photo by: Lawrence Journal-World

The Lawrence school board will meet on Monday, August 26, 2024 at the Lawrence district offices, 110 McDonald Dr.

The Lawrence school district has long had a process for students, parents and community members to formally complain about the content of textbooks and other instructional materials.

Now the group of people who can formally complain about those issues has gotten smaller.

At its Aug. 14 meeting, the school board approved a change in policy that relegates individuals without an enrolled student in the district to file content complaints under the district’s general complaints policy — reducing the likelihood that the issue will be afforded a full review process.

While the board unanimously approved the policy change, it did so with some concerns.

“I want to make sure we’re not cutting off the community from their investment in seeing our school system succeed,” said board member Erica Hill, moments prior to casting her vote for the policy change.

The ideas of book bans in schools and parents objecting to content being taught in classrooms have been growing issues in districts across the state — and also at the Kansas Statehouse, where a GOP-backed “parents’ bill of rights” was introduced in the last session but didn’t pass.

“Some districts are receiving hundreds of challenges to pieces of (instructional) materials,” school board member Shannon Kimball told the Journal-World, adding that the Kansas Association of School Boards’ updated complaint procedures were a response to increasing complaints surrounding instructional materials at both the state and national levels. The Lawrence school district used work from the school board association to create its new complaint procedure.

Kimball said that people without a student enrolled in the district will have an avenue to express concerns about content that is being provided to students. It just won’t be through the formal content complaint process. Instead, it will be through the more general format that any constituent can use for any topic.

“They can still express those concerns freely to board members, building staff and administrators,” Kimball said. “But in order for the review committee process to be engaged, the complaint would have to come from a district stakeholder.”

Kimball said that the review committee process under the policy, which is only triggered if the complaint is not resolved by building or district administrators, has not been triggered during her 12 years on the board.

“We’ve never had an appeal that reached the board level with our review committee about any particular curriculum, textbook or library material,” she said. “To my relief, our community is supportive of academic freedom and not attempting to censor academic materials available to students and staff.”

But district officials sought the change in policy because they can’t be assured that will always be the case, with Kimball saying it would be “foolish to rely on the assumption that it would never happen here.”

While the district has not had to activate its content review board to resolve any complaints, the district has been receiving complaints about content that is shared with students.

Superintendent Anthony Lewis at the Aug. 14 meeting told board members that complaints were previously made that objected to materials containing a culturally insensitive passage. The Journal-World’s attempts to get further details about the materials from Lewis have been unsuccessful. Administrators resolved that complaint without activating the review committee.

Lewis said that the district contacted the publisher, Fastbridge Learning, and the content was eventually removed. In this instance, Lewis said more than one teacher brought the complaint forth, but he did not specify who initiated it. Lewis also recounted multiple other occasions of contested content “where (we) alerted the authors and they were so appreciative.”

Lewis said the district’s policies and practices surrounding issues of equity for students and staff are used to help the district evaluate content that some may find objectionable.

“Because of our work around equity, we were able to let the authors know, and they’ve republished a lot of their books because of that work,” Lewis said.

It’s unclear how many complaints the district has received about its instructional content, and attempts to get additional details from Lewis were unsuccessful.

Lewis still wants to hear about concerns from community members, even those who are now unable to file a complaint under the new policy.

“Schools cannot do this work alone and depend heavily on volunteers,” Lewis said.

Board President Kelly Jones said the board doesn’t ignore complaints that members of the public bring to its attention.

“If something came up that we thought was harming children and it was brought to the board, (we) would still be able to take action,” Jones said. “Likewise, when we receive community input in other spaces, like email, it circles back.” Jones also indicated that the district often looks to its equity policy as a way to gauge the veracity of censorship claims, adding that it utilizes a tool known as its “culturally sustainable criteria.” While Jones did not cite any examples of its use, Kimball said that the criteria take into account the changing climate in which districts are operating.

“Best practices around this issue right now looks different than it did five or 10 years ago,” she said.

Public commenter Jody Meyer, also a candidate for one of five open board seats in the upcoming general election, urged board members to leave the policy unchanged, saying that it was a solution in search of a problem.

“I think it is a little disingenuous to say there are processes for other folks that don’t meet the criteria to make a complaint,” Meyer said. “It seems like this is something that should be left as is for community members to be able to speak.”

Meyer told the Journal-World that she recently filed an open records request seeking the number of complaints that the district has recently fielded over instructional program materials, but hasn’t yet received information.

“I haven’t heard anything to suggest that this is a legitimate concern in (this district),” Meyer said.