Cobb Continues Removing Sexually Explicit Content from Schools

Cobb Schools | August 26, 2024

During the August 2024 Board work session, Superintendent Ragsdale took a few minutes to update the Board and the community about the district's book review process. 

As Lindsey W., a Cobb elementary parent, recently said, “Schools aren’t telling parents how to parent; however, schools have a responsibility to make sure materials available to children are age-appropriate.” 

Keeping schools focused on teaching and learning is why Superintendent Chris Ragsdale remains determined that the Cobb County School District will not provide sexually explicit content to students. As he has previously said, the district is not banning any books; instead, it is simply choosing not to provide sexually explicit content to children.

"Today, I am bringing an update to our ongoing book review process, which we began when we learned sexually explicit and graphic content was available to children in our elementary, middle, and high school media centers. Recognizing our legal and moral obligation to protect students when they are at school, we reviewed the content and, when it was inappropriate, stopped providing unrestricted access to children. 

Since that time, the Board requested to be notified when materials were being removed because they contained lewd, vulgar, or sexually explicit content. 

Today, I am announcing that our team, as part of the review process, has identified, reviewed, and removed access to 13 additional books from our media centers. We did not make this decision casually but did so after reviewing the content in question. 

We are declining to provide access to materials with sexually explicit content in the same way we decline to provide access to rated-R movies and - in compliance with federal law - use internet filters to prevent students from accessing websites with adult content on school district computers. 

We make no judgment on whether these books have any literary merit or whether some parents do not object to their children being exposed to lewd, vulgar, or sexually graphic content. There are many rated R movies that are award-winning films; however, it would be inappropriate to provide children with unrestricted access to them in a public school. 

Again, just like a rated-R movie, our decision is based on whether the book contains sexually explicit or graphic content. And as in the case with a movie like that, Cobb parents can decide if and when their children are allowed to view content in their homes that is not appropriate for unrestricted access in our schools. 

Following our review process, we have decided the following thirteen books contain sexually graphic or explicit language, illustrations, or situations that are inappropriate for children, and therefore, it would be inappropriate for the Cob County School District to continue to provide our students unrestricted access to them.

The thirteen books are: 

• Laid 

• Crank 

• Tricks 

• Push 

• Milk and Honey 

• It Starts with Us 

• The Infinite Moment of Us 

• Casual Vacancy 

• Identical 

• Boys Aren't Blue 

• Juliet Takes a Breath 

• Monday's Not Coming 

• City of Thieves 

These thirteen books, which contain explicit sexual content, are no longer accessible in any of our schools. These join seven other books previously removed for also containing sexually explicit or graphic content. 

Those seven books are: 

• Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl 

• Flamer 

• Blankets 

• It Ends with Us 

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower

•  Lucky 

• Thirteen Reasons Why 

Again, I encourage anyone questioning this decision to review these works, asking themselves not whether they like the book or agree or disagree with it but whether it contains sexually graphic or explicit content inappropriate for children. 

This is a very surgical process. These are twenty works out of the over one million books in the District's media centers. 

The district continues - and will continue - to offer works by and concerning an incredibly diverse array of authors, characters, and experiences. A commonality of all those works, however, is they will not contain sexually graphic language, illustrations, experiences, or language that could not be read aloud at this meeting without violating FCC regulations or be accessible on our computers without violating CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act). 

I recognize there are those who oppose our decision to remove sexually explicit content from schools. They also object to this being a "local" decision. 

For example, it has been repeatedly suggested that if any group gives a book any sort of award, we must provide our children with access to that material. Frankly, several of the books we removed for containing sexually explicit or graphic content were given awards—and generally by organizations explicitly promoting a particular agenda. 

I do not believe that is appropriate. More importantly, our parents do not. Parents want to and should make decisions about when and whether their children should have unrestricted access to sexually explicit or graphic material. Our team's mission - a mission it performs exceptionally well - is teaching, not parenting. 

As you requested, we will continue to keep the Board and our parents apprised of decisions we make regarding particular works."