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NHC school board reviews book selection process again, one member calls ‘banning’ allegations ‘misinformation’

WHQR | By Rachel Keith

Published August 6, 2025 at 5:06 PM EDT

These are the two books that are banned at certain levels and schools throughout the district.

At Tuesday’s New Hanover County school board meeting, Republican board members Josie Barnhart and Pat Bradford led the charge to have their colleagues consider codifying new rules around parent and student book challenges. That would include school-level requests for book limitations or removals going to a districtwide review, redacting the names of parents who ask for school or district limitations or removals of books, and instituting a book rating system similar to MPAA ratings.

New Hanover County Schools Assistant Superintendent for Technology and Digital Learning Dawn Brinson was again called to explain to the board how the school and districtwide Media Technology Advisory Committees (MTAC) function. She, along with various district officials, reviewed this process with a past board (including some of the same members) throughout the nine-month evaluation of the book Stamped: Antiracism, Racism, and You written by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds.

Since 2020, the way instructional materials are selected and how book challenges work have been codified in policy 3200 (selection of instructional materials) and 3210 (parental inspection of and objection to instructional materials). Both these policies have been revised several times since 2022. The makeup of school and district-level review committees was also previously explained during consideration of Stamped and Blended.

Making all parental book challenges district-wide

Tuesday’s discussion followed restrictions placed on the book Blended, a few months ago.

Board member Josie Barnhart was the parent who challenged that book, and said she wants the process to change. She requested that any book challenged at an individual school also be evaluated districtwide.

“Because if we are finding people removing [books] for pervasively vulgar, inappropriate age, maturity, or grade level of the students, or [because it’s] educationally unsuitable, we need to address it as a district,” she said.

Currently, Brinson said the process is for books to be first reviewed at the school level, based on varying types and needs of student populations. If parents are unhappy with a decision, however, they can escalate to a district-wide challenge – as Barnhart did with Blended.

She reiterated that book limitations and removals are not considered “censorship,” but a way to ensure that the district is complying with state law.

Barnhart relayed an anecdote about a parent who had come to her upset that one school had a limitation on a book but at another school there were no restrictions (she didn’t name the book).

Responding to Barnhart’s requested change to the book challenge process, board member Judy Justice said this would add more work to staff – and the board should start treating educators as professionals.

Keep parent names private?

Board member Pat Bradford asked Brinson if they could consider a formal policy of redacting parents’ names when they request material be removed from a school or the district at large. Brinson responded she could work to codify that in the district’s policy.

While board attorneys Brian Kromke and Norwood Blanchard have maintained this is considered protected information under FERPA, a federal law concerning student privacy, other educational law experts say this would not be protected because a parental book complaint is not a part of a student’s educational record.

Notably, the district did not redact the name of the parent who requested the removal of Stamped. Like the Stamped precedent, other districts in North Carolina don’t redact the parents’ names when it comes to book challenges.

Board member Tim Merrick said this redaction would be “highly inappropriate” in cases where parents are asking for restrictions that will impact other families – but reiterated that he understood that parents should have control over what their own student reads.

Bradford sees the redaction as an attempt to protect parents who have the “courage” to review books and that revealing their names could expose their children to unwanted scrutiny.

She also asked Brinson if the district could start looking at a rating system for library books similar to how movies are rated by the MPAA. Board chair Melissa Mason brought up something similar in the past.

The discussion continues over the phrase ‘book ban’

“It’s misinformation that we’re the book-banning board. I have continued to put the truth out there,” Bradford said.

Bradford asked Brinson if the district had banned any books — she gave a nuanced answer: there is not a book that is removed from every student from every school; however, Brinson added in her twenty-some years working in her department there were maybe two challenges preceding the Stamped and Blended cases.

These two books are banned or removed for certain uses. Stamped cannot be used in any high school classrooms, including AP courses, but it’s still accessible in high school libraries. It’s not available in middle or elementary school libraries.

The young-adult novel Blended can only be checked out by fourth and fifth-grade students with parental permission. Students in third grade and under cannot have it. Since there are strict parameters on the book even for libraries, the implication is that fourth or fifth-grade teachers would not be able to discuss it in the classroom either.

Superintendent Dr. Christopher Barnes said under a new state law, HB 805, parents will have access to online book lists for both classroom and school libraries — allowing them to flag material they don’t want their children to access.

Brinson added that this is already accessible for class materials at the district level. (WHQR requested this link and hasn’t heard back.) The new bill mandates that each school has this link on their website; Brinson said that they’re working on creating the index for school libraries but said it would take some time to complete.

The district, she said, also has the capability for parents to flag certain books in the school library that their student(s) can’t check out. They can do this through the Destiny system.

While the topic of discussion was mainly about book challenges, Barnes wanted to warn of a larger concern for students: smartphones.

“If you are concerned about content that your children have access to, I want you to be aware that their phone has much more access than the libraries do,” he said. The audience applauded after he said this.

Barnes also noted the district’s ‘Wait Until Eighth’ program, where parents don’t give their student a smartphone until at least eighth grade.

The board didn’t vote on any policy changes — but the requested changes will likely come back at a future meeting, as Barnhart told Brinson to revamp the MTAC process, and Bradford asked for parental anonymity when challenging books that affect other families in the district along with implementing a book rating system.

WHQR covererage of past book battles: