ST. GEORGE — The Washington County School District was compelled to update its policy regarding curriculum and classroom materials due to recent state laws.
The change comes as a result of the H.B. 374: Sensitive Materials in Schools which was passed in March 2022. This law has resulted in sensitive materials policies for districts, including Washington County, in books being removed from school libraries within the state.
As such, the district’s curriculum materials policy had to be updated to be compliant with the law.
In a personal interview with the district’s Director of Technology, Jeremy Cox said “This policy is very similar to 4211.”
District policy 4211 – Media Center Library Materials “supports the acquisition and maintenance of materials that are educationally suitable for students.”
It also outlines the process for challenging materials to be decided if they are “pornographic” or “age-appropriate” to students.
Cox said the policy regarding curriculum is basically the same thing, outlining the same definitions and the same “challenge” process of materials used as a curriculum within the classroom.
“We adapted a lot of language and terminology and all the laws that apply that we used in 4211 – library policy and adapted it to work in the curriculum space,” he said.
The policy is 4212 – Learning Materials. This policy replaces older policies 4215 and 4220 which outlined learning materials and curriculum. Another policy, 4210, will also be deleted due to the enactment of the new policy.
“This policy will summarize the acquisition and removal of curriculum material within the schools,” Cox said. “Whereas the older policies had one that dealt with acquisition and the other with removal.”
Cox also said the new policy will be compliant with S.B. 55 – Public School Instructional Material Requirements which was approved during the legislative session and signed into law by Governor Spencer Cox during March. The new law requires all school boards and districts to make all “supplemental materials” used by the district viewable to parents and requires a process of review for those materials.
There are a few curricula that are not covered by this policy as it is covered under other state laws. These include sex education, medical courses, some family and consumer sciences courses and any course that the course Utah State Board of Education exempts.
“The law actually governs that in a very directive way,” he said. “As well as parents have to opt-in for their children to participate in that curriculum.”
Cox said the policy identifies three different types of materials: learning material, instructional material and supplemental material.
Learning material is any material used to give a student’s learning such as textbooks, videos, etc. Instructional material is any learning material approved by the district to use while supplemental material is anything the teacher or an educator selects to use within their classroom.
Any of these can be selected to be reviewed as “sensitive materials” except nonfiction which includes the sex education courses.
A parent can challenge the curriculum resources by filing with the district Form 945, “Request for Review of Learning Materials” form.
The curriculum material is then reviewed by a School Supplemental Material Review Committee which includes a school principal, a school counselor/psychiatrist/or wellness staff member, two parents recommended by the school’s community council and one faculty member from the department or grade level.
The review committee can’t have the “challenger” or anyone within the “challenger’s household” within the group.
This committee reviews the curriculum material and decides if the challenge is legit and if the curriculum material must be removed from the school. If there is not, then the curriculum material use may be resumed.
“This process is basically identical to the Library sensitive materials policy,” Cox added.
A “challenger” can be a parent or guardian of a student and can only be challenged at the school where their child attends. “Challengers” can also be staff but only at the schools where they work, unless they are acting as parents of where their child(ren) attends.
Each “challenger” is allowed three submissions per school year.
Even though Cox is not over curriculum within the school district, he compiled the policy regarding the curriculum as he did the same thing for the library sensitive materials policy.
Several board members mentioned this during the last meeting as it made sense since Cox already had done the research and had the know-how to apply the state requirements to the new policy.
“We want to be 100% within the bounds of the law,” Cox said. “We want to make sure that bar is set properly for curriculum and that we are doing the right things for the students.”
The new policy was proposed on May 9 and approved on June 6 during the district board meetings. It is officially enacted as district policy.
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