FCPS says book review committee will meet in private; nearly 1,000 have applied

Dec. 8—Nearly 1,000 people have applied to join a Frederick County Public Schools committee that will review whether 35 books should be removed from school libraries, the district said Wednesday.

The committee will only have room for 59 people, many of whom will be chosen at random, according to an FAQ document officials distributed by email Wednesday afternoon. The document also said the group's meetings would be private, but its findings would be publicly available once they were finalized.

The Maryland Open Meetings Act governs which types of meetings must be conducted in public.

In an email Thursday morning, FCPS Chief Legal Counsel Jamie Cannon wrote that "because the committee is created through regulation, not Policy and is created as determined by the Superintendent/Deputy Superintendent it is not deem[ed] a Board appointed committee or a public body as defined under the OMA."

The committee, which will begin meeting in January, stems from a request by former school board candidate Cindy Rose, who has called on the district to remove books she argues are sexually explicit.

The situation has forced the district to turn to a section of policy it hasn't had to use in about a decade.

FCPS Policy 500-39 outlines how the system must handle requests to remove instructional materials already in use. Part of the protocol involves forming a "reconsideration committee," which must include a certain amount of students, teachers, experts and parents.

Because Rose's request is so extensive, the district is forming a committee much larger than what is outlined in the policy.

The group will include 20 parents, 12 teachers, 10 students, five community members deemed to be "knowledgeable in the subject area" at issue, four administrators, four FCPS media specialists and four curriculum specialists, according to the FAQ document distributed Wednesday.

Parents and students will be sorted by high school feeder pattern, then chosen at random, the document said. The committee will include two parents and one student from each feeder.

Students will need parental permission to participate, the FAQ document said.

Officials will aim to include one teacher from each feeder pattern, too, and the central office staff will select four media specialists from across the county.

Administrators and curriculum specialists will be selected by the directors who supervise their work, the document said.

Those applying as community members are asked to explain what knowledge they would bring to the committee.

In an interview last week, Kevin Cuppett, FCPS' executive director of curriculum, instruction and innovation, said possible examples included people with backgrounds in library science, constitutional law or developmental psychology.

The FAQ document said "a group of three FCPS staff members" would select those applicants "in an attempt to include community members with a variety of backgrounds."

Cuppett wrote in an email that as of 5 p.m. on Wednesday, the district had received 969 applications.

Of those, 856 came from parents and/or community members, 76 came from students and 37 came from teachers or media specialists, Cuppett wrote.

The committee will meet five times between January and April, and each member will be responsible for reading at least two of the challenged books.

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