Berkeley County School District to hold second book review meeting Thursday

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. (WCBD) – The Berkeley County School District on Thursday will continue its review of books that have been challenged by a community member. The school district recently released a list of 93 books that could be removed from some or all schools in the district.

The upcoming public meeting will review 10 of the 93 books being challenged; this is one of many meetings that will take time to review each book to decide if the title will stay on the shelves or not.

This is the second review meeting so far; the first meeting was held at the beginning of the month. Committee members voted on recommendations of whether or not to ban titles, the superintendent will make the final decision.

According to the district’s policy, these 93 titles will not be removed during this reconsideration process. News 2 has reached out to the Berkeley County School District regarding Thursday’s meeting and is waiting for their response.

In the meantime, News 2 spoke to the communications director at the American Civil Liberties Union, Paul Bowers, who says the process of reviewing these titles takes time from school staff.

“They don’t need a mountain of extra paperwork and busy work but that’s what they’re being given. So, we know that if you add up the length of these 93 books, we’re talking about more than 37,000 pages of material to review. On top of that these are books that were already reviewed by librarians,” said Bowers.

Thursday’s meeting will be virtual at 8:30 a.m. A link to view the meeting will be made available to the public.