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District publishes materials-selection/discard procedures after board policy update; libraries to run annual inventories
Summary
Following a 2023 policy revision, district staff described the updated materials selection and discard process for school media centers: annual inventory, advisory review of purchase requests, criteria for acquisition and discarding, and required signoffs for purchases at the school level.
District staff explained the multi-step procedures they will use to select new materials and to remove outdated or damaged books from school media centers, following a 2023 board policy update on parental inspection and instructional materials.
Staff described a process that begins with an annual inventory and continues with a school-level materials-request workflow. Media specialists and school advisory teams will evaluate requests using an explicit set of selection criteria: alignment with instructional objectives, accuracy and currency, technical and artistic quality, likely use and circulation demand, and age/grade appropriateness. Schools must maintain a multi-year collection development plan; media specialists will present proposed school purchase lists for the principal to approve and order.
For discards, the process requires a focused review of circulation (how often a title is checked out), copyright date and topical obsolescence (for example, older science texts), physical condition and alignment with board policy and state law. Discarded books will be removed from the school inventory, identifying labels will be removed, and schools will consider whether items should be replaced; staff said schools may re-assign appropriate retired books to other community programs upon principal approval.
Board members asked staff to ensure that appropriateness and applicability tests are applied at acquisition time as well as at discard time. Staff agreed and said media specialists are trained to apply appropriateness criteria at both selection and discard steps.
Ending: Staff said media specialists would continue annual inventory and collection-development planning and will return any recommended policy clarifications to the policy committee; the board asked for transparent information about the collection plans and materials-request lists when those are compiled.
