Residents Can Now Weigh In On Chino Valley School Library Books And Have Them Removed

Chino Valley Unified School District has passed a controversial policy in which parents, guardians, students, staff or even district residents can formally lodge a complaint to remove a non-curriculum book from a school or teacher’s classroom library if they think it contains “sexually obscene content.”

The policy, however, would not apply to books that are part of the state-approved curriculum.

Once a formal complaint is lodged, the principal of the school must remove the book and inform the superintendent within three days. The superintendent would then notify the school board, which would hold a public hearing within 45 days to determine if the book will be permanently removed.

Kristi Hirst, the co-founder of Our Schools USA, a nonprofit that advocates for education equity, called the new policy a “book ban.” The policy, she said, has been “copied and pasted from a political, religious activist” who lives in Tennessee and its one they use to explicitly ban books with LGBTQIA+ themes.

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“They're adopting this very broad strategy that removes power from parents and gives the decision to the board unilaterally. The board gets to review the books on their own and they get to make the decision,” said Hirst, who has three children in the Chino Valley school district and is a former teacher with the district. “There is no review team that reads the book and decides together, which is what we already had in place. They're removing that policy and instead supplanting it with a policy that gives the board complete power over what books get removed.”

The new policy, she said, would also open up the district to litigation under AB 1078. In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law effectively outlawing the banning of books categorized as inclusive or diverse.

The Chino Valley USD policy was able to pass as a book has not been explicitly banned yet. Parents, guardians and district residents now have the option to flag material they deem sexually inappropriate for children.

California has already sued Chino Valley Unified for what it's calling a “forced outing” policy, where schools are required to tell parents if their children change pronouns, use a different name or come out as transgender.

Supporters of the new policy said it falls in line with religious scripture and will prevent children from going “astray.”