Literacy Matters Vol. 25 Winter 2025

to create an in-house rating system for books in discussion. However, board member Ms. Boatright suggested that they were giving the superintendent an impossible task, explaining that “We’re telling him to fix something that’s moderately unfixable and I do think that the legislature will have some guidelines coming forward over the next year about how schools approach issues like this’’ (Beaufort County School Board, January 17, 2023). This particular exchange acknowledges that the state would likely be stepping in to exert more control over what had historically been local school board issues. The invocation of the role of the state by board members is noteworthy since one of South Carolina’s State Superintendent of Education’s first official acts was cutting ties with the South Carolina Association of School Librarians (SCASL) on August 5, 2023, citing “politicized rhetoric” (Weaver, 2023). More recently, regulation 43-170, a regulation that allows for state-level appeal of local school board book review decisions for which Weaver authorized $25000 in taxpayer dollars for lobbying support (Jensen 2024), automatically went into effect without legislative review (South Carolina Department of Education, 2024; O’Toole, 2024), superseding not only local control over education but also the established legislative process. Although PEN America (2024) and more than 400 publishers, authors, and free speech groups sent an open letter to the South Carolina legislature asking them to stop regulation 43-170, it is now part of the State Department of Education policies and procedures. What Really Happens in the Book Challenge Process Beaufort County provides a specific example of what happens when book-banning efforts by a few community members lead to large-scale efforts to create book review processes that include diverse community members. In this section, we attempt to look at what really happens within those book committees, rather than focusing solely on the final outcome. We gained most of our insight from local and national media coverage of the mass book challenge; however, we also listened to streamed Beaufort County school board meetings and reviewed publicly available book review documents. The combination of sources of media (The Island Packet, PEN America, etc.) along with the conversations happening with Beaufort residents reveals the tension between how book challenges are presented in the media and how real members of the community try to do their best within the process that exists. The initial ninety-six books were chosen due to their ratings of 3 or higher on BookLooks.org, meaning they contained some amount of sexual content (Dimitrov, 2023b). Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi was separately challenged by a group of community members who claimed that it promoted Critical Race Theory, but the text was included in the large-scale removal and review process (Beaufort County School District, n.d.). While the removal of the 97 books circumvented the county’s standing book review process in late 2022 (Dimitrov, 2023b), the subsequent creation of a new book review policy and book review process was consistently applied across the challenged materials (Beaufort County School District, n.d.).

and power. Recognizing media and communication as social processes, analyzing language semiotically, exploring audience roles in meaning-making, engaging in ideological issues of power and pleasure, and examining institutions that profit, Kellner and Share (2007) aimed to combat the fear of media manipulation. How Book Challenges Came to South Carolina PEN America defines a book ban in the following way and we use this to guide the following analysis (Friedman & Johnson, 2022): ...any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished. Diminished access is a form of censorship and has educational implications that extend beyond a title’s removal. From Fall 2021 to Spring 2023, 128 book bans occurred across South Carolina, seventh in the nation (McCormick, 2023). One of the most publicized instances of book removals in South Carolina occurred in Beaufort County in 2022. Two individuals issued a challenge list of 97 books compiled based on ratings from Booklooks, an unvetted book rating system loosely affiliated with Moms for Liberty (PEN America, 2022). As a response, the school board immediately pulled all 97 books for review, ignoring their policy regarding challenged books (Markham, 2024). During a board meeting on October 18, 2022, parents read excerpts they deemed as sexually explicit. Additionally, a police report was sent alleging the distribution of obscene materials to children, and conservative politician Mike Covert emailed the book list to school district Superintendent Rodriguez (Dimitrov, 2023b). By October 21, 2022, all 97 books were removed without the registration of a formal complaint by any parents within the district. By November 1, 2022, the Beaufort County Schools Superintendent formed a seven-member committee to review each book, beginning with those used in the curriculum (McCombs, 2022). At a two-hour board meeting in 2022, the Beaufort County school board heard public comment from, among others, May River High School Student Body President Madison Hahn, and the ACLU’s Josh Malkin, all of whom disagreed with the removal of 97 texts for an undesignated amount of time (McCombs, 2022). This started a review process that lasted until late 2023, costing an estimated $7,275 (The Island Packet, 2023). Beaufort followed the process and supported the decisions of the book review committees. However, according to the board meeting transcript, multiple elected officials expressed concern about the results by claiming committees did not reflect the community (Beaufort County School Board, January 17, 2023). Our research noted broad participation by community members across review committees, though the numbers dwindled as reviews progressed (Beaufort County School District, n.d.).

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In the January 17, 2023 meeting, member of the board Dr. Wisnefski made a motion that the board direct the superintendent

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