SC’s book ban regulation is in effect. School librarians are caught in the crossfire.

Just who ought to be in charge of the books?

For decades it has been the librarian. Librarians on site in local schools are in the best position to know their school’s needs, they say, and have been trained in how to build a collection and, when necessary, cull it according to developmental and academic needs.

Increasingly, however, the people in South Carolina making such decisions are elected officials, political appointees and back-office district personnel who are pulling books from shelves preemptively without input from the public or professional librarians.

Librarians interviewed by The Post and Courier say they enjoy support from students, parents and school colleagues, but feel attacked by policymakers and by strangers ranting on X, on private Facebook pages and in social media messages about alleged dark intentions.

“Let me catch you teach in CRT (critical race theory) and sex to my kids. Ill find you,” one Facebook user messaged directly to the president of the South Carolina School Library Association, Jamie Gregory, in March 2022.

“It is time to not only fire these people but to prosecute them for child endangerment and anything else that will stick,” another Facebook user posted after Gregory was named the state’s School Librarian of the Year. “I hear they just reenacted the firing squad.” 

Since Aug. 1, all public school educators, including teachers and librarians, have had to follow a new South Carolina regulation that prevents schools from providing students with materials that are not “age and developmentally appropriate,” though the definition of that phrase remains vague.

The regulation also states that materials must be removed from buildings if they contain any descriptions or visual depictions of sexual content — and defines that by borrowing from the state’s obscenity law. The regulation does not address exceptions for literary, artistic or scientific merit. One district last month banned “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” 

Despite protestations in an Oct. 2 Department of Education memo that the rules target materials, not employees, the regulation puts educators’ licenses in jeopardy if the state school board decides teachers or librarians are deliberately violating it. Writer and retired school librarian Pat Scales of Greenville called the regulation “anti-education.”

But the greatest impact of the state’s book-ban regulation is self-censorship, librarians told The Post and Courier. They have begun to play it safe rather than risk personal or professional reprisal, they said.

Growing disrespect

Karen Gareis, the head librarian at Bluffton High School in Beaufort County, said that two years ago her job largely consisted of reading professional journals and reviews, noting any trigger topics (homelessness, drug use, suicide, rape, teen pregnancy and alcoholism, among others), determining how potential titles might fit in among books already on her shelves, and weighing all of that against her budget, requirements for refreshing her collection, and what her 1,350 students might need.

“You have to look at what the story is about, what the story arc is,” Gareis said. “Is it redemption? Are there kids in my population that are looking for this kind of material? Are they trying to identify with this story because it is their experience? What’s the end result? Is that person learning a lesson?”

That was before Beaufort County dealt with 97 challenges to book titles on school shelves in early 2023, and before the South Carolina Board of Education’s new regulation on proper use of instructional materials, enacted this summer, gave state officials the power to yank titles in every district and punish educators who open their doors to banned materials. 

Now Gareis examines passages to assess just how explicit any suggestion of sexual activity gets.

“I’m skimming through and saying, okay, yeah, here’s a … all right, okay, here’s, oh, this is a make-out scene. How heavy does it get, you know? And is that considered sexual conduct? Is it just intercourse, or is it absolutely everything, you know?”

Despite initial outcries from professional librarian groups and the ACLU about censorship and embedded biases against marginalized groups, the regulation does not, at first glance, appear to have had a measurable impact on the number of books banned. Charleston County said none have been removed as a result of the regulation; same goes for the Columbia-area Richland 1 and Lexington-Richland 5 districts.

One exception is Greenville County, where book fairs have been canceled this year and where a 26th book — “All Boys Aren’t Blue” — was added to the district’s public book removal list on Oct. 9. George M. Johnson’s 2020 best-selling young adult memoir is among at least seven books removed from Greenville schools since the state regulation went into effect this summer. All seven were removed without a public hearing. 

“At no time do we get any explanation as to specifically why we are being forced to remove it, simply that academics reviewed the book and have determined it needs to be removed from all schools,” said Laura Treffinger, librarian at Blue Ridge High School in Greenville County.

The district’s superintendent said these actions are taken to protect employees.

State Education Superintendent Ellen Weaver penned a letter last year to SCASL that framed the issue as a feud between activist librarians and concerned parents. Weaver said her department “deeply values” librarians but that she was severing ties with the organization and would correspond directly with librarians in the future.

No one at the state or local level has ever sought feedback from her on book bans, Treffinger said.

Parents who support the new state regulation, and similar earlier ones at the local level, describe being “disgusted” by library books with “sexual immorality” in them. Many spoke at a November 2023 state board of education meeting in favor of the state regulation. They described “sexually explicit,” “questionable” and “illegal pornographic” content on their school libraries’ shelves and said school-level book review committees were biased and unfair when they tried to get titles removed.

“If the actions of the characters in these books can’t be discussed in a staff room at work, why do we want to fill our children’s minds with it?” said Carly Carter, chair of Moms for Liberty in Anderson County at that state board meeting.

Gregory, who works at Christchurch Episcopal School in Greenville, said she and other members of the South Carolina Association of School Librarians regard the regulation as a political effort to “de-professionalize” librarians, take local control away from school districts and homogenize school libraries across the state. Gregory is currently president of SCASL.

“One school’s library collection is not going to look the same as anybody else’s, but that’s what’s going to happen under this regulation if the state has final say over what can be in your school library,” Gregory said.

The political push for a state book-ban policy has been a couple of years in the making, with some school districts, including Horry County, Spartanburg 1, Berkeley County, Lexington-Richland 5 and Beaufort County, forging ahead with sometimes limited, sometimes far-reaching bans between 2022 and summer 2024. In 2023, Berkeley County faced 93 book challenges from a single parent, costing the district more than $6,000, said Loni Lewis, a school librarian there. 

Highly trained

School librarians strive to instill lifelong reading habits, emphasizing the importance of reading for pleasure, Lewis said. Librarians also provide a safe space for students.

Libraries have been part of American schools for centuries, and professional librarians (or media specialists as many now are called) became essential school staff members with the creation of free public schools in the 19th century. They have been active opponents of book banning since the American Library Association launched its Office of Intellectual Freedom in 1967.

“It’s important for us to know the history of that in our country and what our legal rights are,” Gregory said.

Becoming a school librarian takes years.

A master’s degree in library science, a field of study that dates back more than a century, is required for South Carolina school librarians. School librarians here also must have a teaching license, pass the national Praxis exam on library media content, complete hundreds of internship hours, and undergo state-regulated performance evaluations throughout their careers.

“There is a lot of professionalism that a lot of people just don’t know about,” Gregory said.

In addition to maintaining and refreshing the book collection, the job often includes troubleshooting Chromebooks, printing and laminating posters, maintaining the school website and teaching kids how to conduct research.

Librarians lean on nonprofit and business organizations such as the American Library Association, the South Carolina Association of School Librarians and Follett Content to stay up to date with materials and professional standards, Treffinger said. Greenville County’s librarians also meet quarterly. It was at one such meeting that Treffinger got a heads-up about the latest Sarah Maas novel.

Inappropriate books like the “Court of Thorns and Roses” series by Maas can sometimes fall through the cracks, Treffinger acknowledged. She has taken feedback from students, parents and other librarians to catch those mistakes.

Even as school districts across South Carolina cement the state regulation into day-to-day routines at schools, librarians insist they have the best training for curating their shelves.

“I have no problem taking things off the shelf that are inappropriate for high school students,” said Treffinger, “But trust that I’m an educated, intelligent professional, and let me do my job.”

Fissures forming

In 2022, Gregory won the South Carolina School Librarian of the Year award.

Shortly after, the S.C. Association of School Librarians received a letter from state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, R-Spartanburg, expressing strong disapproval over the the decision to honor Gregory. The reason: Gregory’s policy stances on which books should be allowed in classrooms, as he said she had aggressively fought against efforts to have books of a sexually suggestive nature removed from public school libraries.

“I stand with thousands of South Carolina parents in unequivocally calling for these sort of sexually suggestive books to be removed from any and all publicly funded schools immediately and permanently,” Kimbrell wrote.

Gregory said even after a couple of years, she is still hurt by the online harassment that followed the letter. “Sometimes I’ll have a student come in and ask me about that whole situation because they’ve heard of it,” she said.

Librarians across the state — accused of harming students, grooming students or providing students with pornography — say these accusations are eroding their historically strong relationships with their communities.

“We go into these jobs with the promise of some autonomy, and that’s not to say that we can just do whatever random thing we feel,” Gareis said. “We’re highly trained. We know how these programs work. We know how to develop a collection that meets the needs of our population.”

Katherine Freligh, head of the legislative committee for SCASL, said banning books can affect childhood development, reducing an individual’s ability to empathize with others.

And Lewis, the Berkeley County librarian, expressed concerns that the new book rules are pitting parents against librarians.

Librarians want to work with parents and listen to their concerns about a book, she said. The state regulation instructs parents to contact schools first if they have a problem with a book, but Berkeley County already has a history of parents going straight to the district office, Lewis said. And it can escalate within the school bureaucracy from there.

“I don’t know if people are really going to make that good-faith effort,” Lewis said.

Where clarity ends

Gareis, a retired master chief for a helicopter maintenance program in the Navy, said she hoped a statewide regulation would remove ambiguities and differences from district to district.

“Where I come from, militarily speaking, standardized is the way to go. You know, then there’s no questions,” Gareis said.

Under the regulation, book challenges can only come from parents whose children attend a local public school, and all challenges must be submitted on a standard form.

But the clarity ends there, librarians say.

The regulation bans “sexual conduct,” compelling educators to ask whether words or passages describing sexual thoughts or implying but not explicitly describing actions also count. 

Books dealing with LGBTQ topics might be perceived as sexual in nature when, in fact, they are dealing more with identity issues. In addition to “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” Greenville County has banned has banned “This Book is Gay,” “George,” “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo,” “The Deepest Breath,” and “Flamer” — all of which feature LGBTQ characters.

Sherman Alexie’s Printz-award winning, young adult novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” uses profanities 26 times, and the main character contemplates erections and masturbation five times — but the book never describes him doing it.

“So does that cross the line?” Gareis said. “That’s one of the best books that gets reluctant boy readers to read because they can totally relate to that character and all of his struggles and all of his feelings of, you know, just not being adequate. So it’s really a good book.”

Other books banned last month include: Nobel-prize winning author Toni Morrison’s debut novel “The Bluest Eye” and Volume 8 of “My Hero Academia.”

Freligh said her librarian friends wonder why policymakers think students, who have access to social media, Google and YouTube, can’t handle these books.

Also unclear are the penalties for noncompliance. An Oct. 2 Department of Education memo explained that the state exercised oversight of instructional materials, not people, but penalties for knowingly violating the regulation still can include losing your teaching license.

Librarians don’t want to get on the wrong side of parents, administrators or district officials and so are self-censoring, Lewis said.

Equity through access

Freligh said she has heard parents challenging certain titles at local school board meetings say it should not be considered a “ban” since books are still widely available for purchase online and at stores. In an executive summary, the Department of Education agreed, saying a ban is “when the government seeks to prevent you from buying, selling, owning, or reading a book.”

Freligh has a different definition for ban: When you limit access, “It’s a book ban.”

Proponents of the state regulation do not understand that there is inequitable access to resources, Freligh said, “not only in different parts of our state, but financially, right here, in Charleston County.”

For some students, school libraries are the only means available to access books that might impact their lives or inform their views, many librarians said. 

Scales said literature can serve as mirrors for some students and windows for others, and that the regulation will create hardships for students who rely on their schools to access such books.

“Lack of access is a form of censorship,” she said. “When we are denying a student’s access to books where they see themselves or want to read about others, we are also denying their civil rights.”

Education goes beyond just learning something out of a textbook, Scales said.

“We serve children as a whole in public schools,” she said. “Sometimes we can use books to help us do that.”

Education Lab reporter Ian Grenier contributed to this story from Columbia.