Logansport students Jacob Patty, Payton Mucker, Layla Powell, Sam Fultz and Charles Zimmerman discussed Senate Bill 12, a bill that targeted libraries for providing content considered harmful to minors. Josh Flynn | CNHI News Indiana
Senate Bill 12 took an unexpected twist this past week.
SB12 was a bill that looked to charge librarians and teachers with a felony for giving “content considered harmful to minors.”
Language from the bill became an amendment to Senate Bill 380 and was discussed during an Indiana House Education Committee session in Indianapolis Wednesday, April 5.
Parts of the amendment were focused on public and school libraries creating a process that allowed parents and community members to challenge books. Libraries already have a system for book challenges in place. Libraries would also have to make their collection catalog available online and be prepared to move books to an age appropriate section.
If prosecuted for allowing a minor access to a book considered “harmful,” librarians and teachers cannot use the educational value of the book in question as a defense.
Librarians and teachers face a level 6 felony if prosecuted.
The amendment also includes text that targets a person or business selling, renting, or displaying “for sale or rent to any person matter that is harmful to minors within (500) feet of the nearest property line of a school or church” and “engages in or conducts a performance before minors that is harmful to minors.”
SB12 passed the Indiana Senate last month. The amendment was crafted by Sen. Becky Cash (R-Zionsville). Senate Bill 380 focuses on graduation issues, dress codes and various other education matters. It was co-written by Stacey Donato (R-Logansport). Donato voted in favor of SB12.
EDUCATORS FEEL THREATENED
The educators are frustrated.
It’s been a difficult four years for teachers all over the country, beginning with the COVID-19 pandemic and followed by national school shootings, multiple controversial education legislation, and now understanding bills like SB12/ SB380.
Prior to the SB380 amendment, Logansport High School teachers and students discussed their thoughts on Senate Bill 12.
“The law, if it becomes a law, seems to be intentionally vague in what it considers obscene material,” said Bryan Looker, a history teacher. “I think the potential punishment towards librarians and teachers is off the charts, considering the first drunk driving offense—if you don’t harm someone— even a second drunk driving defense is a misdemeanor without bodily injury. And this particular bill is talking about making it a level 6 felony.”
“I don’t think it’s intended to be legally binding,” said Nathan Hedrick, an English teacher. “I think it’s intended to scare teachers.”
Tammy Minks, the Logansport High School librarian and department chair, agreed that the bill felt more like a threat than an actual law meant to pass. Even if that is the case, she said it was infuriating.
Minks said that Donato has never reached out to her to learn about how a school library operates or what books may or may not be inside the Logansport High School library.
English teacher Chris Pearcy said most students are exposed to “harmful content” through social media apps like TikTok, films and television, not books.
“If you ban everything that could be slightly controversial, all you are doing is putting it off until (students) are 18 and out in the world,” he said. “You as a parent and we as teachers have no say in what happens when they are exposed to it then.”
A system to select books for the school library exists and is very similar to what the Logansport Cass County Library uses, as explained by its director David Ivey. Both libraries look to trusted national reviewers. In the case of the high school, Minks preferred the “Kirkus Review.” She also has started attending a national conference focused on young adult literature and buys books that are featured there.
Both libraries have similar challenge procedures already in place, too. If someone is unhappy with a book, they tell a librarian and explain their reasoning. From there, there are steps that lead all the way to the library board or school board, who make the final decision to remove a book.
Minks has never had a book challenged at the Logansport High School library.
Cash claimed Wednesday at the committee hearing in Indianapolis that thousands of parents had complained to schools across the state about books.
“I really love our community,” she said, explaining that most parents, when a problem with materials arise, will work to remedy the situation for their child in a way that doesn’t take away an opportunity for the other students. “So, it’s just shocking that our government wants to impose one parent’s views on an entire school.”
Looker explained that the school already has guardrails in case there is an objection from parents. Students need to have permission slips signed by parents to view a film during the school day. If it’s a certain book that they know might be objectionable to some, a parent will have a chance to say that they don’t want their child reading the book and that student will receive an alternate assignment.
He said the bill punishes the 19 students in a classroom who don’t have an objection to learning material, however, because one person does, a book is removed.
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