Oklahoma’s education board has revoked the license of a former teacher who drew national attention during surging book-ban efforts across the U.S. in 2022 when she covered part of her classroom bookshelf in red tape with the words “Books the state didn’t want you to read.”
The decision Thursday went against a judge who had advised the Oklahoma Board of Education not to revoke the license of Summer Boismier, who had also put in her high school classroom a QR code of the Brooklyn Public Library’s catalogue of banned books.
An attorney for Boismier, who now works at the Brooklyn Public Library in New York City, told reporters after the board meeting that they would seek to overturn the decision.
So the banned book is available in the public library? Some ban that is.
NYPL doesn’t care what books are banned in Oklahoma schools.
Small detail, New York City has three public library Systems (New York, Queens, and Brooklyn). While all three have Banned Books events, BPL specifically (in conjunction with Boston Public Library, LA County Library, San Diego Library and Seattle Public Library) runs a service called Books Unbanned that is said to offer a full collection of Banned Books (I believe NYPL and QPL’s banned collections are curated/limited) to essentially any US resident (Many libraries have residency requirements although I believe NYPL and QPL have waived those [when I was kid you had to bring a piece of mail in NYC to get a card]).
Well, in the public library in NYC, not Oklahoma.
Brooklyn is in New York. Also, actual book bans are unconstitutional under the first amendment. What these laws do is prohibit state funded entities like public schools and public libraries in the state from having the books available. The books are still available in privately owned places.
Except you lose your teaching license if you tell students that, soooo…