This is the third story of a multi-part series by Cap City News. Part IV will publish Friday, Oct. 11.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Robin is afraid of messing up. The topic of objectionable library materials has been the spotlight of school board meetings for the past two years. Seeing heated discussions unfold, Robin, a secondary school librarian in Laramie County School District 1, has become increasingly afraid over the past year of parents accusing her of promoting objectionable material.
“I’m afraid that I’m going to mess up,” said Robin, who spoke with Cap City News on the condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal. “What one parent might think is inappropriate, another parent doesn’t. And so we’re just so afraid to make a mistake, you know, for public ridicule or losing our job or just being blamed for it.”
It’s not just Robin who feels this way. She said the district’s library book policies are impacting her and other district librarians’ ability to perform in their positions. Former LCSD1 staff have provided similar testimony as well.
But beyond the district’s new library procedures, Robin believes the Board of Trustees is trying to convey another message to her: She isn’t doing good enough.
“The district, you know, keeps saying, ‘Oh, it’s no extra work for the librarians,’” Robin said. “They have no idea what we do. And for them to say that, it’s just kind of insulting, because it is a lot of extra work.”
With LCSD1’s recent passage of the Opt-In and Procurement policies, Robin says she has less faith in the board’s ability to rely on and trust its educators. She told Cap City News that, despite her and her colleagues’ continual insistence on meeting with the Board of Trustees, no meeting or discussion has come to fruition.
Robin and other district employees, former and current, have told Cap City News how the new library policies are affecting district staff and students.
Impact to librarians and educators
Robin and other district staff have been noticeably concerned about the additional workload the policies are creating for them.
During the spring 2024 semester, the Opt-In Policy burdened Robin with additional tasks that could take additional hours to complete. For instance, she coordinated with some parents to create a personalized list for their child enrolled in the new “Parent/Guardian Restricted Access” option. Some of these student-specific lists spanned as long as 10 pages and could take several hours or days to complete, Robin said.
Starting this fall, though, Robin will no longer have to curate individualized lists for students. Parents and guardians who chose the restricted access option now have to create a list of books themselves and send them to Robin. The form parents must now fill out can be viewed below.
Aside from curating lists, the library policies require librarians to pay extra attention to students and what books they’re checking out, Robin said. The librarians also have to share their book orders with a district library coordinator.
The library policies aren’t just affecting librarians, though. Secondary school librarians work with and train student assistants to help oversee library operations, Robin said. Currently, the district hasn’t made clear to her whether assistants will be allowed to check out books for other students. If the assistants can’t check out books, then this will result in “a ton more work” for librarians.
Despite Robin’s comments, trustees have assured the public that the new library regulations won’t impact librarians’ workloads. Vice chair Christy Klaassen said she doesn’t anticipate the Procurement Policy will impact school staff.
“The procurement policy is not intended to create more work for library professionals,” Klaassen told Cap city News via email. “The policy that was passed earlier this year, which is different than the policy passed in December, directs library professionals to seek to try to avoid purchasing additional materials for the district’s collection that include sexually explicit content.”
If librarians purchase a book that meets the district’s definition for sexually explicit content, then that title will simply undergo the same review process as any other book, board trustees have said at public meetings. Superintendent Stephen Newton said at the Dec. 4, 2023, school board meeting that the additional work brought upon by the Procurement Policy will “largely fall upon the Division of Instruction.”
If librarians do have extra work on their hands, it won’t be excessive nor strenuous, Trustee Alicia Smith said.
“This is not rocket science. I have no library science degree, but I was able with a very, very quick search — in less than a minute — to determine that ‘Monday’s Not Coming’ might have objectionable content in it,” Smith said during the April 8 board meeting. “I had not read the book. I don’t actually want to read the book … but it did not take me very long to determine that there might be a problem with that book.”
Trustees have considered adding further book regulations. These rules would place additional work on classroom educators, staff say.
At a September 2023 board meeting, board chair Tim Bolin said he and his colleagues intend to compose regulations that would require teachers to catalog and publicly post their personal libraries. Bolin said the rationale is that “parents have a right to know what’s being read out of the classroom libraries as well as the school libraries” and classrooms are “an even more enticing” location for students to access literature.
Educators have pushed back on Bolin’s suggestion. At the same meeting, district English coordinator Joseph Evans said the regulations would be nearly impossible to achieve.
“District resources and teacher time have never been stretched thinner since my time being with the district,” Evans said. “I know that you’re saying this could happen over years. I struggle to see how that is in any way logistically possible in several years.”
Cap City News reached out to the district to request an interview with Evans over summer vacation. The district denied the interview as the English coordinator was not on contract at the time of the request.
Bolin said at the 2023 meeting that teachers will eventually have to catalog classroom libraries. However, in an interview with Cap City News, Bolin said he didn’t recall these remarks and that he “can’t say what’s going to happen in the future.”
But Suzan Skaar remembers Bolin’s comments on classroom libraries. Skaar retired as a librarian from the district in fall 2023 and has been a vocal opponent of the library policies at board meetings. As one of the founding members of the local organization Wyoming Family Alliance for Freedom, she believes in every American’s right to read freely.
“Teachers said, ‘What? I have to do what with my collection?’” Skaar said. “I heard people say, ‘OK, well then I’m going to get rid of all the books in my collection. You know, I’m not going to have books in the classroom anymore, because I don’t want to be called out on it. And I don’t have time to catalog.’”
Student achievement
During the spring 2024 semester, Robin began denying students access to titles they tried to check out of the library. Whenever this happened, students responded with confusion, the librarian said.
Parents aren’t talking to their kids about the library policies, Robin said, which has led to some kids growing apathetic to the library altogether. One of Robin’s students has tried checking out books, but she tried explaining why he couldn’t do so. Puzzled and dazed, the student just began checking out the same book to avoid being denied other books.
“Ultimately the kids are the ones that suffer because they don’t know what’s going on,” Robin said. “And then they end up just checking out the same book or don’t check anything out at all.”
If educators are required to catalog their books at some point in the future, then students will be adversely impacted, Evans believes.
“Asking a teacher to take time away from the important work they’re doing with students — to catalog every book in their classrooms — seems like an inordinate amount of work,” Evans said at the September 2023 meeting. “It seems like that would have a very real effect for student achievement. … [Teachers] do know what’s in their library, but to ask them to have a catalog … that’s not something we have the capacity to do while meeting student need.”
If students grow disinterested in reading or don’t have access to broad options, then their literacy skills will suffer, according to Todd Reynolds, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming. Reynolds said literacy skills are directly tied to reading regularly. To get kids to read a lot, they need agency to seek out books on their own.
Another fact that concerns Reynolds is that many books being challenged at LCSD1 are contemporary.
“Our librarians are trying to fill our shelves with books that are interesting to today’s kids,” Reynolds said. “Not to kids in the 1950s or the ‘60s, but to kids in 2024. And some of these books they’ve [nominated as sexually explicit] are books that resonate with kids.”
‘Culture of fear’
Robin and other educators say district employees are working amid an environment of unease. Faculty at the district have said this to Terri Brantz, who retired from the district at the end of the spring 2021 semester. She served as an educator and librarian for nearly four decades.
According to Brantz, the new Procurement Policy places inordinate pressure on librarians when procuring books that didn’t previously exist.
“There is definitely a culture of fear going on,” Brantz said. “A person in that position — the person choosing books — it makes you paranoid. Because if you let one slide through, somebody can come back and file a lawsuit and fire you.”
The book policies have resulted in Dylan Ford being more cautious. As a seventh-grade English teacher, Ford used to be glad whenever a student wanted to borrow a book from his classroom. However, ever since the policies were implemented, he won’t let students borrow books from his classroom. As he explains, students who take books out of the classroom are, in practice, now “checking out” that title. Furthermore, Ford said it’s difficult to keep up with the district’s ever-increasing list of books deemed sexually explicit. His new classroom rule stands as a protective measure for himself.
Ford, who is also president of the Cheyenne Teachers Education Association, agrees that educators feel on edge about the book policies.
“At the beginning of the year, the combination of these three policies was pretty scary,” Ford said. The third policy he referenced is the district’s new parental rights policy. “We spent probably half a day just talking about how to be compliant with these things.”
Mistakes happen, Robin said. One of her routine tasks is parsing through and maintaining her school’s book collection. Although uncommon, she and other librarians on occasion may discover outdated books or ones not age appropriate for their students. The librarians will then transfer the book to another school or remove it entirely. This has been no issue for Robin, but under the new Opt-In Policy, librarians must make a note of when they move or remove any book. Robin says this puts extra pressure on her ability to manage her collection, and she thinks some administrators or members of the public could interpret these book transfers/removals as major mistakes or coverups.
“The district, you know, keeps saying, ‘Oh, it’s no extra work for the librarians.’ They have no idea what we do. And for them to say that, it’s just kind of insulting, because it is a lot of extra work.”
Robin, secondary school librarian with LCSD1
This worry has been validated by at least one school board trustee. Trustee Rene Hinkle, who has openly opposed the district’s book policies, told Cap City News that librarians and district staff are feeling attacked. In the past, board members have approached the superintendent to request letting a staff member go, she said.
Other board members have tried to reassure district staff, though.
“I have not heard anyone up here talk about shunning them, firing them, scolding them,” former Trustee Susan Edgerton said at the April 8 board meeting. “I haven’t heard anyone say those words, so I think that’s a moot point.”
Edgerton resigned from the school board Oct. 8. Her decision is effective immediately.
Cap City News asked chair Tim Bolin for comment on allegations of district staff operating in an environment of fear. He declined to speak upon “hearsay” statements.
‘Already doing their best’
Something that has unsettled educators and librarians, beyond the new library policies, is the subtextual message they represent: They’re not doing good enough.
“Librarians are already doing their best, and you’ve just tied their hands behind their back,” Brantz said.
Librarians professionally vet books before they make any purchase, according to Skaar. For instance, trained librarians look at book review sites and publications such as School Library Journal, Book List, Kirkus and Publisher Weekly. These resources inform librarians about what books are age appropriate for their schools.
Librarians have already been carefully curating their collections, but with the Procurement Policy now in motion, parents can now leave feedback on Robin’s procurement lists. She said she is confused about and feels insulted by this new regulation.
“I have no idea what makes [parents] qualified” to leave feedback on the procurement list, Robin said. “All of us have our master’s degrees, and all of us have been educators for a long time. And so I don’t understand why and how just anybody off the street can look at these books and decide — for our unique population of our schools — why we shouldn’t have these books. I don’t know why they have a say in it at all.”
Despite how Robin, Brantz and Skaar feel, board members have said the library policies weren’t intended to disrespect educators.
“This is not hard. And I think we’re just saying, librarians — I mean folks in the district who are involved in this [procurement] process — just do your best,” Smith said at the April 8 board meeting. “I mean, protect our kids a little bit. Just take a look at this and think, ‘Is this going to be problem for some parents?’”
Over the past year, Robin said she and her colleagues have attempted to speak with the trustees to educate them on how impact the policies will create. She said Evans attempted to set something up on their behalf.
“We’ve asked several times,” Robin said. “We’ve mentioned it in our meetings and said, ‘If we could all just talk, I think we could come up with something.’ But they haven’t spoken to us.”
Bolin said he hadn’t met with any librarians to discuss the Opt-In and Procurement policies as they were being created. The board chair said that to his knowledge, nobody had reached out with any meeting requests.
To view the other stories in this series, click the links below.
- 1. “Book battles brew in Laramie County schools: A community divided”
- 2. “Parental rights, deviations from state statute at the heart of book policy disagreements”
- 4. “Groups with national ties, Wyo state officials intensify debate over books in schools”
- 5. “Book policy fallout: Community debates school district’s future”
