It appears Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. board member Logan Schulz may not be paying close enough attention. We are happy to help, for it appears that Schulz did not understand that he voted this week to ban a book from a school library.
Schulz was the lone BCSC board member this week to vote to remove a book from the library at Columbus East High School. The book in question is an acclaimed New York Times bestselling young adult novel, “People Kill People” by Ellen Hopkins, themes of which are gun violence and white supremacy. The board voted 5-1 to keep the book, a decision in line with what a BCSC committee had recommended.
Schulz cast the lone vote Monday night to remove the book. Yet the next morning, he insisted he hadn’t.
“Schulz said … he would never vote to remove a book, but was voting to move the book to a status that parental consent was required to check the book out,” The Republic’s Brad Davis reported Tuesday. Yet the motion was worded as “determination on library book.” In other words, should it stay or should it go. BCSC Superintendent Jim Roberts confirmed that was indeed what the board had voted on.
Schulz does not get to rewrite history. He voted to ban a book. Period. If he doesn’t comprehend what he was voting on, constituents have a right to be concerned. (Board member Jason Major, who challenged the book even though he had not read it, recused himself from voting. Even so, he said he understood that the vote was to remove the book.)
Perhaps there is a lesson in all of this: When school board trustees use their power to try to prevent young adults from reading literature in the school library, no good can come from it.
This entire book challenge episode has been a fool’s errand, but BCSC parents need to understand that it also comes at a cost: It consumed far too much valuable staff time. This single book challenge has been going on since January 2023. That’s more than 14 months. Staff and even committees wasted time on the taxpayer’s dime reviewing a widely praised and appreciated, age-appropriate novel.
How many hours of BCSC staff time — hours that could have directly benefited students — were squandered here?
Despite Schulz’s invitation, The Republic has no intention or desire to discuss the merits of “People Kill People” or any book in BCSC libraries. That’s up to readers. We trust them to know their own minds.
Our lawmakers in Indianapolis do not, however, and the blame for this mess and others like it happening all over the state lies squarely with them. They enabled these detours into absurdity with a 2023 law that allows virtually anyone to challenge any school library book for any reason. Doing so jolts to life this Frankenstein’s monster of a review process.
We called it a bad law before it passed. It turns out to be even worse than we feared. We commend the majority of the BCSC board who rejected this challenge, but they frankly have better things to do. So do BCSC educators and library staff.
Let us trust parents, not ideologically driven politicians, to determine whether their child can read a book. Likewise, let’s trust professional school librarians to serve the needs of all students. It’s a shame that our lawmakers and a couple of local school board members don’t.
