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KEC

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  • School-Community Relations
KEC
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Boulder Valley School District
Adopted:  June 11, 1987
Revised:  October 8, 2019, October 24, 2023, August 12, 2025, November 18, 2025 

COMPLAINTS ABOUT CURRICULUM, ACTIVITIES OR MATERIALS

The Board assumes final responsibility for all educational activities, instructional materials, and library resources that the School District makes available to students. The Board holds its professional staff accountable for their proper selection of materials, and recognizes rights of individual parents/guardians with respect to materials used by their own children. The Board also recognizes the right of individual parents, guardians, students, and/or residents of the School District  to present complaints or concerns directly related to the curriculum, instructional activities or materials, and library resources in the schools. This policy provides a fair, orderly, and timely process for handling such complaints.

Challenges to Curriculum or Instructional Activities

For school-based support materials (defined in Board Policy IJ) or school or class instructional strategies or educational activities, complaints should be initiated by contacting the people at the building level, including the teacher and principal directly.

Review at this initial level is informal and should follow a discussion format. Further review may be sought in accordance with Board Policy KEC-R.

Individual student religious concerns may be raised in accordance with Board Policy IGAC.

Challenges to Library Resources

Criticism of a book or other library resource may be expected from time to time. In such instances, the Board establishes the following principles to be applied:

  1. The Board recognizes the right of a parent/guardian to request that their child not borrow a particular library resource. Parents shall present the request in writing to the teacher and/or school administrator who will implement reasonable measures to restrict the student from borrowing the library resource.  
     
  2. The Board recognizes the right of a parent/guardian of a student who is enrolled in the public school for which the request is made to request that the school withdraw from school use a library resource in accordance with KEC-R, unless the same library resource has been reconsidered in the last two years. 
     
  3. The library resource shall not be removed, discontinued, or restricted as the result of a request for reconsideration until the determination regarding the library resource is complete and made available to the public. 
     
  4. A library resource will not be excluded because of the writer's race, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, nationality, or political or religious views.
     
  5. The value of any book or other material will be judged as a whole, taking into account the purpose of the material rather than individual, isolated expressions or incidents in the work.
     
  6. The Board directs that no school library staff member shall be subject to termination, demotion, discipline, or retaliation for refusing to remove a library resource before the review process is complete or for making decisions that the school library staff member believes in good faith are in accordance with Board Policy. 
     
  7. All written requests for reconsideration of a library resource in a public school are open records under Colorado law. 

LEGAL REFERENCES

CROSS REFERENCES