Officials in the Cobb County School District are searching their libraries for the same 23 books that Marietta officials recently banned for containing “sexually explicit” content.
They also continue to “actively review” the millions of books in the district’s collection, Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said at a board meeting Thursday.
If the district finds any of the 23 books, it will take the “same process” it did in removing books in August, Ragsdale said. At that time, the district reviewed two books and believed the content required their immediate removal.
The Marietta school board directed Superintendent Grant Rivera several months ago to review the 20,000 books in the high school library for sexually explicit content. He recommended 23 be removed. The school board upheld that recommendation and recently denied appeals from parents who asked to reinstate all of the books.
Five of the 23 books removed from the Marietta High School library are on the American Library Association’s list of the most challenged books in 2022. Six are on the organization’s list of 100 most banned and challenged books in the 2010s.
Ragsdale complimented the much smaller school system that is also in Cobb County for its actions.
“I have said it before, and I am repeating it again: This is about good and evil,” he said. “We have a professional and moral obligation to protect students from vulgar, lewd, sexually explicit, obscene and pornographic material.”
The Cobb County School District has been at the forefront of culture wars in Georgia, after the school board fired a teacher in August for reading a book that challenged gender norms to fifth grade students. Shortly after, the district removed two books — “Flamer” by Mike Curato and “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews — for containing sexually explicit content. Some community members criticized the district for that decision, after an outside group claimed credit for bringing the books to officials’ attention. District rules state that only a parent or guardian can challenge supplemental resources in Cobb schools. (The Marietta school district has also removed those two books.)
Ragsdale has repeatedly stated that it does not matter how the district learns about potentially sexually explicit content. It’s their responsibility to act, he said.
“As you can imagine, the review process of more than a million books is not a quick nor simple task,” Ragsdale said Thursday. “However, that being said, I do commit that we will complete the review and continue to remove any sexually explicit material from our schools.”
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