ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, Va. (ROCKTOWN NOW) – The review of books and media for sexually explicit content has begun two weeks after the Rockingham County School Board adopted their long-contested Supplementary Materials policy for the county’s schools. 
The policy, which establishes guidelines and a complaint process for reporting objectionable content in the county’s school libraries, was adopted in a 4-1 vote at the board’s April 22 meeting at Turner Ashby High School. The months-long debate over which books belong in Rockingham County Public Schools generated backlash from teachers, parents, students, and others in the RCPS community, particularly after 57 books were temporarily pulled from the school’s shelves in January.
At their Tuesday night meeting, the Board heard a recommendation from Superintendent Larry Shifflett regarding one of those books – The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig. Shifflett recommended reinstating the book, after he and the newly established Content Review Committee found that it did not contain any sexual content per the new policy’s language.
The school board unanimously voted to reinstate the book, with a motion from board member Hollie Cave.
However, while The Invisible Boy survived the new policy’s scrutiny, questions still remained about how the policy would be implemented. Eileen Frueh, a parent of two former RCPS students, brought those questions before the board during the meeting’s public comment period, asking how they plan to review the remaining 56 books per the new policy.

“Presumably each book will have its own committee review, because if this isn’t outright censorship but is an actual process to assess the literary worth of each book and determine whether it might place our children in grave harm, then each book needs a thorough and thoughtful review,” Frueh said. “That may take a year for them to do so if they met over the summer and through spring break and through Christmas and through all of the other breaks. Hopefully during that time, the books that weren’t being reviewed would be back into circulation, because otherwise those stories and ideas are presumed guilty before they’re proven innocent.”

Frueh also voiced her concern over how educators will be included in the review process, asking about the possibility of a stipend for their participation.
“This is a highly contentious and political process, it is difficult and I think it is perhaps not ethical to ask staff and teachers to serve on those committees with all of this public pressure without being properly compensated,” Frueh said.
Board member Jackie Lohr, who cast the sole dissenting vote when the board adopted the Supplementary Materials policy in April, said that she agreed with Frueh’s points and echoed her question about the fate of the remaining books. Chair Matt Cross tried to dissuade Lohr’s question during the meeting and directed it to Shifflett, who explained the review process and the Content Review Committee’s first meeting since the policy was adopted.
According to Shifflett, the committee’s first meeting covered their parameters and the work they plan to do, which includes reading all of the books in question.
“Some of the books are sort of like graphic novels, so they’re a pretty quick read but I think [Frueh] brings up a good point – it’s going to take some time to get through these books,” Shifflett said.
He explained that the committee is starting with several books on the list, including the first four books in the Heartstopper series by Alice Oseman, Drama by Raina Telgemeier and A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Mass – the latter of which is more than 1,000 pages long. The committee will then read the books based on a timeframe set by one of the members.
Shifflett selected committee members to represent elementary, middle and high school reading levels, and two criteria.
“I was looking for two things: one – that you could read and like to read and two – that you have the reputation of someone who is willing to have a dialogue,” Shifflett explained.
Shifflett added that, due to the number of books to review and the length of some of them, they will be constant items on the meeting agendas for the foreseeable future, and that he hopes to bring recommendations for a few more reviewed books before the School Board at their next meeting.
In his final remarks before going into closed session, Cross said that, despite some community pushback against the new policy, with many of the attendees opposing the vote at their last meeting, he and the board plan to move ahead with it at full speed.

“At Turner Ashby High School the other night, we didn’t have a lot of our people that voted for us in 2021 and last year for the three new ones that came on, but they ran their campaigns on getting the dirty books out of our libraries, and that’s what this policy was about,” Cross said. “It was about sexually explicit content and that’s what parents don’t want in their school libraries. And we listen to our parents and we’re going to do our best to uphold our promises to the parents of Rockingham County.”