##VIDEO ID:Lqsw1PXpbnk## we are now live streaming you should receive a notification that our meeting is being live streamed to YouTube okay thank you and thank you to everyone for joining us today for the District library book objection committee meeting the purpose of today's meeting is to review an objection to the book titled the love hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood I'm Don Sapp associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction Mr forson our superintendent has designated me as chair of this committee and I am facilitating today's meeting school-based and District staff as well as parent and community volunteers are invited to participate on each committee today's meeting will result in a recommendation that will be forwarded to Mr forsen the St John's County School District superintendent this committee meeting is public record and therefore subject to Sunshine Law is being live streamed for public viewing committee members are not required to have their camera on during the meeting we are committed to Civility and decorum please assist us in maintaining a constructive meeting environment by remaining respectful of each participant during the meeting and afterwards additional discussion of the objecting party or committee members outside of the meeting is discouraged disparaging comments are contrary to District expectations regarding character and civility committee members received several resources in advance of the meeting the resources included the objecting parties request for reconsideration a copy of the book Florida Statutes Florida Department of Education guidance for library media Services professional Source reviews St John's County school board rules the library Bill of Rights and a school library media material evaluation checklist the process for today is as follows first the objecting party will have the opportunity to address the committee they will provide any information they deem compelling or new regarding their request next the committee will have a discussion utilizing the school library media material evaluation checklist finally a decision by majority vote will determine a recommendation for superintendent foron there are two options retain the book for a designated level or remove the book from all St John's County School District Libraries for our meeting today both agreeable and opposing viewpoints are welcome are there any questions okay let's begin Gan Moore is the objecting party Miss Moore this is your time to address the committee you have up to five minutes to share your objection good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts the love hypothesis is by Ali Hazelwood outwardly it seems harmless enough a young man and young woman kissing awkwardly on the cover and is a New York Times bestseller New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren calls it contemporary romance's unicorn The elusive marriage of deeply brainy and delightfully Escapist good readed says this as a thir third-year PhD candidate ol of Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships but her best friend does and that's what got her into the situation convincing on that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than handwavy Jedi Mind Tricks scientists require proof so like any self-respecting biologist Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees that man is no none other than Adam Carlson a young hot shot professor and well-known ass which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab Tyron agrees to keep her charid a secret and be her fake boyfriend but when a big science conference goes hey wire putting Olive's career on the bunson burner Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding six-pack abs suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion and Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope Ally Hazelwood says that she writes contemporary R romcom novels about women in stem and Academia but the seemingly innocent descript description is a misrepresentation and does nothing to promote women and young women and stem in fact all of them seems pretty shallow dimwitted and has the vocabulary of a punk middle schooler she is supposed to be a third-year PhD candidate at Stanford and a scientist this driil does not make it into the realm of serious literary value for minors I'm not sure which is more appalling providing a book to students that is full of profanity vulgarity and has an entire chapter dedicated to a graphic and detailed sex scene or that the St Augustine High School principal media specialist and media adviser committee voted to retain it this is the sort of thing that makes me not trust the process School libraries are not there to accept every written work known to humanity books with profanity vulgarity and graphic sex add no value to student development and certainly do not enrich The Learning Experience of students in school is this really where we have come to in St John's County Schools nastiness and filth at the fingertips of students approved by District staff and committee members does this book rep repr the community standards of the district the issue is so much bigger than this one title is it is it is about where do the boundaries lie where is the line drawn so parents and community members can know when that line has been crossed this book has crossed a line when it comes to students and collections curated by our school district it is a shame and a disgrace that we all even have to be here today the law has been violated pornography in schools is illegal in our state not to mention that decency and Common Sense seem to be the exception rather than the rule the the love hypothesis is not an appropriate Book for a school library and should be removed from the collection thank you for your time thank you Miss Moore Committee members before we start going through the evaluation uh checklists uh just a reminder Florida statute states that any material used in a classroom made available in a school or classroom library or included on a reading list may be objected to for four specific reasons the first reason the material is pornographic or prohibited under section 847.011 of Florida statute if the committee agrees with the objecting party that this material is either pornographic or prohibited um the material must be removed for the remaining three reasons the committee will determine if there is an appropriate grade level or if the material should be removed those three reasons are the material depicts or describes sexual conduct as defined in statute 8471 pin 19 unless such material is for a course required or for a required course next reason the material is not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material and the final reason the material is inappropriate for the grade level age group for which the material is used keep in mind that our final task on the form is to make a recommendation to superintendent forson there's two options retain the book for a designated level or remove the book from all St John's County School District Libraries again statute is clear that we um we will recommend to remove the title if the majority of the committee determines a violation of question four on the checklist the floor will be open to discussion and each Committee Member will have the opportunity to share comments will be summarized to provide an overall committee response for each question please remember to raise your hand to provide a comment for our meeting today both agreeable and opposing viewpoints are welcome and we look forward to attaining consensus let's begin we will go through the school library meeting materials evaluation together each of you should have received a copy of that I will read each question I'll ask if anyone has comments and then we will vote okay for the first question um the objecting party's challenge of material sites and actually for this one I'm just going to read directly from Mrs Moore's um her basis for objection and she checked the material is pornographic the material is prohibited under Section 847 7.12 of Florida statute and the material depicts or describes sexual conduct as defined in section 8471 PR 19 of Florida statute so she checked three reasons are the basis for her objection so we will um capture that in the notes number two this number questions number two and three um just for everyone's reference these are because we are making making a recommendation to the superintendent these questions allow him to see to what degree did the committee um engage in the process so for question number two um basically what we're asking is did you review the pages that were cited by the objecting party so if you did review those pages you would vote Yes and if you did not get a chance to review the pages you would vote no um and if you can go ahead and vote at this time we're waiting on three more votes okay if everyone can leave their vote I will let you know when we have all the votes can you repeat the directions again I'm sorry we're have we're still some technical issues here okay sure we're we're looking at question number two on the evaluation checklist and we're asking for everyone to indic indicate whether or not you reviewed the specific pages that were cited by the objecting party if you did review those pages you'll vote Yes if you did not review the pages you'll vote no I just need everyone to keep their vote up until I have all the votes tallied so if everyone could um make sure vote is visible thank you all right Miss sa we have eight yes votes you may clear your vote at this time thank you thank you everyone we appreciate that okay for question number three um this is a similar style question professional Andor crowd Source reviews were considered so if you did look over those professional and crowdsource reviews we want you to vote Yes if you did not get a chance to look at those you can vote no again this is just to to um let the superintendent know how we arrived at our decision and did we review these different materials all right Miss sap we have eight yes votes for question number three you may now remove your vote thank you and um I will um say that we can have comments on the reviews if anyone wants to make a comment now or you can hold your comments and as we work our way through the questions if you want to site back to the review we can capture it then is there any if if anyone wants to make a comment now you can raise your hand otherwise we'll move on okay all right we're going to go to question number four is the material pornographic or prohibited under Florida statute 847.011 are there any comments would anyone like to make a comment before we vote okay I don't see any hands so we'll go ahead and call for the vote is the material pornographic or prohibited under Florida statute 847.011 Miss sap we have four yes votes and four no votes for question number four okay thank you you may now clear your vote question number five does the material depict or describe sexual conduct defined in Florida statute 8471 pin 19 are there [Applause] any comments please raise your hand if you'd like to make a comment before the vote okay we'll call for the vote for question number five does the material depict or describe sexual conduct defined in Florida statute 847.011 19 Miss sap we have eight yes votes for question number five may now clear your vote sorry missed up that's okay okay question number six um I like to make sure that uh we know where this book is currently within the St John's County School District before we address six and seven so um Miss Sakowski could you do you give us an update on where this material is presently yes it's currently in um the high school collection at a high school okay as a library material okay so this is currently available for grades 9 through 12 okay so question number six is the material unsuited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented are there any comments before we vote okay we'll call for a vote is the material unsuited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented please vote missp for question number six we have two yes votes and six no votes you may now clear your vote okay we'll move to question number seven is the material inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used again this material is available for grades 9 through 12 is the material inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used uh are there any comments before we vote okay we'll call for the vote please vote is this material inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which this material is used Miss sap for question number seven we have three yes votes and five no votes you may now clear your vote okay um we are now at the point where we need to make our recommend mendation uh to the superintendent I would like to open it up to see if um anyone has any comments regarding that um recommendation uh as a starting point because it is currently available in grades 9 through2 that that is generally where we would start um does anyone have any comments okay um that I'm going to go ahead and start with um our committee's recommendation would be that the material is appropriate for grades nine and up if you agree with the this material is appropriate for grades nine and up please vote Yes if you don't vote no and if we get um majority no we we can revisit and decide what we want to do Miss sap for grades uh appropriate material is appropriate for grades nine and up we have four yes votes and four no votes okay um we I'm I I want to take us back as a facilitator so we did have a split vote on um the question that would have necess ated I would say that we recommend removal since we didn't have a majority V vote it's not an automatic removal of this material so we do need to make a recommendation to the superintendent on um whether we believe it should be removed or whether we believe that um there is a grade level this is appropriate for so is there anyone who would like to make a recommendation for a vote on where this material would be appropriate or say like for a a higher age is that what you're meaning when you're asking that question like possibly we do have some titles that um are not available to um some of our younger students in high school so that is a possibility okay if we um if we land and a tie it is basically you know where where we will land is the book will remain available where it is if there's no majority that says we need to make a change then we default to the material remains available where it is so does anyone is there anyone who wants to make any type of recommendation I'll leave it open for few more seconds okay yes we do have one hand raised Vicki um I am really not I I would recommend that it remain in high school accessible to high school students in as a library book where it is and that um I mean I was going to M basically just say something about how I was looking at this if that's okay yeah and we will definitely um I want to have an option for any comments that you all would like considered by the superintendent when he reviews our recommendation um so if anyone would like to include a comment you know Vicki this this is a chance for you to have a comment recorded um but like I said I mean he will see the notes and he will see that it was basically um we did not come to consensus on a recommendation the notes will capture that there wasn't that I started with 9 to12 because that's where we were at landed in tide we didn't have a different recommendation um so if anyone has any comments that you would like included in the notes so that he can see what you're thinking this is your chance okay then I guess I would make a comment okay okay this book is a contemporary adult romance um it's not written for children I don't believe the amount of profanity sprinkled throughout the book or sexual conduct between the two main characters who love each other that occurs near the end of the story is a re reason to remove a book that otherwise might interest some students in a story that addresses pertinent issues like women in stem Fields the academic environment and academic careers and dealing with sexual harassment um the protagonist also lost her mother to cancer at a young age which some students might identify with it's not a curricular book it's just a library offering and concerned parents can always opt out okay thank you Vicki Mr Willets my comment would would follow that I I would make this book um parent would have to approve before it's checked out to a student just because of the sexual content that's involved I agree I we see plenty of contemporary High School books that have lots of profanity in them my issue is the uh the the sexual content so um certainly it's an adult written book but we have adult students on campus um but still I I would prefer a parent to say yes before it's checked out okay okay we've captured those comments for our recommendation is there anyone else who wanted to add anything yeah we have two more hands up now okay great yes I'm sorry that's okay they just came up Vicki go ahead oh you're still muted Vicki okay so um I generally am more comfortable with the opt out provision because the students I mean maybe it's less of an issue with this book than some others but students basically are at an age where they are learning exploring trying on different ideas and different perspectives and different um and I think that um sometimes having an uh opt in to have to go get permission from your parents may make that more difficult and particularly for for students again less of an issue with this book students that may be struggling with like lgbtq type issues or you know um or maybe an issue of sexual harassment which is in this book um it might be awkward for the students to have to go and approach the parents and explain that so I am generally I think that um uh It generally it's better to have an OP out provision and each parent can um decide for for his or or her children um whether they don't want them to read it but I I would prefer to give these you know soon to be you know they're they're growing toward adulthood I'd prefer to give them some latitude and choice to explore with the guidance I mean the other thing I want to point out is that my understanding is that there is an acquisition process and that you know we have trained um teachers and media Specialists who are involved in selecting these books as part of our collection in the first place so you know I I um my my parents we in Academia I am I am really reluctant to just assume that this book wasn't put in here for good reasons um which I think may include the fact that you know it's written by a scientist and it's in in an academics setting um yes it may be a romcom but it does deal with those issues and including of a pretty serious issue of sexual harassment so um all that being said um my recommendation would be just to leave it um as it is accessible to high school students and allow parents to opt out thank you Vicki Miss Patel hi um I just wanted to touch on some of the things that have already been mentioned but things that I noted while I read the book um I also disagree that the profanity was excessive I mean I didn't think it was really gratuitous it was just used for emphasis so I didn't find that offensive and I feel like whether we like it or not that's how kids talk um so they're going to relate to that um I know it was mentioned on the obor's form about the alcohol use but again there was not used by miners it was um used by those who are a over 21 so it's obviously legal and I don't think that should even be considered in the complaint um and while you know I did there is obviously there is a descriptive um chapter of uh sexual intercourse I don't I I didn't deem it pornographic I mean I think that's a stretch um and there was no abuse in it it wasn't wasn't deviant it seemed like normal sex um and it was between two Consulting ad adults not teenagers um again and I think they also throughout this book talked about consent so I think that's important I think that's a strong message to share with young women and men that consent is important um they also briefly discussed birth control and being clean so I think those are important and um while the com the objection form noted that there was basically nothing of value in this book I strongly disagree with that um it you know it was a typical romcom I think we could all probably figure out what was going to happen in the end but it did focus on women and stem the competitive environment of the male dominated scientific community and the challenges women face um talked about opportunities for outreach to women in stem women working together um women working towards obtaining PhD which is obviously something truly to be proud of and I think any parent would be thrilled if their child was working towards getting a PhD um I appreciated the this the number of references to the scientific method throughout the book um they talked about scientific experiments and language and references to the importance of Title 9 and how it benefits women um and also the importance of reporting harassment um so again you know I while there is the there is mention of sex I think that it's age appropriate for high school students and I think those are you know conversations that parents need to be having at home you know you can you can have those hard conversations now before these kids are going off to college um and maybe that's maybe that's taking it too far but I feel like again books like this allow students to read and then if they have questions they can ask questions and again I would also fall back on um you know if I don't want my child to read a book I can simply submit the library book access form um and I think it's up to the parents I know there's all this discussion about parental rights but you know that falls under that if I don't want my child reading something like this then I need to submit that form um and again I also trust our media Specialists to do their job I think they're well trained and they're the experts in this field um and again I you know I'll piggy back on what uh Jean mentioned where she said that this is you know not a good use of our time I also feel it's not a good use of of the time I mean it's important to do these book you know if a book is being objected yes we need to discuss it but I feel like the administration media specialist parents there are more important bigger issues that we could be spending our time on like helping students cope with their mental health challenges than reviewing books thank you Miss Resnik did you want to make a comment or did you put your hand down I'm good thanks okay thank you um Miss Brown go ahead yes I just wanted to add on that in addition to the um diversity of by gender there was also this book has um diversity of all sorts and um that I think our audiences um could potentially identify with so there's different reasons to read it as well and um I think kind of continuing on with Vicki's line and then was just echoed in the last um Committee Member as well there are um Librarians uh media Specialists who have reviewed and selected these books and this book is at one of the high school libraries each of our schools have different cultures and climates and while perhaps this is isn't a book that is widely going to be embraced by the student body at one school at another there are students who would potentially identify with it and have um empowering messages from it so I would encourage it be considered for those reasons as well thank you thank you there are no other hands up currently uh Miss sa okay um well thank you very much to everyone I'm Sorry Miss up Miss Stuart did you w to um say something your hand is up yeah sorry I didn't mean to put up the like clapping hand I pushed the wrong one um okay go ahead um I just I heard a couple of people people mention um a an opt out form what is the process for that and how are parents informed about that because it's been a little bit since I've been in a school um the opt out form is available via the website and parents can identify titles and submit that form into their school's um media specialist and mil milia I will defer to you to add anything else that is relevant I'm not the expert they can once um even if they don't submit a form if they call their library or their school or a teacher there is to be a note that's also added into Destiny with the title or the subject or an author or a book that is not um something that they want their child to read um or to have access to it's just like a classroom management plan for that um student and so um take it very seriously because we do have to document um the um students who have opted out of certain um materials in the library and the classroom libraries are an extension of the library as well so that's very important to note a parent could say cont or subject so it doesn't necessarily have to be it's right yeah it's right on that form it's one of those things and they can submit a list of titles that they don't want their child to read it can be done by email they can tell the teacher um so yes and and as I said we do you know we make sure that we it is posted on the website but it is uh communicated you know at the beginning of the year quite frequently and Mystics also on here if I miss something too but I'm pretty sure I cover that extensively um and we reiterated in our media specialist trainings as well okay and and the form and the form was included in that big stack of background materials you gave us to prepare for this meeting too yes ma'am it was it is included as well there okay well again thank you to all of you we do appreciate the engagement of community and parents in this process it's important um there are two final action steps to conclude our work number one your acknowledgement as a participant on the committee is needed on the recommendation to Mr forsen the recommendation which will include notes from today's discussion will be emailed to you you can acknowledge participation by responding with an email or you may review and sign the document at our Media Services office which is now located um at the Sebastian Annex um at Sebastian Middle School the second thing we need you to do is return your book and any notes that you used in preparing for today's location we ask that you um return the book to the location where you picked it up from so I know some of you picked it up from a local school near you so wherever you um retrieved it if you could just take it back there and we would ask that you complete both of these by this Friday if at all possible I know that our media Services team tends to get the email out with all the notes from the meeting the following day so you should hopefully see that tomorrow maybe the next day but as soon as you can um respond to that um message that would be great I see a hand up Mr Wills did you have a final comment comment before we close the meeting yes ma'am I just question so how many how many books um of this the the love hypothesis had to be purchased for this review or were these books currently in circulation that we could just look at and from current circulation there was one book currently in circulation and that was at St Augustine High School so we did have to purchase some copies yes so this book cost $16 and we incurred the the cost of doing this correct so there's no when we have enough copies of course you know when we get an objection that has the objection is for sexual content then we immediately pull the books and we distribute the books that we have but if we do not have enough then we do have to sometimes buy additional titles okay I was just curious it seems like a lot of money being spent on this I apologize thank you okay thank you