HARRISONBURG, Va. (ROCKTOWN NOW) – The Rockingham County School Board introduced a final draft of their long-discussed supplemental materials Monday night.

The policy outlines criteria for library books in the county’s schools and a complaint process related to those materials. The latest draft of the policy was updated after the board received feedback from a community survey, and advice from the board’s new attorney, who met with the Library Materials Committee last Wednesday in a closed session.

The most recent round of revisions, however, exempted major religious texts and classic literature from that rule. School board member Holly Cave said they also updated the policy to try and ease the burden of documenting reading material for teachers.

“From the beginning, we never intended for you to have to log every map you brought into your classroom or every magazine, or every news article or anything like that, we were specifically looking at books,” Cave said. “Maybe the [original] language was such that it seemed like that, so hopefully we rectified that situation.”

Cave was elected to chair Monday night’s meeting, with Chair Matt Cross and Vice Chair Sara Horst both absent from the meeting. No reason was given for Cross’ absence but Horst, who was out of state, attended via video call to discuss and vote on agenda items.

The supplemental materials policy covers the selection of library books in the county’s schools and a complaint process for anyone objecting to the materials available in the school libraries. While a vote on the policies was expected Monday night, they decided to hold off on that action in order to review the last round of revisions at last night’s meeting.

Horst explained that due to the number the revisions, the board decided to present the draft as an information item. She also said that they received several emails asking why they haven’t scheduled more meetings regarding the policy, and that the community survey which garnered more than 350 responses, was a more feasible option to gather that feedback.

“The survey was open-ended, it left room for people to share their thoughts,” Horst said. “We felt like if we had a series of public forums for that, we would have had hours just wrapped up in comments.”

Horst added that they took extra care to put protections in place for religious texts, classic literature and other material that could be counted as such. She cited the Virginia flag – which depicts the allegorical female figure Virtus with a bare left breast – as an example.

“We wanted to make sure we weren’t getting carried away with the definition of ‘sexually explicit content,'” Horst said. “So, we wanted to put protections in place for classic texts – things like Shakespeare, art classes, advanced art classes, advanced literature classes – they certainly have a curriculum, and in no way were we looking to get into that.”

During a public hearing, RCPS teacher Heather Harris admonished the board for only favoring feedback that does not challenge them.

“I’m not arguing against policies, or any decision that this order is made with or without vote,” Harris said. “Rather, my concern lies with your tactics.”

The board plans to vote on the policy at their next meeting on April 22 at Turner Ashby High School.