'Book-banning crusade' across the U.S.: What does it cost American taxpayers?

It can be expensive to ban books. Just take a look around the country at what taxpayers are being asked to shell out to keep books off the shelves.

Library advocates say that the process of banning books across the nation - including recent book-ban battles in Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Florida alone - run up hefty costs, often in the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"Your taxpayer dollars pay the salary of the employees who are spending some of their time, or much of their time, reading books that have been challenged by just a handful of activists in your district," according to EveryLibrary, a national organization which supports libraries across the country. "And every hour they spend reading a book to review, is an hour of other work they are not doing for you."

The EveryLibrary group says the cost of "the book-banning crusade" boils down to parts and labor - the parts being the books themselves, the labor being the man-hours to review the books that have been challenged.

In Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Nazareth Area School District officials estimate it could cost the district $109,931.74 to pay staffers to review 23 books challenged by Northampton County Moms for Liberty, a local chapter of the Florida-based Moms for Liberty.

Jennifer Simon, the president of the local Moms for Liberty Chapter wants at least four books – Push by Sapphire, Boy Toy by Barry Lyga, Sold by Patricia McCormick and Crank by Ellen Hopkins – removed. The group argues that the books are not age-appropriate for school kids in the district. The district has already spent about $8,000 to review those books so far, said Richard Kaskey, the district's superintendent.

Nationwide, K-12 school districts are spending potentially tens of thousands in taxpayer dollars to compensate staffers to read and review challenged books, remove some of those books from classrooms and library shelves and store them. The spending is concentrated in states where schools are responding to new state legislation restricting or limiting books around sexuality and racial and social justice – including Florida, Texas and Utah. And it is supercharging taxpayers to confront their school boards.

"I'm a strong supporter of public education and I actually don't mind paying taxes to support our public schools. However, I am appalled that my taxes are being wasted to combat a campaign to limit what students can read," said Evan Davis, a Nazareth resident at a recent district school board meeting.

"I pay taxes in order to educate our youth – not to deny them educational freedom," said Davis, who called the limits on books students can read "not only detrimental," but "dangerous."

PEN America's Freedom to Read Projector Director Kasey Meehan said the bans are not only costly for kids in terms of what information they could be losing, but they are also financially costly for taxpaying school families and their neighbors.

"It's a significant amount of money," she said. "There are certainly time and personnel costs, and then there are the emotional costs for students, educators, librarians, school board members and parents."

In what other cases have schools dipped into their pocketbooks to review book complaints?

• The Spring Branch Independent School District in Harris County, Texas spent $30,119 to pay 16 staffers to review the book "The Black Friend, On Being a Better White Person" by Frederick Joseph, ABC 13 Houston reported in March. Other districts in Texas have estimated it could cost thousands to screen for books that contain material around sexual identity or racial justice, according to BookRiot in 2021.
• School districts across the state of Florida have spent "between $34,000 to $135,000 annually" in the last several years to comply with state laws requiring schools to restrict books that contain sexual content, according to POLITICO. One of the laws requires schools to find or hire an employee with a media specialist certificate to check inventories and vet books in school libraries to ensure they meet the requirements of the law. Some Florida schools in the last few years have limited access to "The Hill We Climb" by Amanda Gorman and "Gender Queer: A Memoir" by Maia Kobabe, POLITICO reported.
• The Utah Legislature's Interim Education Committee studied one large state school district to analyze the impact of HB 374, known as the Sensitive Materials in Schools Bill. The unnamed large district spent about $20,000 for staffers to spend 500 hours to review 202 challenges of 42 uniquely-titled books from three staff members, one parent and three parent groups, said Patty Norman, the deputy superintendent of student achievement in October 2022. The district ultimately ended up barring 10 of the 42 book titles from schools, according to the case study presented by Norman.

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What does it take to ban a book?

Generally, once a book challenge hits a district, school board officials decide whether they will spend funds to pay a staffer, or multiple staffers, to read the book and decide whether the book should be legitimately banned. The could be additional costs for staff to remove the material from district libraries and classrooms and store the books.

The typical process by which books are challenged varies by district.

At the Nazareth Area School District, for example, a parent, group or community member can submit a formal request via a district form to have school officials review a book and reconsider whether it is appropriate for students.

Then, the district's director of curriculum will coordinate a team of people, consisting of a school principal, administrators, teachers, counselors and/or library media specialists to "review the material that is the source of the complaint," according to the district's policy. "This process might involve reviewing the material, reading the material in whole, etc. This process timeline will vary depending on the complexity of the review of the material," district records show. "For example, the reading of a library book will need additional time provided for the reading of the entirety of the book."

Disagreements are solved by the district's school board. The school board hasn't decided whether to review the books challenged by Moms for Liberty, but any funds used to do that will come from its "general operation budget," said Stuart Whiteleather, a business administrator for the Nazareth Area School District.

"This expense was not budgeted so funding would come our budget reserve line item that would cover any non budgeted expenses," he said.

The district hasn't taken into account costs to store the books if they are removed from libraries and classrooms, said Isabel Resende, the assistant superintendent of the district.

How common are book bans in America?

Requests for book restrictions in American schools are on the rise in part due to increased state legislation shielding certain books in classrooms, according to PEN America's Index of School Book Bans.

The nonprofit organization is tracking individual books banned across the country.

During the first half of the 2022-23 school year, PEN America found 1,477 instances of books being banned, affecting 874 unique titles, an increase of 28 percent compared to the prior six months, according to a report titled "The State of Book Bans in the USA" on the organization's website.

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In the same report, the organization attributed part of the increase during the 2022-23 school year to an uptick in state legislation restricting the content of books in schools.

"School districts in many states are reacting to new laws that dictate the types of books that can even be in schools, or what kinds of policies they have to follow to add new books and review their collections," according to a report from the organization.

Parent activists who have long been at the forefront of book bans in schools remain committed to their cause.

Northampton County Moms for Liberty in Pennsylvania is a chapter of the Florida-based conservative organization Moms for Liberty, which has challenged a slew of books with content around race relations, social justice and LGBTQ+ issues. The organization is listed as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Supporters of Moms for Liberty and other parent-led activist groups across the country are confronting local school boards with complaints about several books, including other books on a longer list include The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Parents who are afraid of their kids learning about content surrounding race and LGBTQ+ issues at schools have backed them.

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What other costs are schools paying to ban books?

Over the last two years, Meehan said she and her colleagues at PEN America have heard about media specialists librarians being called in over summer or on weekends to review book collections and librarians "jumping across multiple libraries within a district pulling from collections – reviewing books and helping make decisions when books are being challenged."

"It's such an emotional burden to go through these book ban considerations and fights," said Meehan.

Peter Bromberg, an associate director of EveryLibrary, said he agrees that there is emotional debt for staffers tasked with reviewing books in in addition to community-wide financial costs.

"I’ve had people call me crying at 10:30 at night – there was a school librarian didn’t want her family to see her having a breakdown," he said. "The cost of the destruction of the truth is as emotional as the dollar."

Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected]. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @kaylajjimenez.