In April of 2025, the Board of Education of the Bellbrook-Sugarcreek School District enacted a new policy, #5780, the Parents Bill of Rights. It is a policy restricting school books and materials having to do with "sexuality content," including "gender ideology." Grades K-8 were forbidden any such material; grades 9-12 were required to have parental permission to borrow it. The Board stated that "sexuality content" meant "inherently private sexual acts," and even described it as “if you did it on a park bench, would an officer arrest you for it?” The Board said this policy was meant to comply with the recently-enacted Ohio Parents Bill of Rights (H. B. 8), even though H. B. 8 makes no mention of books or libraries. 

The middle, intermediate, and elementary school librarians had to identify all such books for removal. (The elementary school had none. The Board had the intermediate and middle school books moved to the high school so they could deny that any books were “banned,” not understanding that the books are being removed from their intended audience. That is a book ban.

Five books were removed from Bell Creek Intermediate School, grades 3-5, because they supposedly mention "gender ideology." (There is no explicit sexual content in library books at this age.) The books include two by popular author Rick Riordan; a sweet and award-winning novel by Alex Gino, George, about a trans girl wanting to play the lead in the school play "Charlotte's Web;" and an award-winning Canadian graphic-illustrated history book, No Girls Allowed, that has no "gender ideology" at all, but is about cis women who dressed as men to do brave deeds that the world denied to them as women, such as smuggling an enslaved person to safety. One of those women was Mulan -- ever heard of her?

Thank you, American Library Association! 

The American Library Association announced that it just filed a lawsuit, along with AFSCME, "to stop the President’s attempts to illegally dismantle the Institute of Museum & Library Services. Today we filed suit in federal court to halt and reverse the gutting of the only federal agency dedicated to library funding. The President does not have the authority to destroy a federal agency. That’s why we’re taking action with our co-plaintiff AFSCME."

You can read more about it at ala.org/IMLS-suit

We still have egregious state laws that most likely will need a lawsuit, too, but this is great news!

Our Press conference on February 18 received a lot of coverage, as the story by the Associated Press reporter was picked up by US News and World Report, the Washington Post, MSN The Canadian Press, and others around the US. Everyone spoke wonderfully, and we are very thankful to Senator Catherine D. Ingram and Representative Joe Miller and their legislative assistants, as well as Lorain Public Library System for partnering with us in this project. Many people stopped by on both February 18 and 19 to see the exhibit. My elevator speech got more honed with each opportunity!

You can view the video of the press conference remarks HERE, and the AP article by Julie Carr Smyth HERE. You can also see the excellent report by Morgan Trau of News 5 Cleveland WEWS HERE. I also noticed that the coverage by ABC4 quoted John Fortney, Director of Communications for the Ohio Senate Majority Caucus, as saying that books bans are a "fiction promoted by today's left" and other Republicans saying that all the disagreement is about age appropriateness. We beg to differ. Book bans are real, attempted book bans have been frequent in Ohio (235 titles reported in 2023) and librarians have received threats to their jobs and their personal safety for offering books that so much as mention LGBTQ+ characters with no sex mentioned at all. 

I am tired, still shoveling snow, but very, very grateful for everyone's support. Thank you.

Next Tuesday, February 18 at 1:00pm EST, we will be holding a press conference celebrating Toni Morrison Day and the right to read.