The Mat-Su Book Review Committee concludes that some books have returned to the shelves

A citizens’ committee tasked with reviewing offending books for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District has completed its work. The committee reviewed 35 books last year and voted to permanently remove 19 of them from school libraries. A lawsuit over the removed books is ongoing and is expected to go to trial next year.

The Mat-Su School Board has not followed all of the committee’s recommendations, but has so far voted to eliminate seven.

In the spring of 2023, Mat-Su residents asked school board members questions about whether certain library books violated obscenity laws. The 56 books in question were removed from shelves last spring while the committee conducted its review.

District officials said the volume of book complaints overwhelmed the existing review process, and the school board selected members for a new committee to review the books. Before the citizens’ committee was formed, the review process required the person complaining about the book to meet with the librarian and school principal and escalate the review through a six-member committee while the book remained in circulation.

At a school board meeting in June, Superintendent Randy Trani said the district had been working to streamline its book review process and the citizens’ committee was no longer needed.

“If someone, a parent for example, has concerns about a book, it’s not a process that takes months and months and months, it’s a much more streamlined process. So we’re trying to make sure we don’t get into that situation again,” Trani said.

The Board of Education’s current policy on public complaints regarding instructional materials states that complaints about books presented to the Board of Education will be adjudicated by the Superintendent or his designee and may be appealed to the Board of Education.

At the committee’s last meeting last month, members voted to remove three of the four books they reviewed, including Tricks by Ellen Hopkins, Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott and a graphic novel version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The committee voted to keep Perfect by Ellen Hopkins in high schools only.

The Northern Justice Project and the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska sued the district last November on behalf of six students and two parents, claiming the books should have remained on the shelves during the review. Although 28 books were put back on the shelves, the eight plaintiffs still sought damages from the district, according to Savannah Fletcher of the Northern Justice Project.

“First of all, there are still the books that have been banned outright. Now that they have been reviewed, they have been banned, and we have not yet decided as a team which ones we agree with,” Fletcher said. “Some of them we have already stated that we do not dispute, but not all of them we believe are rightly banned outright.”

Another 15 books that were challenged are no longer in the district’s collection, and two books were not reviewed by the committee. The district administration will now decide whether to remove them. The school board is expected to vote on the committee’s final recommendations at its next meeting on August 7.

Tim Rockey is a producer of Alaska News Nightly and covers education for Alaska Public Media. You can reach him at[email protected]or 907-550-8487. Read more about TimHere.