News

The Williamson County Schools Board of Education and WCS Superintendent Jason Golden discussed the district administration’s decision to temporarily remove the digital library app Epic! from student computers last week at a work session Thursday.

Just as Americans tend to hate Congress but like their own member of Congress, it has long been true that people are much happier about their own children’s schools than about the country’s education system. For instance, a Gallup poll last year found only 42 percent of parents saying they were satisfied with the country’s schools, while 73 percent of them said they were satisfied with the education their own children were getting.

Remember when then-House Speaker Glen Casada “enticed” members to vote for Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher scheme? Remember how the FBI was (and still is) interested in Casada and others for possible bribes in order to pass the bill by a single vote?

Williamson County Schools has announced access to the Epic! digital library app will return Thursday.

The move would come just a week after the temporary removal of the app in response to concerns shared with the district surrounding a selection of books, including the "An ABC of Equality," found among over 40,000 books available on the app.

The American right has lost the plot on free speech. The passage of Florida’s House Bill 1557, which bans “classroom instruction” on “sexual orientation and gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade and in a manner that isn’t “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” in all grades, K–12, is merely the latest in a string of what the free-speech-advocacy organization PEN America has called “education gag orders” that have been proposed by Republicans and passed by red-state legislatures from coast to coast.

FRANKLIN, Tenn. (WTVF) — It's a controversy both here in Tennessee and across the country -- the books inside school libraries.

As Governor Lee has signed a bill into law requiring schools to ensure their books are all age-appropriate, Williamson County Schools said this week it has temporarily removed a digital library app that gives students access to thousands of books. Williamson County Schools said it is reviewing the app, called Epic! to make sure its internet filters are appropriately screening content. The district says so far, it hasn't found any content that should be blocked for all students.

Recent Stories from newschannel5.com

(WASHINGTON)– Today, new outlets report that the Williamson County, Tennessee, school district removed access to the digital library app Epic! for all K-5 families after a parental complaint about the book An ABC of Equality, which is designed for 1-4 year olds. In response, PEN America issued the following comment from Nadine Farid Johnson, PEN America’s Washington director and co-author of its new report Banned in the USA, issued this week: “This immediate and full-scale suspension of access to a system of library books by a school board is emblematic of the precise issue we highlight in our report. This is an online library system to which parents subscribe, and upon which parents, teachers, and students rely. Suspending access to 40,000 books without adherence to appropriate process, and with utter disregard for the First Amendment rights of the tens of thousands of students impacted, is a dereliction of duty on the part of the school board. Unfortunately, it not only sets a worrisome precedent; it also undermines the very education this school board is responsible for ensuring.”

Earlier this week, the man who's been widely credited with single-handedly willing the "critical race theory" panic into existence (even if the truth is a bit more complex), laid out a new set of marching orders for the right: Defund public universities, discard academic freedom, remove credentialing requirements for K-12 teachers and generally foster so much anger against public schools that it drives a nationwide popular movement to privatize education.

FRANKLIN, Tenn. (WSMV) -A digital library used by students in Williamson County Schools has been temporarily disabled while the district reviews its content.

WCS parent Trisha Lucente says earlier this week she notified school board members about content on the digital library app called “EPIC!”

She says she logged in on her kindergartener’s Chromebook and found a range of books.

Williamson County Schools temporarily removed a children’s digital library with more than 40,000 selections from student learning devices on Wednesday after a “concern” was shared with district staff about the app, according to an email sent to parents that same day.

The app, called Epic!, is used daily by students and teachers. The district is in the process of reviewing the app.

Students in Williamson County, Tennessee, have experienced near non-stop changes to the books and resources available to them this school year. Thanks to Moms for Liberty’s relentless campaigns locally, books continue to be challenged and removed throughout the district.

Book banning is not new — in the U.S. alone the practice goes back to Puritan times, when Thomas Morton's book New English Caanan and others opposing this way of life were tossed from Massachusetts.

But the American Library Association said Monday that this year there have been more challenges to books than they have seen since they started tracking it in 2000.