One topic that will be looked at during the 2022 Iowa Legislative session gained some steam towards the end of 2021.

Lawmakers will discuss what is deemed obscene or inappropriate material in public school libraries. In November, Iowa Senate President Jake Chapman attended a Johnston School Board meeting where he argued there was obscene material in books in the school’s libraries. He claimed at the meeting to create legislation that would make it a felony for school officials to allow these materials to be checked out by students.

District 47 Representative Phil Thompson from Boone says this is a tough topic to regulate because he wants to keep access to materials to students and learn about all kinds of subjects in school. When asked about kids having access to the internet and finding potentially more egregious obscene material, Thompson says the legislature is concerned with public schools.

“Public schools are our arena and it’s something that we’ve got to pay close attention to and that we’re not just handing kids with obscene materials. And I’m not saying that that’s happening in every school district all the time. But it is our arena and if there are problems, we don’t want to be the ones handing those kinds of keys to our children.”

Thompson is advocating for transparency for parents by having a classification system in place where books and other school material that is age appropriate and then anything outside of that, allowing parents the right to refuse their child to have access to that.