Book policy fallout: Community debates school district’s future

This is the fifth and final story of a multi-part series by Cap City News. Links to previous stories can be found at the bottom of this article.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — What is the role of a public official? It’s a question some in Laramie County have pondered as book policy discussions have unfolded. Residents like Marguerite Herman have given this question thought.

“Whom are we serving?” Herman said. 

As a former LCSD1 trustee, Herman is unsure what purpose the district’s library policies serve. On the extreme end of things, she thinks the policies do a disservice to the public because they may result in library shelves losing out on certain titles. But she isn’t just irked about book removals. The ongoing library controversy boils down to, she believes, public officials working against the will of constituents. As Herman notes, the majority of parents have opted into the district’s “Open Access” library option.

To view the number of students enrolled in each library access level, click the drop-down bar below.

With the new library policies now solidified in Laramie County, residents and educators are left wondering what outcomes await the district. For instance, schools nationwide have passed book policies similar to LCSD1’s and faced legal backlash as a result. And while the board has spent time and resources composing library policies, other pertinent issues have gone unaddressed, community members say.

And aside from the district’s uncertain future, local figures are still asking: What is the role of public officials?

A nation of lawsuits

Some parents and educators have argued over the past several years that library policies restricting access to objectionable content infringe on First Amendment rights. Americans outside Wyoming have agreed and used this as a legal basis in the courts.

In late August, a group of publishers and authors coordinated with one another to sue the state of Florida over House Bill 1069, or “K-12 Education, School District Responsibilities.” The law went into effect in July 2023 and resulted in Florida school districts purging hundreds of books. The lawsuit’s plaintiffs include publishing giants Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins Publishing.

In the Midwest, a controversial Iowa law was allowed to go into effect this past August following a lengthy legal battle. The parental rights law, shepherded by the state’s attorney general, creates “a standard for ‘age appropriate’ books that would require schools to remove books that contain any description or image of a sex act,” per Iowa Public Radio. Although the state’s appeals court allowed the law to take effect, several law firms and the ACLU of Iowa are continuing efforts to block the law.

Literary publication Publishers Weekly has kept a log of book-related lawsuits in the U.S., identifying ongoing legal challenges in states like Texas, Alaska and Arkansas.

It’s uncertain if Wyoming will be added to this list, but Trustee Rene Hinkle is certain it will happen at some point. Hinkle told Cap City News she thinks the school district’s Procurement Policy is a book ban. Even some people in favor of restricting access to public school library books have recognized the potential for legal action. Darren Smith, a Cheyenne attorney and the uncontested candidate for Wyoming Senate District 6, said as much.

“What’s the worst thing that could happen if you take action?” Smith said at the Dec. 4, 2023, school board meeting. “You could be sued on faulty legal grounds, and this district might need to spend a little money to defend itself against frivolous lawsuits with no strong legal basis. Who cares? It’s time to do something.”

Cheyenne students have stepped up to the mic to express their constitutional right to freely access information. At a June 2023 school board meeting, one high schooler cited the 1982 case Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico. The legal case involved students suing their district because it removed books. U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. handed the students a win, concluding that school districts could not remove books based on partisan or political ideology. The justice said the district’s actions suppressed the circulation of free ideas. Four other justices concurred with Brennan, while four dissented.

LCSD1 Board of Trustees Chair Tim Bolin told Cap City News he has no knowledge of lawsuits occurring elsewhere in the U.S. related to book restrictions or removals.

The role of board trustees

School board trustees are hired to exercise their own judgment when making decisions. That’s according to Trustee Alicia Smith, who stated at the Aug. 19 school board meeting that the public comments submitted to the district for its Procurement Policy are “not a vote for a policy.” She said the 300 comments received are not “statistically significant when you look at comments received and how our community feels about this policy.”

“That public comment, when we receive it … it is not a vote for a policy,” Smith said at the meeting. “Everybody on this board is here as a trustee. Trustee representation means that an elected official ultimately relies on their own judgment when they make decisions. We’ve been elected by the members of this community who trust our judgment to make the right decision and advance interests of our school district. We were not elected as representatives to simply cast the votes of the loudest majority in our community.”

Other trustees feel differently about public feedback. At the same meeting, Brittany Ashby acknowledged that the district didn’t receive overwhelming feedback for its Procurement Policy, but said the feedback received “is pieces of information. And so it says to me the majority of the community doesn’t want [the policy].”

Trustee Hinkle believes trustees aren’t elected to a board to act solely on their own intuition.

“This board is elected to serve all students in the district and the constituents of this district, not just the ones who have the same beliefs as they do,” Hinkle said at the Dec. 4, 2023, school board meeting.

Bolin said he believes trustees need to hear from the public. Cap City News asked Bolin to comment on the board’s decision to pass the Opt-In Policy despite the fact 77% of the 1,500 public comments opposed it. He stated, “That’s just public comments.”

‘We wasted a year’

Some believe that books with objectionable content are the least of educators’ worries, though. LCSD1 is currently experiencing other dilemmas that parents, students and teachers want solutions for.

Earlier this year, parents said their children are falling behind in reading. They lambasted the district’s literacy and reading intervention programs, saying the programs are insufficient and they’re having to pay tutors out of pocket to help their struggling students.

Student well-being has been another topic of discussion not just in LCSD1 but across the nation. A community member on the “LCSD1 Books in Context” Facebook group states student mental health is another pertinent issue the district needs to address. Media coverage on student mental health has blown up over the past several years. About one in six children ages 6–17 has been diagnosed with a mental health condition, but only half receive care, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health. In addition, symptoms of mental health disorders have risen significantly over the past several years, due in part to the global pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

A high school senior at LCSD1 also recently addressed student safety at a September school board meeting.

“My younger sibling came home from school because they had a panic attack about shooting threats at South and Johnson,” the high schooler said. “What did the school do to address these threats? Get to new classes like nothing was going on. My sophomore year of high school, somebody had a gun in the school parking lot and pistol-whipped another person. We didn’t even go into a secure perimeter, and a message wasn’t sent to parents until hours later.”

The district has cared more about parental rights than ensuring the safety of children, the high schooler said. She referenced the November 2021 incident where a vehicle struck and killed 13-year-old Makaili James Evans at a crosswalk outside McCormick Junior High. School administrators, she said, have not thoughtfully implemented safeguards to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.

“What’s something that’s been handled in a timely manner, though?” the senior continued. “Banning literature simply because it doesn’t fit certain people’s ideologies. The district can’t bother with the safety of our kids, but they can go to the ends of the earth to make sure children can’t go by a name they feel more comfortable using.”

As the district’s teacher association president, Dylan Ford has a list of alternative issues he would like to see addressed. Much like the high school senior, Ford wants to see the district address student well-being more aggressively, as student violence has risen noticeably in recent years. On Sept. 26, an incident occurred at East High School where an 18-year-old student made shooting threats, which triggered a lockdown. Earlier that same day, a student fight unrelated to the lockdown incident took place at East, Ford said.

To better address well-being, Ford, also a seventh-grade English teacher, believes the district needs to hire more counselors and behavior interventionists and allocate resources toward other social services.

Another major concern among educators, Ford said, is cellphone use.

“I don’t know of a high school teacher who hasn’t complained to me about cellphones when I’ve been in the same room with them,” Ford said.

The current cellphone guidelines haven’t been touched since 2019, he said, and the language in the policy is too vague for educators to reasonably follow. Ford believes the rules should be updated or, alternatively, trustees should pass a new policy that enforces cellphones differently.

Students aren’t being supported in other areas, either, according to Patricia McCoy, a mother and the county chair for Moms for Liberty. She wants to see change in the district’s curriculum, which she believes is less academically rigorous than it was a decade ago. In addition, she has observed that students with special needs aren’t being assisted by certified specialists.

Aside from what she wants to see changed at LCSD1, McCoy believes the time spent creating and passing the library policies has deprived trustees of valuable time addressing other issues in the district.

“We wasted a year going back and forth, arguing like school children, over whether these books should be allowed or not,” McCoy said. “That’s disappointing.”

To view prior 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”
• 3. “‘They have no idea what we do’: District librarian, educators, say book policies foster environment of unease”
• 4. “Groups with national ties, Wyo state officials intensify debate over books in schools”