Legislators put their SC school district into spotlight of book challenge debate

Culture war debates over what’s appropriate for library shelves put a rural South Carolina school district in the national spotlight, as a Moms for Liberty book challenge escalated into a legislator’s calls for the state to investigate and fire employees.

The Department of Education isn’t commenting on whether an inquiry even exists.

But it has sought the Legislature’s approval for a regulation that would create a standard policy for challenging books in South Carolina’s schools and give the State Board of Education final say over parents’ complaints.

The House could take up and OK the regulation Thursday. But with only four legislative days left in the session, it’s not expected to go any further this year.

The two GOP House members representing Anderson One School District have urged for passage as they await the outcome of an investigation they say is underway.

The regulation would also require school districts to maintain on their websites “at all times” a publicly available and easy-to-find listing of all books and materials available to students — addressing their accusation that books were hidden from parents.

How Anderson became national news

The issue exploded after the Anderson County branch of Moms for Liberty, a conservative parental rights group founded in Florida, sent out a news release in late February highlighting portions of emails Anderson One provided in response to a public records request.

The release quoted school librarians complaining in emails about Moms for Liberty.

In one from March 2022, a librarian was explaining to a teacher — who was trying to find a book — that she’d taken the library catalog offline “so parents can’t scour it for critical race theory books (sigh).”

Five months later, she wrote, “I still don’t have my catalog visible to the public — we removed those links, right?”

“I think mine goes straight to the log in page as well (if I did it right),” another librarian responds.

Rep. Thomas Beach, R-Piedmont, wrote to state Superintendent Ellen Weaver, saying the records showed a “coverup” by public employees.

The father of three children in Anderson One schools called for employees to be investigated and fired, as well as a statewide investigation “to see if these methods of hiding graphic and pornographic materials from parents is happening throughout South Carolina.”

Anderson One officials firmly deny Beach’s allegations.

A district spokeswoman said the catalog of library books “is and always has been” open to parents through their child’s school login. And it’s been open for public searches without a login since last fall, according to the district. However, as the Gazette learned, finding the database can be difficult for anyone unschooled on where to click.

While book battles are occurring nationwide, the fight in Anderson One stands out due to Beach’s request and where it’s happening.

The accusations involve one of the most staunchly conservative areas of a Republican-dominated state. Both Beach and Rep. April Cromer of Anderson, who requested the records on Moms for Liberty’s behalf, are members of the House’s hardline Freedom Caucus.

Patrick Kelly, a lobbyist for the Palmetto State Teachers Association, said that in 19 years of teaching, he’s never heard of a legislator asking the Department of Education to investigate specific educators.

“Anderson is just one example of how book challenges have been accompanied with threats and harassment,” the South Carolina Association of School Librarians said in a statement to the Gazette.

“There are politically-motivated groups behind this behavior and, unfortunately, some of our state’s lawmakers have decided to join in,” it read.

The president of the association is a librarian and former teacher of the year in Anderson One.

News of the Anderson One allegations quickly spread beyond Upstate South Carolina, as it was picked up by several conservative outlets, including the national Daily Signal, a publication of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, and Fox News. According to the school district and librarians, threats followed.

“As intended, it is painful and traumatic to be the focus of their name calling, accusations, and even threats to my physical safety and the safety of my family,” wrote Tamara Cox, the library association’s president, in an email to the SC Daily Gazette. “No librarian should be targeted for simply doing their job.”

10 boxes of documents

The records that Anderson One provided Cromer last November ran to roughly 17,000 pages, according to the school district.

The Gazette asked for a copy of the communications released to Cromer but was told it would cost $6,000 to $7,000 to get the same information. The Gazette instead paid $22.80 for a much more limited request.

Cromer got the requested communications for free because she’s a legislator. A district spokesperson said Cromer’s request took several staff a full week to redact the information released in hardcopy.

The pages filled 10 boxes, according to Moms for Liberty’s Feb. 28 news release, which said a thorough review found emails that “show school librarians conspiring to hide books from parents so they are not flagged as ‘controversial.'”

The group attached six pages of emails dating from November 2021 to July 2023. In them, public school teachers and librarians, mostly in Anderson One, discuss book selections for lessons, book challenges elsewhere and frustrations with Moms for Liberty specifically.

Founded in 2021 to fight pandemic mandates and closed classrooms, the controversial conservative group has spread nationwide to counter what it considers “woke” ideology, with tactics that include seeking the removal of books from school libraries.

There are 19 county chapters in South Carolina.

One email chain from July 2023 that the Anderson chapter released is between a Powdersville High librarian and a teacher asking for recommendations for contemporary young adult fiction to read aloud during class.

“We are in a really weird climate right now with books in ASD1,” the librarian wrote. “The Moms of Liberty are coming hard at us with book challenges (mind you, the leader of the group doesn’t even have a child in our district – *grrrr*), so we’re going to need to tread lightly with our topical choices. They have their censoring guns loaded.”

In another exchange shared later by Moms for Liberty, a teacher of Advanced Placement English reached out to some students over the summer, asking if they’d be interested in organizing a pushback to book challenges, emailing back and forth with them to strategize.

“What’s happening is that books are being removed because of a challenge that is based on excerpts. These excerpts are distributed and read aloud at board meetings for a shock effect,” he wrote in June 2023. “They are explicit. And out of context, they could reasonably be called ‘obscene.’ But the excerpt is not the book as a whole, and that is what I am defending. … And that would be one of the ways we would argue against these bans.”

Multiple sources told the Gazette that teacher left the district following the Moms for Liberty email blast. The district said it could not discuss personnel matters, and the teacher did not return messages from the Gazette.

There’s no record that any other Anderson One employee has left over the controversy.

The trouble started percolating over a year ago.

In March 2023 — two months after the Anderson County chapter of Moms for Liberty held its first meeting — the Anderson One school board proposed changing its book-challenging policy so that only residents of the district could challenge books in its schools. And Anderson One is among five school districts in Anderson County.

“This raised red flags for the parents, who then found many of the sexually explicit books that had been challenged across the country,” Moms for Liberty chapter leader Carly Carter wrote in an email to the Gazette. That was when parents contacted her, she said.

Then last spring, amid the Legislature’s debate on banning abortions, GOP Sen. Sandy Senn of Charleston said on the Senate floor that a parent in Anderson One asked that the 1985 dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” — about a society where women are valued only as baby-making machines — be removed from shelves.

That prompted a flurry of open records requests from news outlets, according to records released to the Gazette.

Parents in Anderson One ultimately challenged nine books, including “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which is among seven that students now need parents’ permission to check out. Only one on the list has been removed from shelves entirely.

“After parents challenged nine books for being sexually explicit, the subsequent school board meetings were very contentious, and it became obvious that there were people within the district working together to block parents,” Carter, the chapter chairwoman, wrote.

After several months of back and forth with the school district, Moms for Liberty decided to file a Freedom of Information Act request on which books were removed from high school libraries. When the group learned the FOIA’s cost, they asked Cromer to request it instead in her official capacity, so they could get it for free. And she asked for much more, including all communications from librarians containing the words “critical race theory,” “privilege,” and “LGBTQ.”

Cromer, whose children graduated from the district, said what was found in the boxes confirmed the group’s concerns.

“I think it just highlighted a lot of the things we were told were not happening. We saw it first-hand in their own emails and their back and forth that they were working actively, intentionally to hide stuff from parents,” Cromer told the Gazette.

A “bombshell report”

Days after the Moms for Liberty press release, Beach sent his letter to Superintendent Weaver, pointing to the group’s “bombshell report.” His letter, which did not name anyone, accused Anderson One employees of deliberately and secreting “grooming” students — alleging, without evidence, that educators are deliberately sexualizing children.

“I don’t think I’ve been more upset” since his 2022 election to the House, Beach told the Gazette about seeing the emails in the release.

The district called his accusations ridiculous.

“Our teachers and administrators have dedicated their careers to serving students and helping them reach their full potential,” said district spokeswoman Jennifer Mazza. “Accusations that there is ‘a deliberate campaign of secret grooming’ are not only false, but also diminish the hard work of teachers in our district who are focused on the academic success of all students.”

Such success was celebrated just last week when Weaver announced that the state’s Teacher of the Year is a social studies teacher in Anderson One.

Cromer said she supports Beach’s request for an investigation but said she doesn’t think she can call for the firing of a school employee.

The Gazette requested and reviewed all emails since last June between the district superintendent and Beach and Cromer. These included invitations to award ceremonies and a discussion with Beach about a potential budget earmark for the district. The emails made no mention of the FOIA responses or any specific employees.

Mazza said the district has investigated “any concerns about employee conduct,” and is addressing concerns in accordance with the district policies. There have also been security concerns, she said.

“Student and employee safety is a top priority for Anderson One and we take any threats very seriously,” Mazza wrote.

Other parents in the district have opposed the push by Moms for Liberty.

Jessicka Spearman, a mental health therapist, founded the organization Anderson Reads last April to support both the school and public library.

Spearman, a Democrat who is challenging GOP Sen. Richard Cash in November, has four children in the Anderson One district — two at Wren Middle and two at Wren High.

“Ultimately, what I am more concerned about is within the community, how this affects the LGBTQIA students, those within marginalized communities,” said Spearman, who has a transgender teenage son.

Spearman said her parents met at Wren High, and she graduated from the district herself.

“No, I do not see any grooming in the school district,” she said. “I am a product of Anderson District One. I graduated in 2000. As far as the books go, there is no grooming.”

The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union meanwhile began tracking Cromer’s public records request early on to push back on what the organization called in a blog post a “smear campaign.”

“Rep. Cromer has proudly aligned herself with Moms for Liberty, and we’ve seen their agenda kind of play out across the state and across the nation, so I think there’s definitely reason to be concerned that a larger swath of books will be targeted if they’re not already,” said Joshua Malkin, a legal fellow with the state ACLU.

Malkin said parents have the right to choose what their children are exposed to, using opt-out forms for particular material, but not the right to limit what all children can access.

“Legislators have their freedom of speech as well but the fact we are seeing legislators use their platform to harass, bully, name just incredibly hard working and dedicated public servants is especially problematic and I haven’t really seen that elsewhere around the state,” Malkin said.

Cromer told the Gazette that “having an adult conversation, especially when your children are involved,” does not amount to bullying and harassment.