SPOKANE, Wash. — Representative Monica Stonier (D) is the sponsor of House Bill 2331 and says that book bans have quadrupled in the past year. She also says most of the books targeted by those bans were written by or centered around people in protected classes.
Protected classes in Washington are persons forty and seventy years of age, persons of any race, creed, color, national origin, sex, or marital status, and persons who are handicapped.
Her goal is to allow library professionals to be more involved in deciding what books are appropriate for students.
“We know students must see themselves in the texts they read. And when they don’t, they fail to be seen or heard. They deserve that,” Stonier said.
House bill 23-31 would prevent school boards from adopting policies that limit or restrict student access to works that are written or discuss things like race, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
However, the bill has received pushback from across the state.
During the public hearing in January more than 750 people signed up to testify against passing the bill. The most common concern is that it takes control out of the hands of local school boards.
“Such autocratic oversight at the state level is improper as it violates the principle of local school boards’ control over its own local districts,” said Andy Cilley, an Olympia resident with grandchildren in the public school system.
Locally, the Mead School Board sent a letter to the legislature echoing those concerns.
The letter reads in part: “The mead school district opposes the bill as it represents an additional encroachment on the authority granted to school boards. Further eroding the ability of communities to guide the decisions of the school boards they elect.”
Since then, the bill has been amended to allow school districts to appeal decisions to remove or not remove a certain book while still putting the decision of what a student can read back with parents and teachers.
“I prefer that the decision about whether or not a student can have access to a text be made between a classroom teacher and a parent, because I think that strengthens faith and trust in the public schools,” Rep. Stonier said.
The bill was introduced to the Senate and deferred to the Senate Committee on Early Learning and K-12 Education. They will meet on February 19th to discuss this bill.
