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Chatham County Schools outlines phased plan to implement House Bill 805 catalog and parent opt-out
Summary
Mark Sandberg, chief of technology and school accountability, presented a four-phase rollout plan to implement House Bill 805, including an online searchable catalog, parent-authentication via Infinite Campus, classroom inventory tools and a parent request form.
Mark Sandberg, the district's chief of technology and school accountability, presented the district's plan on Nov. 3 to implement House Bill 805 requirements for parent access to school library holdings.
Sandberg told the board the district has an online catalog for school libraries and a parent-authentication workflow tied to Infinite Campus: parents who register with the email on record receive a code that allows them to view checked-out books and to flag titles they prefer their student not borrow.
"Libraries are done," Sandberg said, noting the next challenge is classroom libraries because state law treats books in classrooms as part of the libraries covered by the statute. He described a four-phase plan: inventory classroom collections using barcode scanners provided to teachers; offer an AI-assisted video-to-metadata tool so teachers can record many books at once and extract title/author information; publish grade- or subject-level lists to the district website (the plan will not list individual classrooms); and maintain a parent request form for items parents want unavailable to their child.
Sandberg said the district will not apply HB805's opt-out workflow to textbooks that are part of the required curriculum. "Library books mean electronic [and] print resources, excluding textbooks, for independent use," he said, quoting the statute's scope as implemented by staff.
Board members asked how the district will handle donated and personal books and who will bear the time burden of inventorying classroom collections. Sandberg said the process would prioritize ease for teachers, include guidance and scanning tools, and that librarians and parent volunteers in some districts have helped with inventories. He said the goal is to complete most inventories by the end of the second quarter and to publish the lists thereafter.
Provenance (excerpted): Mark Sandberg's HB805 presentation begins at 01:23:53 in the transcript and runs through phase and procedure explanations; board questions about classrooms and opt-out follow in subsequent blocks.
