District now notifying parents on books their child checks out after removing books from libraries

TROY — Students will not find certain books on the shelves in the library at Troy City Schools after the district removed them.

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Troy Superintendent Chris Piper has been dealing with the controversial issue of removing books since 2023.

“It began when a community member went onto a search engine,” Piper said. “I believe it was, it was INFOhio, where you can search for school books and you can search by a keyword.”

That community member said he found sexual content in some books that he felt was inappropriate for students. He then asked that those books be removed.

This has been happening across the county, despite pushback from some lawmakers and even the president.

Troy City Schools gathered a committee to read each book in its entirety and discuss what they thought. They eventually made changes to two of nine books. One was removed entirely and the other was removed from middle school libraries but kept for the high school.

As Piper said on News Center 7 at 5:00, he knows this topic is very political but said his students are the top priority.

“I don’t think it’s difficult to keep the students as our first priority,” he said. “We also try to balance that certainly with understanding that the different people have different perspectives.”

Another big change the district has will allow parents to know what books their student brings home.

“At the end of the day, if a child checks a book out from a school library, their parent will get an email with the title, the author, [and] all the information about the book,” he explained.

Piper encourages parents to continue having conversations with their students.

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