed okay so same vote so that motion passes the original motion on the consent agenda so okay

15:35 okay we have our consent agenda items one through six is there anything on the consent agenda that anyone would like move to a business item if not I will hear motion on our consent items one through six I move to accept consent items one through six thank you okay we have a motion from Ms. Hogan and the second was from Ms. Powell to approve consent items one through six any other discussion

16:20 any other discussion okay all in favor of approving consent items one through six say aye aye any opposed okay that motion passes thank you okay we have our consent agenda okay okay next board we have our consent agenda items one through 11 is there um anything on our consent agenda that you would like to move to a business item

17:06 no no if not i will entertain a motion on our consent i move to approve consent items one through 11. okay Ms. Price has made the motion is there a second second okay we have a motion by Ms. Price and a second by Ms. Hogan to approve the consent items one through 11. okay Ms. Price has made the motion is there a second second okay we have a motion by Ms. Price and a second by Ms. Hogan to approve the consent items one through 11. any other discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed okay those have passed

17:38 we'll move to our consent items next so we have consent items one through six is there any consent anything on the consent agenda that anyone would like to move julie yeah i would like to move the board minutes and it's i just need to make a small correction on my board report section in the minutes and i noticed this after the agenda was posted so i have to do this in a public board meeting so okay we'll do that well we'll do that afterwards we'll uh i'll entertain a motion right now for consent um items two through six we'll do that first and then we'll go to the other one is there a motion for that i move that we approve consent items two through six okay i'll second that

18:30 okay there's been a motion by Ms. Hogan to approve consent items two through six second by Ms. Price any more discussion okay all in favor to approve those say aye aye any opposed okay that motion passes for items two through six okay consent items we have consent items one through nine um is there any one of the consent items that anyone would like to move off to the uh to a

19:29 uh to a business item no i'd like to move number five just for just i just want to make a comment okay okay okay okay so we'll we'll come back to that one so let's go ahead and uh do we have a motion to approve consent items one through nine not um not um minus number five i move to approve consent items one through four and six through nine

20:06 oh good listed in the agenda okay okay we have a motion by Ms. Price and a second by Ms. Powell to uh approve uh consent items um one through four and then six through nine any discussion okay all in favor aye any opposed okay uh those passed

20:44 so um the issue is it was just strictly a procedural uh kind of a technical issue that led into more substantive problem and it's my understanding this is the first time that it's been appealed to the board so that's why it's come up and why it may have happened 40 times before but this is the first time it's come up to the board level and and you can do some of that if it's non-controversial and routine on a consent uh calendar i just don't think in this case it worked and i do think that a judge should it get to the point of

21:23 being reviewed by a judge would find that it was a problem and the easiest way to clean it up is to send it back and have them do it in accordance with that um it's they've adopted robert's rules of order and robert's rules of order specifically says that the only things that go on consent decrees uh i mean on the consent agenda or consent calendar are non-controversial and routine matters and so under these circumstances it's clearly not non-controversial routine i don't want to address because i don't know that this should ever be considered routine

22:01 but their own policy specifically says that it has to be um to the full board for approval during a public board meeting and so it was it was a technical violation that kind of ran them into a substantive problem it's not something that can't be fixed it's not something that i think they were acting in bad faith on or anything like like they said they've done it repeatedly and nobody's called them on it this was the first time they got called on it i mean this is a very narrow issue uh because we didn't like i said we i didn't reach the issue

22:34 of whether or not fight club actually violates sensitive materials because we don't have to there is a procedural issue and the procedural issue is required that they follow their policy i think that a court should it get past us could very well find that they did not because they've adopted robert's rules and they did not follow those because the whole point of the consent decree is there's a bunch of items on it and they're basically passed because they're routine and non-controversial and they get passed so you guys can save your time and do other things that that need to be much more discussed i think it was a

23:12 technical issue i don't think it was an intentional i'm trying to hide the ball type of issue or anything like that i think it was a technical issue that they've done before and this is the first time that it's been brought to our attention and in reviewing what i was provided reviewing their rules reviewing our rules and robert's rules which i know far more about now than i ever wanted to i think that they are and i do think that a court would find that they were in violation just strictly

23:45 on the not being clear on the appeal and the rationale for their decision

00:00 consent items board are there any items that were requested to remove from consent if not we're ready for a motion on the consent items I move that we accept consent items one through ten I second that motion thank you we have a motion for mr. Robinson a second from miss Hogan on consent items one through ten all in favor of that motion please say aye aye aye any opposed with a name okay that one passes unanimously

00:00 the first group is consent items board before we open that for a vote are there any items that you'd like move from the consent agenda to a business item okay with that we're ready for a motion on the consent items 1 through 9 10 what's that there are 10 oh you're right there's a more recent version mine says nine case so it's consent items 1 through 10 thank you I move we approve consent items 1 through 10 I'll second that so we have a motion from mr. Robison a second

00:36 from mr. art to approve consent items 1 through 10 all in favor of that motion say aye aye aye any opposed that's unanimous we'll move

00:00 move now to our consent items board members are there any items that you'd like to move from consent to a business item president Mumford I would like to move item number two to a business item please thank you so I'm gonna move item number two to the top of our business items and that leaves the board minutes as a consent item we need a motion to approve those minutes I'll move that we approve the minutes I'll second so we have a motion from mr. Rd and a second from miss price to approve the minutes any discussion or questions all in favor

00:37 please say aye aye that's unanimous we'll move forward now to our business items and the board appeal committee recommendations

00:00 now to our business items and the board appeal committee recommendation is now at the top of the list and Dr. Toon I'd invite you to come forward as the presenter so the board's up to speed on that final recommendation. Thank you President Mumford, Vice President Gerard Bord, Superintendent and Business Administrator. This decision has been in the works for quite some time. In December we received a request from a community member to review the appropriateness of the inclusion of the Bible in the school libraries in our district. That was submitted according to our policy and the

00:34 individual does have standing in our district as per our policy and so we assign that review to our one of our sensitive materials review committees which are made up of four parents and three staff members. Those parents are randomly selected by a lottery. That committee is in compliance with a key aspect of the state law that requires that in making designations around sensitive materials that districts utilize parents who are representative of the school community in making those decisions and recommendations. Several many weeks later after a full review of the Bible the committee made a decision

01:09 that's been very well publicized around the world that the Bible should be removed from junior high and elementary schools that it was age appropriate for high schools only. So I'll share just a little bit about how that designation's made because that's key to the consideration that the appeal committee gave as they very carefully weighed in the balance of recommendation to bring to the full board today. So in Utah law there's two basic decisions that need to be made. The first decision is references of what they call a bright line rule. In code are outlined basically three

01:42 types of sexual content whereby if the content is described or depicted in the text then that designation is made by our committee that that content violates the sensitive materials law and is removed regardless of the value or the consideration of the work as a whole. That's the bright line rule. That's been a part of the conversation around library media for quite some time. There's there are viewpoints on either side of that argument. Our intent always has been and will continue to be to uphold the law as we've received the from our legislature as well as the guidance from Utah State Board of Education in their model.

02:20 And the attorney general is he's written a very specific memo advising on ways to adhere to state law and also minimize the risk of potential legal challenges outside of the state of Utah. So after the if the committee makes a designation that the book does not contain a violation of this of the bright line rule then the work is considered as a whole and there's kind of a balancing act that takes place between the content that's there. The state board policy as well as ours uses the phrase violence and vulgarity and that's balanced in conjunction with the value of the work as a whole to minors.

02:56 And that value is based on expert reviews, the committee members experience and background as well as their own assessment of the community standard. And so committees come together and they make a judgment about the value of the work as a whole and then they make a judgment about the nature of the content that's in there and they do a balancing act to determine age appropriateness. And so some mistakenly have thought that the Bible was deemed to have a violation of the bright line rule. That's not accurate. Our committee initially said that the Bible did not violate the bright line rule.

03:26 And then after that further consideration in weighing in the balance, the committee determined that it is age appropriate for high school only. And that was when we were by our policy implement those decisions immediately. And that decision was implemented and announced and almost immediately we began to receive appeal requests and the community started to take note of that decision. The appeal requests continue to come in throughout the 15-day appeal window and our policy does allow for a full consideration of every decision by individuals in the community withstanding who can request an appeal.

04:01 Those appeal requests as well as all the information that was considered by the initial committee were provided to the appeal committee which is a subset of the board consisting of three elected board members. I facilitate that committee just in terms of ensuring that they have the understanding of the law and policy as well as the materials they need but I'm not a voting member of that committee. So the committee received all the materials and began to process the appeal according to our policy. the reconsideration of the Bible today is not an exception to our policy, it is a direct application of our policy as it's written.

04:38 And it's important to note that because of the concerns that would exist if we all of a sudden started to create exceptions for specific books that we like or that align with our personal religious perspectives or something like that. And so the appeals committee met and considered two questions, the same two questions the initial committee considered. Does the book violate the bright line rule? And our appeal committee determined that in their view it does not. And then they considered also age appropriateness which is that balance balancing test between the value of the work as a whole to minors as well as the other content that's available that's presented in the book.

05:18 Our committee in weighing their own assessment of the community standard made a determination that the value of the work as a whole is sufficient to supersede any concerns about the content that's in the book. And made the recommendation to you as a board that you would consider the Bible, King James Version, to be considered age appropriate for elementary, junior high, and high school students. That decision if approved by the board would essentially be would overturn the decision made by the initial committee. And the handful of copies that were removed from the handful of schools that we had at junior high and elementary schools that had the Bible would then be restored.

06:00 So the effect of that would be just a simple restoration of those, I think it was eight books that were in elementary and junior high schools and those would be restored to the collections in the school. So I hope that background is sufficient for your consideration today. I will just add my own personal perspective to this whole process. There's been some narrative in the community that maybe this was an effort to undermine either a district effort or effort by individuals on the community to undermine the law or to make a point about whether the law is appropriate or not.

06:31 And I can tell you that is wholly untrue. This has been from the beginning an effort to implement the policy. And the policy from the beginning has been a sincere effort to adhere to the state law, to minimize all risk of legal challenge, and to involve parents in the decision, every decision along the way as we're directed by the state code. And so I'll just add that as my as my final point and then just I'll be available for any questions as you discuss. But the I'm here to present the appeal committee's recommendation that the Bible be considered age appropriate for all levels.

07:07 Thank you, Dr. Toon. So board will need a motion in regards to the board appeal committee recommendation at this point. I will move that we approve the recommendation of the book appeals committee. Second. Thank you. So we have a motion by Ms. Gerrard and a second by Mr. Robison to approve the proposal of the board appeal committee, which would reinstate the Bible in all levels of Davis School District libraries where it had been previously restricted. We'll open that up now for any discussion. I imagine each board member probably has something they'd like to express.

07:46 And I think just to keep a matter of equal access to share thoughts. Let's go ahead and start with you, Mr. Robison, and then we'll just go down the line. Well, I would just express gratitude to the process, but more importantly to the people that were part of the process. I think it's unfortunate that we've heard comments about a rogue committee that just kind of went out on their own. These are wonderful people, both staff members and parents, who are trying to do the very best they could to make sure that we follow the law.

08:22 So I give a lot of credit to those individuals, to our training of those people through the teaching and learning department. But I also give credit to our appeals committee because that, again, is part of the process. The comforting thing to me as a board member and a community member is that we made every single attempt that we possibly could to stay within the law. And there have been hours and hours of discussion prior to the implementation or the process being voted on by the board of very, very intense preparation

08:58 to make sure that we were part of the law the way that the legislature and the Attorney General wanted us to be. So my point is just thank you for keeping us within the law, and I appreciate all the work that went in by all who were involved in this. I echo that. I have not seen anything but sincere intent to follow the law and really just do the right thing. I don't see a lot of ulterior motives at all personally being involved and watching all the things the district has done,

09:36 and I really appreciate all the hard work that they've done. I realize that in the law I looked extensively at the law, and I think, in my opinion, it allows for quite a bit of subjectivity, and it's going to be difficult to kind of really consistently apply this, but we're trying. I really appreciate the community input, and I realize that this is a work in progress. We're kind of new at doing this, and our district is probably the fastest at it. Thank you, Dr. Toon. I know you've really put a lot of work into this, and so we're open to looking at improving our process and policies.

10:17 Thank you. Ms. Gerard. Well, some of this might be a repeat, but I think it warrants saying again. I don't think you could say thank you enough, so I wanted to start out first by saying thank you to all of those who are serving and have served on our book review committees for the work that they have done throughout the district. The law, Utah Code 53-10-10 requires that committees, consisting of a majority of parents on those committees, conduct the reviews on book requests. We have complied with this law, as has been said, and I'm very grateful to the outstanding administrators, librarians, community council members, and other parents who have given huge amounts of time, effort, and thought into these book reviews to make this possible.

11:10 I'm very appreciative. I'm very appreciative for what they've done. Having said that, it is my firm opinion that the King James Version of the Bible is a historically significant, very important book of scripture with deep spiritual meaning for many people. The magnitude of the magnitude of the value of the Bible as a literary work outweighs any violence or profanity, which may be contained in the book, in keeping with our district policy, considering that the book as a whole and considering the community standards has significant value for all.

11:49 That policy is 4I-202, and again, speak in support of the appeals committee decision while thanking the original committee that worked on this. They put so much time into it, and I'm very appreciative. I want to thank everyone who has reached out in support in emails and phone calls and comments today. We appreciate that very much, and I appreciate those that have been patient while this process has been worked through.

12:27 For the past few weeks, there have also been some name-calling, false accusations, and even threats directed at Davis School District. And I just want to state, for the record, that Davis School District is full of amazing, dedicated, caring, good people, all working for the benefit of children. And it is my privilege to be able to work with them. I just want, lastly, to encourage all of us to treat each other with more dignity, respect, and kindness.

13:12 This message is so important, and it's the focus of an organization called the Dignity Index. Their website is dignityindex.us. I truly believe that this is what our entire country and our state needs at this time as we try to work together to accomplish good things that benefit all of us. Thank you. Well, it has been an interesting several weeks, and I'm grateful for the process that has brought us to this point of voting as an elective board on the matter of retaining the Bible in our schools.

13:54 I continue to be humbled by my responsibility to the community that I represent. Clearly, the Bible has literary and artistic value for minors and is consistent with our community standards. Personally, I believe it is a sacred text. I agree with the original review committee when they determined that the Bible does not contain the explicit sexual depictions as defined by the law. They spent many, many hours working through the review process. There is a delicate balance that needs to be walked here.

14:30 I am very concerned about the sexualization of our children, and there can be no debate that pornographic material is harmful to minors. I also value reading as a way to cultivate critical thinking and expose us to different viewpoints, cultures, and ideas. I wish our kids would read more, not less. It has been disheartening to me to see the contention that has arisen between people who, in good faith, want what is best for our kids. Democracy is messy, and I hope, like Bridget said, for more understanding and grace for everyone involved on all sides of this issue moving forward.

15:13 The process has not been perfect, but I believe it is working. Thank you. I agree with everybody else. I am sorry that those who are in top leadership positions treated us this way. I thought we were working together. They will all get a call from me. I am very happy about the way the district handled it and the process. And most of the time when I learn something in life, it's tough.

15:51 And this was a tough one to watch. Thank you. I also just want to echo what everybody has said. It's good to be last. And I just want to express my appreciation as well for just the process, the people involved. And I mean, I know, I can't remember who said this, but I am proud to represent our school district and my community.

16:27 And I know that the people that work in this district care about our students and children, and that they have their best interest at heart. And I'm just grateful for what everyone has done. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Price. Just some quick final thoughts. I got to speak a lot last week, so I won't say much, but I wanted to kind of bring it all into one spot. In the six and a half years that I've been serving on the board, we've grappled with some really challenging issues. We've had racism, boundary changes, school closures, mascot disputes, COVID restrictions.

17:07 And we find ourselves in an interesting position as a board. Schools are often compelled to act as mediating institutions. And that's the situation where we've been in, where we're navigating differences of opinion that are in the communities that we serve. And the situation before us tonight is challenging because it's something that's at the heart of what we each believe in. For me, as a person of faith, as a person who has a strong conviction for constitutional principles, and someone who values books, it's a lot of things that come together in one decision.

17:42 Some thought that this might just be an easy decision and that we could just simply reject the initial submittal. Or maybe where the board should have just canceled the committee's determination. But I felt like this issue really required us to honor the process and the policy. That's what protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and our ability to evaluate other books in our media centers effectively. I believe that Davis School District is on solid legal ground with this due process with a reasonable basis.

18:17 It includes community participation and full accountability from this body. That gave me a lot of confidence and calm in recent weeks as I knew that our board would have the opportunity to each state our voice and we would be able to work through this with the dignified way that we handle issues. I'm grateful for review committee volunteers that have been serving for the entire school year on a variety of different texts. I'm grateful for the district staff and leadership who helped facilitate and support that process. And for the librarians that are managing our libraries and making them places of learning.

18:51 And I'm also grateful for the diligent work of our colleagues who served on the appeal committee. They were in a challenging position and they worked to quickly review everything according to policy so we could get to a solution for our community. It's a process that played out fairly and there will be some who disagree with the vote tonight just as there were some who disagreed with the committee. I'm in full support of the appeal committee's recommendation. My vote to fully retain the King James version of the Bible in all school settings is based on an objective criteria and a deep personal belief that the Bible has serious literary artistic historical and political value for minors.

19:29 And it is consistent with the community that we were elected by. I recognize that our policy can use some refinements and improvements just as we do with all of our policy. I'm committed to following the laws addressing explicit material in expeditious ways and engaging our community because you're so important in this work. I hope we can move forward and better apply our resources resources to serve the interests of our students and their learning.

00:00 If not, I think we're ready for a vote. We had a motion by Miss Gerard and a second by Mr. Robison all in favor in them of the motion to approve the board appeal committee recommendation to reinstate the Bible in all DSD media centers. Please say aye, aye That's unanimous by the board. Thank you. Dr. To

00:00 Great. Next, we have our consent items. Board, are there any items you'd like to remove from the consent agenda to a regular business item? Seeing none, we'll take a motion to approve consent items 1 through 8. I move we accept the consent items 1 through 8. I'll second that motion. So we have a motion from Mr. Lamb and a second from Ms. Price. All in favor of accepting consent items 1 through 8, please say aye. Okay, next we'll open our first business

00:00 to proceed on our agenda to consent items are there any items that a board member would like to move off of consent to a business item seeing none we're ready for a motion to approve consent items 1 through 6 oh sorry yeah or just a question before we proceed well like so if they if I want a discussion move it to a bit yeah so 5 and 6 the additional one-time compensation and super con superintendent contract those are the two okay sounds good so we need a motion to approve consent items 1 through 4 I move that we approve the

00:41 consent items 1 through 4 I'll second that so we've got a motion from miss Hogan and a second from mr. R to approve consent items 1 through 4 all in favor please say aye aye aye aye that's unanimous board

00:00 So if there's no objections to items 1 through 6, we'll take a motion to approve the consent items. I'll move that we approve the consent items 1 through 6 with the small change. I'll second that. So we have a motion from Ms. Gerard and a second from Ms. Price to approve consent items 1 through 6, noting a clerical change to the minutes as noted by Ms. Powell. Any discussion? I just want to clarify for Ms. Powell over there. The other Ms. Powell.

00:36 It was the October 3rd meeting under board reports. Did you get what I said? It should say legislative priorities, not religious leader. I'm sure it was just a. Thank you. Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you.

00:00 Next up we're gonna move to our consent items board. Are there any requests to move a consent item to business? Seeing none. I'll take a motion to approve consent items 1 through 6 I'll move that we approve consent items 1 through 6 second Thank you. So we have a motion from mr. Ard a second from miss Powell all in favor of that motion to consent on items 1 through 6 please say aye aye thank you that's unanimous we'll move

00:00 we're to the portion of our meeting uh to the consent items and uh hopefully you've had plenty of time to look at those consent items are there any items that anyone would like to move off of consent on to a business item uh president drard yes i'd like to remove item eight sensitive materials appeal committee recommendation okay um we will move that to a business side do we have to vote on that mr lovell we don't do it it's just a request of a board member i believe i think you

00:38 would just vote to approve everything else besides that one yeah but we don't have to vote to move it so okay um anything else um do we have a motion to uh approve the consent items um except for number eight the sensitive materials appeal committee recommendation i move to approve consent items one through seven i'll second that okay so we had a motion by ms powell and a second by ms price to approve the consent items um except for an abrate thank you all in favor aye aye aye aye any opposed

00:00 Okay, so we have the motion on the floor to table the sensitive materials appeals. Recommendation until February and until after some more information will be added on to the website. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. One opposed. Oh, no. Sorry. Was that? No. Okay. Okay. Unanimous. Okay.

00:00 okay now consent items okay is there is there any piece of the consent item any number that you want to move to business item if not I will entertain a motion I move that we approve consent items one through six second okay we have a motion by miss Hogan and a second by miss Powell to approve the consent items one through six all in favor aye aye any opposed okay that passes

00:00 So hopefully you've had a chance to look at the consent items. Are there any items that you would like moved to a business item on that list? Ms. Hogan? Yeah, I request we pull number seven, Sensitive Materials Appeal Committee Recommendation from Consent to Business. Okay. We will pull that and put that on our business item agenda. We'll do that one first. Do I hear a motion on the rest of the consent items minus number seven?

00:37 So I move that we approve consent items one through six and eight. I'll second that motion. Okay. We have a motion to approve the consent items one through six and then eight minus number seven. And it was motioned by Ms. Barber and seconded by Ms. Price. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you.

00:00 Okay, we have a motion and a second on the floor. I'm not going to read the motion again, but all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed to the motion? No. Okay, so help me vote. Raise your hand with the four to three. Okay, four for the motion? No, I get some motion. You probably want to. Okay, let's do a raise of hand. All those in favor of the motion? So there's one, two, three.

00:36 All those against the motion, the other four. Okay, that motion fails.

00:00 okay so is there a motion on the other side I move we we approve the sensitive materials appeal committee recommendation item 7 in the consent items I'll second okay so all in favor of that motion to approve the original consent item say aye aye all opposed no opposed okay so the same vote so that motion passes the original motion on the consent agenda so okay

00:00 Okay, we have our consent agenda items one through six Is there anything on the consent agenda that anyone would like move to a business item? If not, I will hear a motion on our consent items one through six. I Move to accept consent items one through six Thank you Okay, we have a motion from Ms. Hogan and the second was from Ms. Powell to approve consent items one through six any other discussion?

00:38 Okay, all in favor of approving consent items one through six say aye aye any opposed Okay, that motion passes Thank you

00:00 um okay next board we have our consent agenda um items one through eleven is there um anything on our consent agenda that you would like to move to a business item no if not i will entertain a motion on our consent i move to approve consent items one through eleven okay miss price let's make the motion is there a second second okay we have a motion by mr price and a second by miss hoca to approve the consent items one through eleven any other discussion all in favor aye aye

00:38 any opposed okay those have passed

00:00 We'll move to our consent items next so we have consent items 1 through 6 Is there any consent anything on the consent agenda that anyone would like to move Julie? Yeah, I would like to move the board minutes And it's I just need to make a small correction on my board report section in the minutes And I noticed this after the agenda was posted so I have to do this in a public board meeting Okay, we'll do that up. Well, we'll do that afterwards. We'll all and entertain a motion right now for consent

00:30 Items 2 through 6. We'll do that first and then we'll go to the other one. Is there a motion for that I? Move that we approve consent items 2 through 6 Okay, I'll second second. Okay. There's been a motion by Miss Hogan to approve a gent consent items 2 through 6 Second by Miss price any more discussion Okay, all in favor to approve those say aye aye any opposed Okay, that motion passes for items two through six.

00:00 Okay. Consent items. We have consent items one through nine. Is there any one of the consent items that anyone would like to move off to a business item? No? I'd like to move number five just for, I just want to make a comment. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So we'll come back to that one. So let's go ahead and do we have a motion to approve consent items one through

00:35 nine, not minus number five. I move to approve consent items one through four and six through nine. Oh, good. Listed in the agenda. Second. Okay. We have a motion by Ms. Price and a second by Ms. Powell to approve consent items one through four and then six through nine. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Those passed.

00:00 those pass and now we'll go to um number five and miss powell did you want to want to talk about that one yeah i just wanted to note um so this instructional material is a whole novel the fault in our stars recommended for grades 10 and above and in the committee notes the original committee that reviewed it they mentioned they suggested that um we prove but include like apparent letter warning because there is some kind of risky content in there and i would highly suggest

00:38 that i don't know if i need to make a motion for that or just well i i agree with that and i had taken note of that and thought a lot about that i i don't know that we need to um well i think we can we can uh take the motion to approve that and add that wording right uh tj mr strain um is that something we need to add because that was in the notes so um i think i think they this is always a suggestion good practice just any time that that whatever novel is being read we're just trying to

01:14 get our teachers just to send a note home just saying hey we're about to read this whether that's in a disclosure yeah or just hey the unit on the fault in our stars is coming up and so i don't know if it would need to be like a formal recommendation but but we continue to recommend that to our teachers just for good practice just to keep parents in in the loop okay president is it okay if i had yes yes please need to be clear that at the to clarify there are no sensitive materials in the book right sensitive

01:46 material would prohibit it from use in schools there's no sensitive materials right um and an approval with a board directive to include some kind of letter home would be abnormal um typically those instructional recommendations flow through the process that tj outlined um certainly that's the board's prerogative but it would be pretty out of the ordinary considering the the nature of the board's role in approving instructional materials because because it is a general practice anyway right yeah usually yes usually they either put it in their syllabus or their beginning of year materials or i've known some teachers

02:23 that will send an email home just saying hey next month or next week we're going to start our unit on the fault in our stars right here's what the book is about some great um discussion points that you can have with your students here's also some things that you might want to be aware of because parents can opt out always yeah yeah they don't want their child reading that ms barber do you have a comment i think i i'm just remembering i think the last time we had something like this come up and i i'm so i will repeat

02:51 myself sorry for that but i i feel like i would be uncomfortable recommending that because then that becomes we become the separate deciding board of what decides that you gets it and it doesn't and i don't feel comfortable being that but i think we just stick with the syllabus and i know i keep hearing that puts it all on the parents to read the syllabus and know what's going on but that's really who should have the responsibility yes of looking through this so i i'm comfortable with just approving that okay okay

03:17 and it has been said and um this pal did you want you can finish your comment but yeah yeah it has been said and and noted and um it sounds like it it is a general practice that we do anyway but um it is important that that does happen so so my concern is you know if a parent sees a kid come home with this book read it and like they might know there is some i mean it's some something some stuff in there that a parent could be concerned about the thing with like me as a parent if it's just put in the general

03:57 syllabus i'm not going to read it i chances are i'm not going to read it but if if sometimes a teacher will email me hey this book is going to be um we're going to cover this let me know if you don't if you want something an alternative that's the type of thing i think parents would appreciate and that's what i would encourage because because it's just really micromanaging to read every your every child syllabus for especially once they're all in secondary and they have like eight classes each and you have

04:27 multiple kids so i mean i would highly recommend so we don't get surprises and then public you know discussions what the heck is going on you know why is the school recommending this and not i i don't know i just have to say along with your argument i think it could be said that by us requiring this then we're micromanaging telling teachers how they need to um like to get to tell them in addition to the syllabus you have to do this when when really it is up to us as parents if we're curious and we want

05:07 to know to look through it and i know it's i know it's a lot of work and i agree especially with um secondary because they have more classes but i i know it at my child's high school i don't know if it was the syllabus or if it was a separate email that listed all of the books that would be read that year um but i feel like our teachers are doing a good job notifying parents so i don't know i just i feel uncomfortable because i feel like that's us micromanaging them i feel like when we are elected

05:41 as school board members people expect us to kind of take care of this so they don't have to micromanage everything so i guess i have a different perspective i don't think it's too much to ask the teachers hey just send an email you know we know ahead of time there's kind of some potentially risky risky material i don't know i have a comment okay um i do think it's great for us to be good stewards and helping parents navigate things like this but i also feel like it um is for 10 plus age you know

06:13 students we're not saying this is going to eighth graders these kids are already confronted with any kind of material that's being discussed in this book already they're already seeing that if not i'd like to know where that child is what rock they're living under um and i think that this is not saying every student in our schools is going to be reading this book am i right in that that it's giving them the option of using this in their classroom under the direction of a teacher who will guide the

06:50 discussion and i think it's us showing confidence in our teachers abilities to navigate this area and then if parents do feel like there's something that comes up they have that option of saying i i do feel like um i don't think there's anything in this book that we would be getting a lot of calls about okay ms barber one other comment just to go along with that i interact with a lot of our secondary

07:25 english teachers and i think because of these policies that we have these processes they're very aware i would not be surprised if many of them and their plc's are listening to this conversation and they they know that these books are being out there we're having this discussion so i think us having this discussion right now is us doing our elected duties we're talking about it we are expecting our teachers to be really proactive and i'm not going to tell them i they have to send out an email but i'm i'm pretty confident they will they will because of what we are doing and that they will be

08:01 really good stewards of these materials that we're trusting with them and with the relationships they have with parents and students okay i i think this has been a great discussion does anyone have anything else they want to add can i ask yes what committee recommended that that we send out a letter for the parents what was that or who's on that committee so this is uh this is the book review committee so it's it's made up of just mainly all teachers um and some parents on that committee and so as as they were talking

08:39 through it they're they're pretty um considerate of of a lot of different viewpoints and they do a they really try to check themselves and and see where they're coming from so as they were making that recommendation and and teachers can see this as well so they can read through what the committee says they can see that recommendation so that's another opportunity for them to be able to say oh if we're going to read this here's some of the committee notes and here's why it would be good a good book to read

09:08 but something we might need to be cautious about about i appreciate knowing that this is mostly a teacher committee so yeah i feel like they probably coming from teachers won't feel micromanaged when they're recommending a letter so um can i and i want to make sure that we're clear like we we do expect parents to read syllabuses and that we don't consider that micromanaging to read eight syllabuses and or syllabi and and definitely if nothing else read the english syllabus syllabus um as an english teacher

09:43 uh for seven years i i always communicated home most of it was in the syllabus was in the disclosure statements uh that's how teachers are trained um we definitely you know i can't think of a book that i taught that didn't have something that was i mean whether i'm talking about uh studying julius caesar where he's murdered um studying of mice and men where he assaults a woman and then goes on the run and his friend murders him um to you know the crucible with uh hangings and trials and like almost everything

10:16 i taught had something that i knew i might have uh maybe a small percentage but a percentage of folks that i respected and would find other alternative assignments and we did um but i i think that's our norm and i think i that would be what i would say as a principal i i i would i would make sure that that that continues to be part of our practice and let's put it up front and remind teachers that especially with literature things that students are going to spend a considerable amount of time with and

10:43 discussing and reading that we i think reminders that that we we need to let parents know that that these books are coming but i will say that was my practice to always remind parents when we especially we were dealing with more of a heavy tax like the crucible or some other books even a scarlet letter um that that dealt with you know touchy things infidelity and adultery and and punishment and all those things so those are things you want families to engage with i think it'd be good for us to to lead with

11:13 some of that but i do want to say that i don't feel like it's micromanaging to expect parents to read our disclosure statements it does take time but especially if you you might have concerns or at least concerns enough to make a call or come to board meeting please read the disclosure statements okay thank you superintendent linford it's nice to have a perspective of a former english teacher so okay so when you have multiple kids each with eight eight classes each and some of those disclosures have like 20 books or items on it it does get to be a lot like overwhelming

11:53 yeah that's understandable okay um if there's no more comments or discussion then i'm looking for another motion on number five the instructional materials approval i'll move that we approve the instructional materials approval item number five i will second that okay it's been moved by ms barber and seconded by ms price to approve number five on our agenda the instructional materials

12:32 uh any more discussion okay all in favor aye aye any opposed okay thank you that was a really good discussion okay uh we will move on to our business items uh the first one we'll call mr onofrio up and techno talk about technology resources and internet safety first and final hello board members we're back here again on another legislative change this one sb88 is asking us to have more content with parents regarding our technology specifically it's asked us to allow a parent to request a white listed uh

13:11 limitation to their kids access to the internet on district devices and provide a system by which the student a parent can monitor the system the student's internet use sb88 also required us to have uh a complaint system which we already had in the policy so the other changes you see there are just a change in the name of the accessible use agreement document so with that we would require request that the board approve this on a first and final okay thank you mr onofrio first of all are there any questions

13:44 that we can we need to have answered by mr onofrio no okay then i'm looking for a motion i move to approve

00:00 so remember Boggess remember Brinton yes I just had a question about this because I think the public perception is that Davis County was wrong to pull this book rather than that this was just a procedural thing and as I understand it the Davis School Board has done has put the books on the consent calendar after going through the appeal numerous times like 40 times before with other books so why other books because I applaud Davis District for pulling books

00:37 that don't meet our you know that don't hit there they hit that bright line so they need to be pulled they are sensitive materials they don't have the educational value so they're following the law in removing the book so I just want to make sure and get clarification that is there a precedent set where they've done this with 40 other books so why this book because I think it's a good thing that they're being advocates to follow the law and remove the books a G cover well yeah come on up

01:10 I figure y'all can hear me I don't know about anybody else so the issue is it was just strictly a procedural kind of a technical issue that led into more substantive problem and it's my understanding this is the first time that it's been appealed to the board so that's why it's come up and why it may have happened 40 times before but this is the

01:45 first time it's come up to the board level now one thing that you need to understand is that the board is restricted by your rule 277 123 10 4 that you're strictly reviewing the procedure not substituting your judgment for theirs about whether or not it was or was not a sensitive material so and we really didn't even get into that because it was strictly on the procedure of how it got onto their their specific policy is that it has to be as I said out on the full board for approval during a public board meeting final decisions on the appeal and

02:23 and you can do some of that if it's non-controversial and routine on a consent calendar I just don't think in this case it worked and I do think that a judge should it get to the point of being reviewed by a judge would find that it was a problem and the easiest way to clean it up is to send it back and have him do her in accordance with that thank you I've got member Davis next but before that I need a point of information and that is that these pumpkin cookies are on point Randy so

02:55 again thanks to your wife I know that was worth the interruption member Davis go ahead yeah and this might be for AG Cooper again but is there anything that says that it's not okay to do this on a consent calendar because any member of their board can take it off the consent calendar if there's a big they get a lot of feedback prior to this any member of the board can take it off and say let's discuss this further I worry about this making it look like they're you know breaking some kind of a law somewhere also as member Earl was just

03:35 saying if their own policy says these will go on a consent calendar then they would be okay is that is that true and maybe we need to make an encouragement to have a thorough and clear policy as opposed to take everything to the full board every book to the full board I mean it'll go to the full board but I mean take everything off of the consent calendar okay I'm not going to touch this thing is it okay it's they've adopted Robert's rules of order and Robert's rules of order specifically says that the only things that go on

04:12 consent decrees I mean on the consent agenda or consent calendar are non-controversial and routine matters and so under these circumstances it's clearly not non-controversial routine I don't want to address because I don't know that this should ever be considered routine but their own policy policy specifically says that it has to be um to the full board for approval during a public board meeting and so it was it was a technical violation that kind of ran them into a substantive problem it's not something that can't be fixed it's not something that I think they were acting in bad faith on or

04:48 anything like like they said they've done it repeatedly and nobody's called them on it this was the first time they got called on it so there's a better way to do it to where it's more open and transparent without looking like they were trying to sneak something through if you put something on a consent calendar yes anybody can take it off in fact they did that in this particular meeting they originally had one through six and then they only did two through six on the consent calendar so it it's something if somebody had come in and said hey you know we want to talk they could

05:16 have taken it off and that didn't happen in that meeting but it was very minimal information in the paperwork about why the sensitive materials committee had made their decision so I don't think it I think that a court very well could find that they did not check all the boxes they needed to check should it get to that point may follow up so my my question is are we saying that every one of these should never be on a consent calendar or are we saying that there should be more clarity in their policy because

05:52 one could argue if it's happened 40 times it kind of is routine but that's a matter of opinion I suppose but I'm just trying to get clear on what we're saying are we saying that every single charter and district these shall never be on the consent calendar and if so then I think this motion is probably what that's trying to say or are we saying be clear in your policy about your procedure because it could be argued that your procedure with roberts rules this isn't considered routine or non-controversial I just wanted to interrupt here and as you cooper tell me if I'm off base here we're kind of getting

06:33 into this wider right now we are discussing did um but we'll set a precedent so I want to know did davis and and that could be something that we can go down that hole but did davis follow their procedure I don't we can't go through everybody's policy right now we could we could readdress policies right and say okay we need to ensure x y or z but what is before us is did davis follow their policy you're saying not necessarily as it is written and that's what we are discussing here so I'm hesitant to start

07:09 getting into all that's what that's where I'm hesitant to start getting into right I mean this is a very narrow issue uh because we didn't like I said we I didn't reach the issue of whether or not fight club actually violate sensitive materials because we don't have to there is a procedural issue and the procedural issue is required that they follow their policy I think that a court should it get past us could very well find that they did not because they've adopted roberts rules and they did not follow those I don't want to argue about whether or not it was routine or non-controversial I mean I think

07:43 the fact that we're here arguing about it shows that it's not non-controversial but the when you do that you have to kind of take it they have a way of opting out of roberts rules in their policy as well and they did not do that so their policy specifically says that the appeals committee will present their recommendation to the full board for approval during a public board meeting where the final decision on the appeal and rationale for the decision will be determined by majority vote of the board I think that a court very well could look at it and the supporting materials that went with it and

08:17 say that that is not to the full board and not the full rationale and not presented to everyone so the solution for that is send it back and let them do it to where it is very clear

00:00 Thank you. And Chair, just one other question. It's my understanding that this really comes down to whether or not the Davis School Board acted appropriately when they put this sensitive material action on the consent calendar versus their regular agenda. That's what I understand the primary issue to be. Is there any requirement in the Davis School Board rules or their policies that require an item like this be placed on the regular agenda versus the consent calendar?

00:42 Not specifically what their specific policy that governs this says is that the appeals committee will present their recommendations to the full board for approval during a public board meeting where the final decision on the appeal and rationale for the decision will be determined by the majority vote of the board. And that's their policy and procedure 41-204.4.9. And you've had the opportunity to review what actually went up in front of the board and what was public record. And the concern that I see is that there wasn't enough information to explain what the full rationale and I'm not I don't know whether or not a member of the public would have understood that they could have come in and said, hey, I want to I want to talk about this because the whole point of the consent decree is there's a bunch of items on it and they're basically passed because they're routine and non-controversial and they get passed.

01:38 So you guys can save your time and do other things that need to be much more discussed. I think it was a technical issue. I don't think it was an intentional I'm trying to hide the ball type of issue or anything like that. I think it was a technical issue that they've done before and this is the first time that it's been brought to our attention. And in reviewing what I was provided, reviewing their rules, reviewing our rules and Robert's rules, which I know far more about now than I ever wanted to, I think that they are and I do think that a court would find that they were in violation just strictly on the not being clear on the appeal and the rationale for their decision.

02:24 Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

00:00 - Hi, my name is Brooke Stephens. I'm the founder of ratedbooks.org. And I'm here to tell you that pornographic books are in our children's schools.

00:00 So there's a lot of people who will say something can't be pornography if it's not a visual image. But on many of the pornographic websites, there are literary sites.

00:00 This is what's been working across time. They fought ratings in movies in 1964 when they were going to, there was a Harmon, he was going to put it in and he was running a bill in the Senate and the movie rating industry, movie industry came and said, oh, don't worry about writing a bill to write movies. We'll rate ourselves. And they did, but it was at the request of that bill going through, but the librarians fought the rating of movies. They were in there claiming that it was against freedom of speech. So they're still there. They're still pushing for it.

00:00 Well, we could do pre-purchase lists, too. So I've been running against the NBRI, the 34,000 rated books that we have aggregated. Texas has been sending us lists before they purchase it so we can give them a rating on it and say, hey, this might not be one you want to get.

00:00 I am very nice. And I control my face in those legislative meetings. I control my face right now. I'm unleashed with you because you're my BFF.

00:00 Yeah. Yeah. Wait until you can be responsible and deal with the consequences for whatever it is you choose to do with your life. Right. Well, Brooke, how, um, tell them your, tell them your website, how they can find you, et cetera. Okay. So go to ratedbooks.org and you can sort the books in the reports feature by age, whatever. Um, you can get links to all of them. You can watch the videos that support it. You can print off those reports and then also go to the national book rating index. And at the top right here, you can see get automated inventory reviews. We can review

00:40 the whole collection in your library and under 10 minutes, you send us an Excel spreadsheet of the books. We just need the title, the author, the ISBN. You can say, this is from X school. We don't need to know what school it's from. We can run it for you so you can clean it. It could be a public library. It doesn't matter. Send it to us. We will match it against our 34,000 reviewed, um, reports and send it back to you so that you can feel more confident in, is this appropriate for children or not?

01:09 We also have a service that goes by for your, um, but it's, I can't give you a price because it's how big your library is, but we can integrate our ratings with your library system. So when patrons are using it, they can see the rating in there and it's ongoing as we get more reports, as you get more books, those will be rated because it has an API, um, that it uses to keep it live and active. So we're trying to come up with solutions for you because up till now, parents type in each title into the inventory.

01:40 We don't have time to do that because there are so many. Um, we're also coming up with a book code scanner where you scan the ISBN number on the book and it will pull up the rating for you. So that's coming soon. Um, whatever it is, even go through the recommended, click on recommended. And we have been gathering

00:00 my name is brooke stevens and i speak in support of board member kleinstraft we need a policy that adapts and helps resolve the unique circumstances that our libraries are facing in 2009 publishing companies created a new genre for 18 to 35 year olds whom were stuck in adolescence in order to compete against self-publishers publishers created a new adult category of books the demand from these customers was more detailed sex in the books at that time the line for the young adult category was talk of sex but no details the genre failed because there was no space available in bookstores

00:37 and libraries to accommodate the new genre because the storylines in the books more closely resembled those of the young adult category the books were placed there instead so that explains the influx of explicit pornography in books because of the extremely detailed sex scenes many of the passages in these books qualify as the addictive stimulant pornography pornography brings a lifetime of damage to individuals and families i know parents who have paid 12 000 a month for months and even years for residential treatment for severe pornography addictions and yet the schools hand out books to

01:13 to these um children this is a great cost especially when they remain um it doesn't take into account all the therapists bills before and after that marriages are shattered by pornography if we have a stimulant such as a pack of cigarettes do we take into account the packaging what color is the packaging is there a nice picture in it is the slogan good if that's what you're doing you're missing the point pornography is an addictive stimulant and must be treated as such students must not be granted access to addictive stimulants in the school settings such as alcohol tobacco drugs or pornography

01:49 due to this influx of extremely explicit novels we need guidance that allows the proper checks and balances as is in board member klein's draft for weeding of books so we can restore confidence in library materials one minute due to the explicit and graphic nature of these books it is not responsible as board member lear has in her draft to put children on these committees in fact i had to excuse a student member of the committee yesterday so i felt comfortable giving my allotted five-minute speech we also need a policy that involves the parents and lets them participate in the conversation

02:23 if the schools are trying to teach students not to be biased but model bias what are they really teaching actions speak louder than words it is extremely biased when deciding if a book will stay to let the person who selected the book participate but not the one challenging it it's like a boxing match with only one team in the ring board members client board member clients policy includes parents this is vital in establishing trust and cooperation with the community thank you ms stevens next

00:00 I can. So, Llano County, that is where I live, and Llano County has the premier designation as the first library in all of America sued for removing pornography from the children's section. Now, when that happened in April of 2022, the books were not removed and thrown away. They were taken off the children's section and marched over about 30 feet and placed into the adult section of the Llano Public Library. This is a county library.

00:00 And so often, you know, I've spoken at 163 school boards. Now, some of them I've spoken two or three times at, and so I've appeared maybe over 200 times, but at 163 different ISDs across Texas. It seems like a lot, but Texas has over 1,200 school districts, so I have to get busy. I have to move quicker.

00:00 So what I've determined is that so many trustees are very concerned about their next election, and you would think that would propel them to protect the children that they're responsible for, but that's not necessarily how it's working out.

00:00 And I'll give a shout out to Lano ISD. I successfully harassed him so much that one of the school board members did not choose to run for re-election last session. And his wife was one of the high school librarians. She was the high school librarian. Two of our school board members are married to school librarians. One to the high school, one to the elementary school.

00:00 And you go around to school boards. I do. I've been to 164 school boards. 164. One woman in line O. We were going to win because God does not want this kind of filth accessible to children.

00:00 These are books that are so disgusting, so filthy, so dirty, so vulgar, so pornographic that for the ladies here, I wouldn't even open it and show you.

00:00 Bonnie, come up. This is Bonnie Wallace. So Bonnie, I've told how we met. It was kind of a miracle how we met, and we've continued to work. You worked on these bills, helped us write these bills.

00:00 So, Bonnie, how many school districts have you gone to to testify? I have spoken at 164 school districts, some in Texas, most in Texas, but some others also states. One escorted you out? Three escorted me out. One escorted me out with three police officers recently. Many cut my mic because they don't want to hear the content. Listen, I don't blame them. The content is very shocking and alarming. But if me, an adult, cannot read it to adult school board members, who's going to protect the children?

00:00 very concerning. It is not graphic pornography, however, it does have extremely concerning inappropriate content for our elementary kids.

00:00 So again, this is an example of no, there's no pornographic content, but this is certainly not age-appropriate for elementary children.

00:00 definitely someone who orders this pornography this is pornography it is obscene and they allow it and put it in front of minors make it available to minors that person needs to face the music

00:00 As of June 18th, 2026, the Community Library Network lists 142 books as part of its mature content collection. Yet there are currently no books physically available in the mature content collection room at the Post Falls Library. I have verified this and have the documentation to support it. The practical result is that these taxpayer funded books are not readily accessible to the public. While patrons may place hold on these titles,

00:36 if they know they exist and know how to request them, access is significantly restricted. On June 4th, I placed hold on five books from this collection. As of today, none have been made available to me. One title has three copies in the district, all listed as checked out with due dates of November 24th, 2026 or December 8th, 2026. Another title also has three copies in the CLN system,

01:12 all showing due dates of November 10th, 2026. I have the receipts. Taxpayers paid for these books. Why are they effectively unavailable to the taxpayers who own them? The evidence suggests that this board has chosen to restrict access to certain materials based on viewpoint. Of the 142 books currently designated as mature content, approximately 39% contain LGBTQ+ themes. This raises serious concerns about viewpoint discrimination

01:50 and exposes the community library network to potential First Amendment challenges. The books I requested contain LGBTQ+ characters and themes. Neither contain sexually explicit scenes. They do, however, portray same sex relationships and crushes. If books are being segregated and made inaccessible because they depict LGBTQ+ experiences, rather than because they meet an objective legal standard for obscenity or harm to minors,

02:28 the board is engaging in the very type of government viewpoint discrimination that the First Amendment prohibits. Libraries exist to provide access to information, not to suppress ideas that some individuals find objectionable. Taxpayers deserve transparency, equal access to publicly funded materials, and a board that respects constitutional principles.

00:00 Given those decisions, it raises serious questions about the priorities reflected in this budget. How can the board justify reducing essential public services while simultaneously allocating funds for new offices? If there is money available for new offices, I believe the public deserves a clear explanation as to why those funds cannot instead be directed toward maintaining branch hours, staffing, and services. The priorities reflected in this budget deserve a clear and transparent explanation. The public should understand why expanding or improving administrative facilities is being prioritized over restoring or maintaining the services that directly benefit library patrons.

00:41 Third, which line item in the current budget was reduced to accommodate a 20% salary increase for Mr. Walters? It is concerning that he received a 20% salary increase while staff received only a 4% cost of living increase. From my observation, CLN's administration appears to be top-heavy. The board should provide the public with a clear explanation of how this salary increase was funded and why there is such a significant disparity between administrative and staff compensation. Additional questions regarding the proposed budget that I will be emailing to the board.

01:19 I look forward to having these questions addressed and receiving a response. Thank you.

00:00 Finally, I want to address the eight percent salary increases. I applaud the Board for recognizing the value of its employees. Library employees deserve fair compensation, but I question the disparity between the eight percent increase for employees and the 20 percent increase given to the director last fall. When I served on the Postel School Board, we generally provided the same percentage increase to all employees, including the superintendents and assistant superintendents.

00:37 We considered it a matter of fairness and equity.

00:00 i have some questions about the budget um the salaries show a proposed eight percent increase but i suspect that that's not evenly distributed because director walters has increased by twenty percent and the staff is only four percent cost of living the medical dental is a is proposed to increase 54 and a half percent from 348 000 to 538 000. i would really like some explanation for such a huge increase

00:00 this library board represents a county that is very republican and very conservative especially since it does not include the city of Coeur d'Alene conservative republicans do not vote for tax increases president trump ran on tax cuts no tax on overdue no tax on tips no tax on social security president george hw bush ran on read by lips no new taxes the minority of people that are supporting a library property tax increase should not have a problem with the following option

00:37 before you consider a property tax increase one annual fee on all library cards presently we pay fees for driver's licenses license plates boat sticker boat launch sticker fishing and hunting licenses building permits parking etc two see on late book returns three see on field trips four be on checkout rock pots metal detectors etc if this program still exists you'll know also you need to have a written library scope

01:16 the scope of what the library provides anything that is outside of the scope needs to be eliminated and cut from the budget a good example would be to eliminate field trips especially since the county parks and recreation department offers field trips parks and recreation department is far more qualified to do field trips than a library if it still exists eliminating checking out crockpox metal detectors or anything else people can go to goodwill for these items libraries are about books not crockpots

01:56 also you have you have two largest savings account which shows you have taken too much money from taxpayers therefore i'm requesting you reduce our property taxes by one percent this coming year this could win you a large number of votes when you run for re-election thank you thank you the next speaker is uh michelle lippert

02:31 good afternoon michelle lippert post falls as you prepare to finalize the budget i'd like to draw your attention to the recently completed community survey 88 of the respondents asked the district to take a two percent tax increase taxing districts are legally permitted to take up to a three percent increase each year however a three percent option was not included in the survey why was that option omitted and how many respondents might have chosen three percent

03:09 if that legally available option had been presented the survey also makes it clear that library collections are a priority for the community now six percent of the respondents identified books and digital materials as a service that matters most to their household yet the proposed budget includes only three hundred and five thousand dollars for books and electronic materials in the fiscal year 2023 that amount was approximately four hundred and seventy thousand dollars

03:48 your budget is a decrease of about 35 percent the annual budget show a steady decline in funding for the collection since 2023 our community is growing and the demands for library services is growing with it you would expect an investment in the collection to keep pace with growth not continue to decline the survey provides a clear message from the community books and digital lab materials matter

04:23 please listen to the community and make the library collection a budget priority thank you

00:00 I have some comments in line kind of with the director's report, but not the same thing, but this has to do with the director and what we're doing here. It was encouraging to me to get a number of compliments from our constituents, from the public, about what we're doing with regard to selecting votes for minors. And that's kind of what we let our campaign on, but there's always a big but when you improve. We have an acquisitions policy, and in there, it requires an Excel spreadsheet to be put out each month as part of the packet, and we did get that.

00:43 And for July, I look at it specifically for young adult fiction purposes, there were 24 purchases made. Unfortunately, seven of those, seven out of the 24, contain graphic violence, and this may not be a policy violation, but is it really desirable for minors? Is that a good reason why we're buying that? Worse than that, two books in particular didn't appear to actually violate our policy.

01:23 And I'm sure that there is plenty of professional, there are professional references out there for the collections of whoever is purchasing these things to assure that they're aligned with our policy. I'm going to read what two of these are, I'm going to read the book. And speaking of ratings, there are, I pull this up here, there are books or there are references called compass book ratings, take back to classroom, rated books, screen it first, so forth. There are references out there available to the general public.

01:59 I don't know what's available to the professional librarians in particular that I'm calling out here. And this is again, purchased in July. That was what our current right now packet says. This book is called The Girl in the Castle. It's written by James Patterson. And according to these different sources, it contains sexual assault, graphic violence, sexual content, minor drug use, and alcohol use, suicide ideation, and there are at least 76 swear words, 19 of which have the F word in them.

02:37 And again, these are rated in there with the National Book Painting Index, whatever, Kiss the Book is, there's different organizations out there. And the other book, again, I'm not trying to be a downer, it was good to get positive feedback. I think we've done somewhat, actually, we have done better each month. I review those things every single month, but there are too many things slipping through the cracks. Here's another one. The Fault in the Stars by John Green. It contains sexual activities. Rating it on 1 to 10, it rates it a 6.

03:11 Profanity, 10 out of 10. That's all bad. It's at the top of the charts. Alcohol use by minors, references to alcoholism, drug use, controversial, religious, historical, and social commentary. These are things that come right out of these rating systems. They're readily available to the staff. We ran an idea of ensuring we're buying good materials. It's very easy to be discerning as to what we purchase. Once we get it in-house, it's a different story. It becomes a big first amendment issue, but we can control the things that we're funding.

03:49 And I'm having an issue with this thing. Obviously, I'm a little bit wound up because it irritates me because I've been going to these reports every single month for almost a year now. They're on our website. There's an Excel sheet attached to the board packet if you go online and look on there. And so, I like it almost, not right now, but why are the taxpayers funding these things that appear to violate the policies we wrote? And so, I think that may be a discussion for another board meeting. I don't know.

04:20 We don't need to solve it here. I'm mixing it in as part of the director's report because we're reporting what we do. But we have, I marked it up very clearly here, our materials selection and acquisition policy. It's very clear as to what is allowable, what's not allowable. It explains and there's definitions of what's inappropriate for minors. It explains what is obscene. It goes into description of what propaganda is. And I don't want to go through each of these definitions here, but I'm getting a little disturbed by it. So, it may be a subject for another meeting, but, and I have met a number of times with the director and I'm assuming he's doing his best to work with whoever's purchasing these materials, but we can do better.

00:00 I know you and I have met about this. I don't know off the top of my head, but do you remember what kind of numbers you were presenting to me from 2025? They were higher? Oh, they were just ballpark, yeah. Definitely. I would guess a dozen maybe could be a little higher than that. How many in the last month? Last month we had one. That's all. Meaning in June. Yeah. Yeah, for June. And in this month, at least two almost guaranteed violator policies. So it's better. That's what I told you.

00:34 It's not the end of the world here, but we're not there yet. And I don't want to. It's a work in progress, but just to speak to the one that you brought to me last time. Not everything on that list is purchased. Right, because that list will include donations. That list will include a variety of methods that got onto that list. That's included in our acquisition. No, I don't see donations. I just want to speak to the one. Sure. So the one you mentioned last time when I investigated it, because I take this as seriously as you do, otherwise it wouldn't be here.

01:09 That one was actually a bit of an anomaly, because it was an item that was in the catalogue. In other words, it had a mark record in our ILS, because we had it. It's not a new book. It was a 2014, 2016, I can't remember. But we had it and it was long overdue for missing, right? And then it came back, although I still haven't concluded whether that same one came back or it was another copy of that one. And unfortunately, it was received at a branch and put through the processing cataloging part, because it was just an addition to something, oh, hey, we've had this, but we don't have it, right?

01:57 So this is an internal issue, which I'm working on, but it's not related necessarily to the, oh, we're trying to get stuff that violates false. Yeah, that's not what I'm here for. But I'm just trying to clarify that. Let's put that one aside. That one actually would be clean. Did we not gain it last, didn't you? I'm just saying, if you gave me with one. Yes, that's correct. And I'm telling you, the context of that one. So then you can move me to two right now.

02:32 Yes, I think this is the first. I didn't come to you before. I don't surprise you, sir. Well, that's fine. James Patterson. So to me, that makes me wonder. Well, first of all, I don't know. I'll have to go check whether or not the assignation of the, like you said, I check all the YAs. Whether that YAs is the publisher's designation, which is ending up on that sheet. Because we all know James Patterson. If he published a book that the publisher thinks is for YA, and I've expressed my opinion of publishers here many times, not many times, but before it.

03:15 Libraries are here. We live in a higher echelon of five millennia of history. We do a certain thing. Authors can do whatever they want. And publishers can do whatever they want. But I don't feel beholden to publishers or authors because I'm not in that. I'm not in the commercial marketplace. Right? Understood. So, if it's a James Patterson and they think it's YA, that doesn't mean we're going to treat it as YA. So, if it's going by location, it's the report, it's the location, that's all. Yeah. So, maybe you can... So, a lot of this conversation is actually more about the details of that document that you're working with and you're making assumptions on that document itself.

03:54 And I'm telling you that it might not have been purchased, right? There could be another explanation. And it would be odd for me to say that if you're bringing me 20. If you're bringing me 20, 30, 40, like, before I got here. But now you're bringing me one and two. And I'm saying, okay, that's interesting. How did those two happen? How did that happen? So, you know, I'm on the same page as you. Okay. We're all working together. We're all in this together. So, I don't mind you doing it this way.

04:22 You want to give me more lead time on the team? This was a surprise. I can roll with it. I thought I'm tired of finding them myself each month. So, it's time to figure out the rest of it. I'm just glad that you came to me with ones from before I got here or before I changed the, you know, the structure here before. And they were in the 20s, 30s. And now we're down to one, two. And I can explain.

00:00 it's not not designed to be an inquisition exactly but it's also it's also important to understand right we are a public library yes and therefore the reason why we're structuring it with a mature content collection and inappropriate uh using the term inappropriate in the in the in the collection acquisitions policy is so that we regain the right and freedom that libraries should have to put things wherever we want to right as a library we can put a book on this shelf or that shelf or this shelf or that shelf right the goal is the same though we want a top quality wholesome

00:39 educational like valuable children's collection that's that's the to make you know children's collections great again right that's what we want and that's what we're doing it doesn't mean that we're not going to get a book in that you know one person here one person there might think this is terrible what is this right and that's not going to go in the children it's going to go where we want to put it on the shelf it could go into the whole entire ya can move seven days over right and as i've said here many times before young adult to the publishing industry is i don't know 13

01:15 17. young adult at your local church group is 18 to so it's the ones that are trying to get married in court right it's a totally how we're defining young adult right is up to us right and so we've redefined young adult as 18 to 25 then all of a sudden the whole young adult publishing market right may come in and then we place it somewhere so i i just want to make sure that you understand that i'm on the same page right and we are trying to accomplish something together which is great

01:49 okay so no thank you and the reason we have that report coming out it's not strictly just to monitor how well we're complying but it's also to advertise to the public hey look at what we bought this month if you can go online you can look at this list and there's where we bought thousand books in the last month and go ahead and use it as a tool to help you shop a little bit and for a taxpayer to see where the money is going so it's not strictly there to monitor looking just for bad books well that's

02:21 fine and like i said in my little report right if we're talking about like transparency here and this is a public library like everything we have is in an ils or you can just go in and search keyboard so you'll know where it is you know where we put it yeah like it's not we're not hiding anything it's the whole point of a library system is that it's meant to be right publicly accessible right so it'll be interesting we have those two books right and i haven't had a chance okay i'll

02:47 get into it after i haven't had a chance but it'll be interesting a long from now whenever to see where it landed right and if it breaks the law it's landing in the mature content collection should be a guide i don't know that's another conversation but it's important to realize that even if we because you made a comment about being selective versus first amendment and removal i'm not going anywhere near that i'm just saying that we have a place for something that breaks the law you know idola law is the idola law we comply we appreciate we have a place for that we also have a place for a children's

03:22 collection which is like for our families and children in our community and then we have an adult collection which is the general adult question and public libraries going to have a full spectrum of of stuff right so we have these collections and that's really where i'm interested i'm interested to make sure that we have a a library collection where we empower the parents so they know that this section is going to have going to have that and this section is not going to have that whatever that is but at least it's knowledge right and this is why i mean it's great that i guess you're getting that report

03:57 early but that report is essentially the i that's the shelf list back in the day when you went into the car catalog you had a whole bay of car catalog the first subject and uh the same bay author and then the same day it's like they had to be produced but there was a fourth one which was the shelf list and if you just need to know everything that was in the library on the shelf you could just go to the shelf usually it was behind the scenes it wasn't the one that was out

04:20 in the public but car catalogs we live in that same environment it's electronic so now this is great we can continue to do that but don't forget that it ends up just being in the iLS and everything is transparent and available to see where it ended up

00:00 One is Free Speech Coalition, E.V. et al. versus Ken Paxton, a 2025 Supreme Court case. And the other one is the Texas law issue, HB number 1181. This was a seminal case related to Texas age verification law to access pornography online. And it was, you know, not Google or websites that didn't have at least a third of its content being pornographic. So most of that obviously would be considered sexually explicit. And so this case is very germane to, you know, the debate related to how should states continue to regulate minors' access to harmful to minors' content.

00:48 And so what this court held, since no court had applied the strict scrutiny intermediate or rational basis standard to this issue since Ginsburg, right, so I mean, we're we're grappling with Miller and Ginsburg, and this is pre what scrutiny is the court going to apply. This court says intermediate. We're applying intermediate scrutiny to an age verification requirement. And they essentially based on that finding to this facial challenge to the constitutionality of the law because of the state's traditional and reserve power to protect children from having access to content that an adult would have a right to access, right?

00:00 - My question is, I guess, two things. Does this give us any more rights to remove harmful material as opposed from the libraries? It was just putting them in this other section. Removal is what everything was centered on almost to the legal action as they were removing a pro-library. Does this give removal? - Or of a basis? And then how does this affect our acquisition?

00:36 Do you think anything about our acquisition policy where we're just saying we're not gonna buy things is, don't we have the freedom to choose or to buy what we want? - I would say we don't know yet how that acquisition rule will be looked at. Some courts are saying they're the same standard, some are not. But the budget issue is the real important thing about acquisition. You can't force us to buy a book. So you can't sue us 'cause we didn't buy a book. But once you have a book, the hook is,

01:04 oh, the government disagrees with the message. And that's why they're removing it. So that's always gonna be there. But it's a tiered in free to answer your question. The Supreme Court's giving the states the authority to regulate it. So it doesn't give us as the library more authority to go out and push the envelope or whatever. It's just telling the states, hey, if you wanna make this your policy and you wanna pass this as a law, you could require the libraries to do it, right? And so it doesn't automatically give,

01:34 I would say it doesn't automatically give us any additional authority to do anything, because the state law still exists, right? It just is an indicator of, is that exercise of authority by the state going to be allowed by the Supreme Court?

00:00 Multiple comments at our budget meetings, previous regular meetings, and in the Asian press are absolutely false. I won't name names, as that would be an unprisoned behavior, and the names don't matter anyway, as it is truth that is important. Some people are bent on making sure other people's innocent children have access to pornographic materials, and therefore hate and spare no opportunity to spread lies about the current Board of Trustees and the good administration of CLN. Despite their love proclamations for love and tolerance for all, they really seem to be only for themselves and their alternative viewpoints.

00:34 They seem to coordinate with each other to ensure that at least one of them is always here and share information with each other on what happened at the meeting, and meeting recordings are freely available online, so one could surmise that they perfectly well know what the truth is of what happened at meetings and are therefore purposely spreading lies. They don't seem to have any shame when they are caught in their lies. They then tell different lies, or double down and get louder about the same lies. You know what they say about a lie told often enough.

01:04 They use freedom as an excuse to promote grooming other people's children with materials that are so heinous that they've been illegal in all 50 states about the last 55 years to give to another person's child. And before that, no one would have survived the backlash of either publicly advocating publishing the same is filled for children, or giving it to them. These extremely explicit materials groom children for sexual exploitation and a perverted life that leads to disease, mental and physical health issues, and death. They also claim that we're banning, book burning, or censoring, when in reality these books are

01:36 still available to adults that have been removed from the children's sections. Interestingly enough, previous administrations purchased and placed the vast majority of the worst of these heinous materials in the children's sections. They also claim that our director got a 20% raise, apparently for no other reason than just to waste taxpayer funds. The issues has been expanded upon in our public meetings and that CLN deleted a vacant position to beat up the vital responsibilities and salary of set position between multiple other positions. So it wasn't a new expense on taxpayers.

00:00 First, I want to take a moment to discuss the approval of the Fiscal 26-27 budget. I previously raised concerns about the potential tax increase and suggested that staff cuts start at the top. Unfortunately, the decision made by this administration was to let go of employees who have dedicated decades to CLN, many of whom genuinely love their work. It's especially difficult to see valued employees leave, especially someone recognized nationally for their contributions. These decisions impact lives, and my heart goes out to those affected during this challenging transition.

00:35 I believe that reconsidering the new office lease would have been a better path. CLN has effectively operated its current offices for years, and it seems to be working, and now with fewer employees, are those offices even necessary? Ms. Addison, I would like to address the comments you made during the last regular board meeting, as they require clarification. Although I may not always have all the facts, I speak honestly. I'm not a liar. If you were trying to offend me, you succeeded. It is important to consider the implications of language used in discussions.

01:11 For instance, labeling someone a liar can be damaging and can unsubstatuated claims regarding the promotion of inappropriate content, such as grooming children. Accusations should always be supported by credible evidence. I have consistently advocated for parental rights in determining materials, what materials their parents' children should access, emphasizing that this responsibility should rest with parents, rather than the state or library board. As for coordinating with others, yes, we belong to the group Library Alliance of North Idaho. And we coordinate our messaging just like you do, with your group, Marianna Cochran.

01:52 Regarding the director's salary, I want to point out that during the February meeting where Mr. Walker's new contract was approved, there was no clear indication of how this salary increase would be accommodated within the existing budget. If this information was discussed in executive session, the details from such sessions are typically not made public, leading to lack of transparency. Lastly, I would like to remind you and others of the legal definition of defamation in the United States. A person can be charged with defamation if they make a false statement that identifies an individual through context,

02:30 even if their name is not mentioned, that statement harms their reputation. Thank you.

00:00 At the Community Library Network's August 20th meeting, Trustee Rochelle Otteson accused me of being a liar, of being bent on exposing children to pornographic material, and of being a groomer. These are her exact words. Although she did not use my name, that does not necessarily shield her from accountability. Under defamation law, a person does not have to be named explicitly if their identity can be reasonably determined from the context. One of the key questions in the defamation case

00:36 is whether the statements damage the reputation of the person targeted. That raises an obvious question for me. What is my reputation in this community? And could such accusations damage it? I moved to Kootenai County in 1988, when I was hired as Director of Religious Education at St. Pius Parish. I was also a part-time instructor in moral theology at Gonzaga University. I remained at St. Pius until the birth of our first son, after which I began teaching part-time at North Idaho College and Lewis and Clark State College.

01:14 As my sons grew older, I continued adding courses at NIC, and eventually became a full-time philosophy professor. During my 26 years at North Idaho College, I was elected Chair of the Faculty Assembly, elected twice to the College Senate, appointed to the Curriculum Council, and honored with the Excellence in Diversity Award. I was also named a Woman of Distinction in Education by the Coeur d'Alene Serotonist. Beyond the college, I've been deeply engaged in my community.

01:50 I served for 24 years as a Trustee with the Post-Fall School Board, and spent eight years on the Executive Board of the Idaho School Boards Association. In 2023, I was honored as the Association's Board Chair of the Year. My community involvement also included teaching religious education at St. George's, serving on PTOs and senior parent committees, and participating actively in Boy Scouts. I'm particularly proud that both of our sons became Eagle Scouts.

02:26 Today, they are college graduates, one is a veteran, and both are devoted fathers to my four wonderful grandchildren. Perhaps this history speaks for itself. It reflects a lifespan, teaching, serving, raising a family, and contributing to the community I've called home for nearly four decades. Would publicly labeling me a liar, a groomer, and intent on distributing pornography to children damage that reputation? I believe that's a legitimate question

03:03 that is best left to the courts.

00:00 Please, or any library for that matter, please remove these pornographic books. Please do whatever is needed.

00:00 They asked me to read the pornographic content of a couple of books at a school board meeting to help bring attention to it.

00:00 Diane Stover: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this monthly webinar to protect children from obscene and pornographic materials. I'm Diane Stover, State Director of the Protect Ohio Children Coalition and co-chair of the National Protect Child Health Coalition.

00:00 I speak up against the pornography in our schools. We know, again, that this is about breaking the minds of our children.

00:00 oh yeah so we we did update a policy tonight and I know that a lot of people don't get to see the the work that goes behind the policy that are we voting on it next we already did and could say okay that's yeah okay so it was a policy update that adds some guardrails into our school gives a little bit more oversight into things that are coming into our kids hands I think that it's really important to have these types of policies there's a lot of work that went in behind the scenes and I know as a member of the public and not the board I

00:31 often looked at these kind of procedures and went okay so you just all come in and say yes and that's whatever there was a lot that went in behind the scenes Erica did a lot of work on this there was a lot of discussions between you know myself and and Samantha Perry to make sure that we had the right intentions that we had the right motivations here and the right policy that added value to the district so I'm grateful that everybody was on this that that the work went into it

01:00 the discussions did happen and that we came to the conclusion of a really good policy update I think that this is this is an important one and I'm very grateful for all the work that went into it thank you I move that we adjourn the public hearing first I have a second all in favor okay next up is action items 8 a discussion

00:00 a lot of people will say it can't be pornography if it doesn't have images but a lot is as you said images it's in graphic novels

00:00 The other book, which is not pornographic, but kind of borders on it, is a book for, in theory, it's for young readers, like maybe fifth grade and up, and it's called The Summer of Owen Todd.