Saint Francis visitor urges board to restore school board decision-making on book reviews

A visitor to the Feb. 10 St. Francis Area Schools school board meeting urged the board to restore local board authority over book challenges and to reconsider the district's use of an external website and review process for first-stage decisions.

The visitor, Ryan Curac, speaking on behalf of Progress of Education Minnesota Saint Francis, told the board the current process removes the board's role and places final decisions or early filtering on an external website and committee rather than at the locally elected board level. "We don't even have a say in what happens at that website or how those decisions are made," Curac said. "We could arbitrarily wake up tomorrow and all of the modifications to the system could be changed."

Curac said the community has raised concerns about "lewd or inappropriate" material in some books and that restoring board review after the book-review committee's work would allow the locally elected board to reflect community standards. "I think we should respond to that by seeing the original process through which would have landed at the school board," he said.

Superintendent Humphrey responded during the administrative report and clarified the board's role in a formal nonconcurrence. He said the district has 60 days to respond in writing to a review committee's recommendations and described the common internal practice: staff draft a nonconcurrence letter, present the draft to the board for feedback, then return with a revised draft for formal approval so the 60-day timeline is met. He said the current process "works really well" in his experience.

The board packet and the superintendent's remarks indicate the district has removed multiple books under policy 606.5. The superintendent noted a third book had been removed and that a fourth removal occurred after the meeting packet was issued; he said the fourth removal would be reported at the next meeting.

Member Anderson told the board the policy committee discussed policy 606.5 and that the committee does not expect to revisit it until late March. The district did not take formal action on changing the policy at the Feb. 10 meeting.

The discussion matters to patrons because policy 606.5 and the nonconcurrence process determine who makes final decisions on challenged instructional or library materials and how quickly the board can respond when the committee and community disagree. Supporters of local review told the board restoring the final decision to elected members would ensure outcomes align with community standards; supporters of the current procedure have argued the committee process can expedite reviews.

The board did not vote on changes to policy 606.5 at the Feb. 10 meeting. The superintendent said he will present a draft nonconcurrence letter and return it to the board for approval within the 60-day response window when required.