By Gabbie Burton
Contributing Writer

The Oxford Area School Board held policy committee and work session meetings on Aug. 13 that provided a broad overview of the district’s important policy edits and initiatives for the upcoming 2024-2025 school year, including who will determine whether a book will be removed from a school library, student classifications and policies regarding the school district’s use of social media.

The policy committee’s meeting primarily focused on policy 6300 -- “Materials Selection Policy Library,” that began receiving attention last spring when the school board was involved in several books being contested for removal from one of the district’s libraries. Primarily, the committee focused on who would be on the advisory committee when a book is proposed for removal. Although President Jenifer Warren and member Tenille Dewees agreed that there should only be one board member on the review committee, board member Mike Blessington said that the committee should be made up of two members.

The committee then voted in favor of having the review committee made up of two members.

Considerable time during the meeting was occupied by Blessington’s argument that books in the young adult genre are not appropriate, as students in the schools are “adolescents” and not “adults,” while Warren and Dewees clarified that the “young adult” classification is from publishers and refers to books written for the adolescent age group and is not the district saying children in schools are actual adults.

“That’s a publisher’s definition of a ‘young adult,’ and that’s how they categorize the books,” Dewees said. “We can’t change that for the policy just because you don’t like referring to kids as young adults when it's the way the entire industry calls it.”

This discussion did not end in a vote on any edits to the policy.

The policy committee also reviewed policy 1190 -- “District use of social media,” and decided not to disable comments under district posts, as a possible previous edit suggested.

“We can’t shut down the ability to post due to First Amendment,” Superintendent David Woods said. “We can monitor our page for disparaging, harmful or harassing information.”

After the policy committee was completed, the work session began with the proposal of becoming a Unified Champion School, submitted by Athletics Director Amber Stirling and Dr. Chad Kinsey, director of Special Education. The Unified Champion Schools is a program through the Special Olympics that would implement a track and field program in the high school where the team would be made up of 40 percent disabled students, 40 percent non-disabled and 20 percent according to the school’s preference of student-athletes, in order to promote social inclusion through sports. This presentation was an introduction to the board and a decision as to whether to implement it will be made at a later date.

Additional items on the agenda included Superintendent Wood’s goals for the upcoming school year, the 2024-2025 school handbooks and President Warren’s board goals – all of which was reviewed with little discussion.

A reminder was given that on Tuesday, Aug. 20, a special meeting will be held to appoint a new school board director to fill a vacancy left by previous member Kaitlin Bell.