Edmond Public Schools asks state Supreme Court to rule on library issue with Ryan Walters

Edmond Public Schools asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday to decide whether the Oklahoma State Board of Education or a local elected school board has the authority to establish policies concerning books in the district’s libraries.

District Superintendent Angela Grunewald said the lawsuit was filed after the Oklahoma State Department of Education threatened to have the state board lower Edmond's accreditation at an upcoming meeting on Thursday because two books, “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls and “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, are in the libraries of the district’s three high schools.

The district is asking the court to assume original jurisdiction of its lawsuit against the state Board of Education, the state Education Department and state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, who leads both the state Education Department and the state board. It’s also asking the Supreme Court to issue “a writ of prohibition” that would prevent the state board “from proceeding further” against the district.

Walters issued a statement about two hours after the Edmond district announced the lawsuit.

“This is an ongoing subversion of accountability," Walters said. "Edmond Public Schools not only allows kids to access porn in schools, they are doubling down to keep pornography on the bookshelves. Parents and kids should have the confidence of going to schools to learn. Instead of focusing on education, EPS has chosen to peddle porn and is leading the charge to undermine parents in Oklahoma.”

How Ryan Walters, Oklahoma State Department of Education have been working to influence content available in school libraries

In March 2023, Walters announced the creation of an email address — dubbed Parent Watch — where concerned parents could notify the state Education Department about materials in school classrooms and libraries. The department also has a library advisory committee that reviews parental complaints, to which Walters recently appointed Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the “Libs of TikTok” social media account. The state Education Department has declined to release the identity of any other members of that board.

The Edmond school board voted unanimously Tuesday to file the lawsuit, an action Grunewald said the district did not take lightly. In a letter to Edmond district families, she said the lawsuit was filed in response to correspondence the Edmond school district received last month regarding the two books in the high school libraries. In the letter, she said, the state Education Department “ordered the district to remove those books from our libraries, which is not something within their authority to do.”

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She said that if the district chose not to remove the books, the state Education Department threatened to downgrade the district’s accreditation and would order the district to defend its decision during Thursday’s board meeting.

“By law, our district must be accredited, so you can see why accreditation is a critical asset worth fighting to protect,” Grunewald said.

She noted the district, since 1997, “has had a clear policy for the review of books in our school library, a policy we have followed consistently for over 25 years” and that district board members “firmly believe in local control for school boards in Oklahoma and standing up for the laws passed by the state Legislature that guarantee that control.”

Quite emphatically on Tuesday, Grunewald said, “We do not have pornography in our classrooms and our libraries at Edmond Public Schools.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Edmond schools ask Oklahoma Supreme Court to rule on library dispute