Reoccurring topic at RCAS school board meetings

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - On Tuesday, some Rapid City community members continued to speak out against what they claim are 200 books in the RCAS that allegedly contain “Pornography, pedophilia, and racism.”

According to one of those community members who did not want to be named, they don’t want to “ban” the books, rather they want them out of the schools and “left at the public library.”

This controversy comes as schools and public libraries in the US are expected to see a record number of book challenges in 2023. The American Library Association noted that most of the books under fire were written predominantly featuring LGBTQ topics or people of color.

After asking for the full list of 200 books those community members claim to be in question, they only sent us a list of five books, including a message saying “They won’t send the whole list at this time.”

Those books are:

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
Push by Sapphire
Multiplication is for White People by Lisa Delpit
Red Earth, White Lies by Vine Deloria
Letting Go of Literary Whiteness by Carlin Borsheim-Black

It should be noted that 4 out of the 5 books mentioned are by people of color.

During the meeting, the RCAS school board ultimately responded by pointing to the library policy in place that members of the Rapid City area community have to go through in order to do something about this book issue, saying that even if it takes three months to take away a book from RCAS libraries, the policy is there for a reason and will be followed.

“As far as the ‘policy takes too long,’ part of the board’s main job is policy and if we don’t follow our own policies, whether we personally agree with them or not, then that creates chaos. We have policies for a reason... we cannot ignore one policy because that opens the door to ignoring policies down the line... we cannot circumvent them,” stated the RCAS school board.