After a spate of book challenges this summer, Collier County (FL) Public Schools (CCPS) came to a decision: let parents see what books their children are taking out to read. The district opened its virtual doors in August, allowing moms and dads to review what the nearly 45,000 K–12 students at its 50 schools are checking out at the library media center. The move comes after a series of book challenges that the district faced in June 2015, when a parents’ group called Parents ROCK (Rights of Choice for Kids) raised concerns about  four titles: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (Holt, 1970), Beloved (Knopf, 1987), Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban (Knopf, 1992) and Lois Duncan’s Killing Mr. Griffin (Little, Brown, 1978). They wanted the district to restrict availability of the titles to what they called “age-appropriate children with a parents (sic) permission,” according to a June 18 Facebook post.

A privacy issue

“Parents really are our partners in education,” says Peggy Aune, CCPS assistant superintendent in Naples, FL. “This allows parents to see any information about the books and make suggestions [to their child] about what [they are] checking out.” Parents reading with their children can send teachers and librarians into joyful cartwheels. Letting mom and dad peek at what their kids are checking out to read? For that, there’s a little less enthusiasm. A long-standing tenet of librarianship is the belief that parents do not have the right to dictate what all students read. At the same time, they also respect that parents and guardians have the right to make decisions they feel are best for their own children—even if those choices may not ring true to them as media specialists. “When Harry Potter (Bloomsbury, 1997) came out, I had a girl who said she couldn’t read it because her mom wouldn’t let her, because her preacher said ‘No,’” says Terri Grief, school librarian at McCracken County High School in Paducah, KY, and immediate past president of the American Association of School Librarians. “That was heartbreaking for me, because everyone was reading Harry Potter. But I understand parents have the final say.” A book can be a safe place to get answers to questions they may not be ready to ask of friends or family. “Maybe they do need to read a book about a sensitive subject that they don’t feel they can talk about with their parents,” Grief says. “They use fiction to learn about life. That doesn’t mean they want to do [what’s described in the book]. Knowledge is power.” Sometimes, Grief notes, kids just want to escape into other people’s problems. However, she counsels students all the time that if a book “feels icky,” she says, or makes a child uncomfortable, then maybe they shouldn’t be reading that title right now.

CCPS  links Follett  program to web portal

The district uses Follett’s Destiny Asset Manager, a software program that helps districts track and oversee their literacy resources. Each school has a media center, staffed with a full-time certified library media specialist, says Traci Kohler, director of STEM, instructional technology and media services for CCPS. In August, the district linked that program online to its web-based portal. This allows parents of K–12 students to enter their own child’s six-digit ID, and then see what he or she has already accessed from the school media center. Follett is “not involved” with the set-up of the portal and link to the Destiny system, says Tom Kline, vice president of corporate communications for the educational technology company. “It sounds like something the county did themselves,” he says.

New option gathering momentum

Since CCPS granted access to students’ library activity for the 2015–2016 school year, there’s been a “heightened awareness of the parent portal,” says Kohler. She adds that parents have been calling to learn how to log in. Thus far, there haven’t been any challenges by parents, according to Kohler. “I’ve had monthly meetings with the media specialists,” she says. “Nothing has risen to that level that has needed my attention. In our case, no news is good news.”