A new state law has many teachers frantic this school year
NEW HANOVER, NC (WWAY) —
Teachers are required to catalog, review, and submit all books in their classrooms and personal libraries before students can access them.
Teachers emailed WWAY stressing that the process is time consuming, taking hours to scan and enter each title. And with no clear deadline from the state, teachers are rushing to complete the task.
New Hanover County Superintendent Christopher Barnes says that law threw a bit of a wrench into the school year.
“The turn-around time has been tough simply because we are starting the year off, we have kids in the buildings now, and so the legislation didn’t give a start time, it expected it to be done in the beginning of the school year, obviously August 1st was when the bill was signed, so we’re working to make sure we get through that volume of books as soon as possible with families and parents being able to look at materials,” said Barnes.
The law requires parents to have access to an online catalog, where they can ‘opt out’ of books they don’t want their child to read.
Barnes says he understands the burden and is trying to provide support.
“This will get done, it’ll get done in a timely manner, and I’ve asked them to do it when they can how they can. We’ve been pushing out volunteers, we’ve been pushing out people from our central office to go into classrooms to help scan.”
He adds that extra equipment and volunteers should help with the process.
“We are trying to provide scanners and materials for folks to make this as less arduous as possible. It’s a lot, it’s a big job, it’s not a hard job but it is a heavy lift in regards to numbers, so volunteers and support is great. You should see those start to come and done in the next couple of weeks, the next few weeks at least,” said Barnes.
