By Gary Kilpatrick (Bartlesville, Oklahoma) Recent email dated October 21, 2025 following a local school board meeting. Many in the area have been trying to get our school board to remove inappropriate books from our school libraries.
============================================
We had a good turnout of people interested in the subject of removing pornographic books from our school libraries – most seats in the Education Service Center were occupied. Superintendent Chuck McCauley allowed comments to be made at the start of the meeting on topics not on the agenda. Under the Board rules no questions could be asked by the Board members and no discussion of the topic could occur. However, we had three excellent speakers.
The first speaker emphasized that the Board’s existing Procedures for Reconsideration of Materials was inadequate when 103 books (140 books when counting duplicates among libraries) in Bartlesville School libraries have been identified as either pornographic or containing sexualized content. This speaker also stressed that the existing challenge procedure was deficient in that it did not address how to assure more pornographic/sexualized books would be kept out of our school libraries.
The second speaker, a parent of two teenagers in the Bartlesville School system, questioned why Board members would protect their own children from such material but allow it to be put on the shelves of school libraries. He challenged the Board members to treat his school age children well.
The third speaker presented a riveting testimony of the consequences of pornography in our schools. Her story of a young man who “lived out what he read on the pages” of school library books and subsequently was sentenced to 65 years in prison for his offenses against five women, dramatically demonstrated that school board actions, or lack thereof, with regard to pornography has real life consequences.
After the speakers Superintendent McCauley advised the Board that he believed they should continue to follow the existing Board policy for removing books from school libraries.
My analysis of the situation we currently face is as follows:
Facts:
1. The current Bartlesville Board of Education Policy (Policy EC-R1) states that:
- The Board is legally responsible for selection of library materials,
- Authority is delegated to the Superintendent for development, implementation, and administration of appropriate regulations,
- Final selection of materials is made by the library media specialist subject to approval by the Board
- “Pornographic material and sexualized content will not be available to minor students in accordance with Oklahoma Accreditation Standard 210:35-3-126″
2. Pornographic and Sexualized are defined in Oklahoma Administrative Code 210:35-3-121.1
“Pornographic” means:
(A) depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct which are patently offensive as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, considering the youngest age of students with access to the material,
(B) materials that, taken as a whole, have as the dominant theme an appeal to prurient interest in sex as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, and
(C) a reasonable person would find the material or performance taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific purposes or value, considering the youngest age of students with access to the material
“Sexualized content” means material that is not strictly Pornographic but otherwise contains excessive sexual material in light of the educational value of the material and in light of the youngest age of students with access to said material.
Analysis:
1. The administration has admitted that 103 books identified as pornographic (either “red flag warning’ or “sexually explicit”) by Takebacktheclassroom.com are on the shelves of our school libraries (about 80% in the high school or the freshman academy and 20% in the two middle schools.
2. For the two books for which I actually read the excerpts I found that both of them contained content that met the Oklahoma definition of pornographic, namely “descriptions of sexual content which are patently offensive as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards.” There was, in my mind, no need to read the entire book to evaluate whether the books contain “serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific purposes or value”. Both books failed the test from the get-go. However, I will admit that some of the books on the suspect list might not be as graphic and prurient as the two I randomly selected.
- The question can be validly asked: If these two books are patently “pornographic”, how did they get on the shelves? It does not appear to me that the existing Board policy for review and removal of books addresses this question, and more significantly, no Board member, at least up till now, has raised this question at a Board meeting or suggested that an agenda item be included to discuss such issues (nor has the administration put an item on the board agenda).
3. Leadership of the group that identified the suspect books do not believe that it should be their responsibility to initiate challenges for 103 books and spend countless hours participating on 103 review committees. They believe that the Board should direct the administration to conduct a review of these books and remove all 103 of them.
- I feel quite certain that at least one of these books will receive a formal challenge from community members. This initial book review may result in clarification as to whether there exists a difference of opinion between staff and community members as to what constitutes “patently offensive.” If this first review goes well, i.e., the book is removed with little discussion about literary value and the focus being on “patently offensive” due to its pornographic nature, then maybe further books can be removed expeditiously.
- I discussed the issue of how these books even got on the shelves with Superintendent McCauley and he believed this issue could be addressed through a discussion with the principals of the schools during a book review process. I am less optimistic that such discussions will lead to recommended changes to the existing process of placing books on the shelves.
- My preferred solution is for the Board of Education members to exercise their responsibility under the law to assure no pornographic material or sexualized content is available in Bartlesville School libraries.
How can you help?
1. Write your school board member and encourage them to challenge the administration on this issue. The Board has the legal responsibility for selection of materials in our school libraries and, in my opinion, they have failed. They need to screw up the courage to rectify the past errors in judgment (I am being gracious). I cannot say what went wrong – the facts are just not available at this time. But the Board has the responsibility to find out what went wrong. We aren’t talking about just one or two books. We are talking about one hundred books!
Thank you for getting involved.
Gary Kilpatrick
Editor’s Note: Gary lives in the Bartlesville area and serves on the Washington County GOP County Committee as precinct chair. He has been active for many years and often sends out very informative emails on local matters and hot topics. This post is one of those emails shared with his permission.
If you wish to receive email updates from Gary Kilpatrick directly, please so notify him at gakilpa[at]proton[dot]me.
For additional background here is a recent article on this topic:
Shared via OKGrassroots
You must be logged in to post a comment.