Does AASL need to lead a movement for “consideration” policies?

I have always been so thankful that ALA/AASL and their local affiliates once led the charge for all school boards to adopt formal “reconsideration” policies and procedures to be used when educational materials have been challenged.

I know in our district, simply asking a parent, teacher or community fill out a form that begins an official process after s/he objects to a book or other resource has really separated those with a genuine concern from those without. We have kept many books available to kids that would not be there had not a reconsideration policy been in place. And that there is a mechanism for books that don’t meet true “community standards” to be seriously discussed and dealt with.

I have used this same policy when there has been a request to block a website as well. The requestor has to go through the same process as if s/he were challenging a book.

Lately, however, I’ve been hearing about a different “intellectual freedom” threat - the capricious blocking of websites without any due process in place for making the decision to do so. And equally troubling, there seems to be no official recourse in many districts for a teacher, librarian, parent or student to challenge a decision made to block a particular site.

While CIPA’s guidelines for what should be filtered are often broadly interpreted, they can (and in my mind, should) be very narrowly interpreted if one truly believes in the concept of intellectual freedom. Sites to be blocked to meet CIPA guidelines must be “obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors.” Reading that, it seems to me that the law covers only sites of prurient interest or that are illegal. “Harmful to minors” is so vague that it is meaningless. Choices of all other sites to be blocked are left to the individual district.

If a district has chosen to block sites about evolution, games, webblogs, hate groups, birth control, homosexuality, web-based e-mail, or who knows what, does ALA/AASL offer language that could be included in board policy to challenge this blocking? In other words, is there a formal “consideration” process that a district can and should adopt that would keep control of website access out of the hands of a single individual or small group in a school? Where, like with a book challenge, a standing committee of a variety of stakeholders would review the material that a teacher wants access to, and then makes a recommendation to the school board for a final disposition ruling?

Perhaps there is and I just don’t know about it. I’d be grateful if someone would educate me about this. If there isn’t, what ALA/AASL committee ought to tackling the issue?

Does your school have language in its board policy for a method of challenging the blocking of web sites? Is so, I’d like knowing about it.