(Radio Iowa) – Some agreements between public schools and local libraries would be blocked under a bill approved by Education Committee in the Iowa House. Library bookmobiles would be barred from school property and the bill prohibits schools from letting students use school I-Ds to access books and other materials from public libraries. Katherine Bogaards with a group called “Protect My Innocence” says the bill is needed to stop Iowa schools from going around a state law that bans school libraries from having books with sexually explicit content. “It closes the loopholes and ensures schools remain accountable to parents, accountable to the taxpayer, transparent to the public, and compliant with the law,” she said.

Republican Representative Brooke Boden, of Indianola, says the bill reinforces the 2023 law she and other legislators passed after learning kids and teens were able to check out books with graphic sexual content from some school libraries. “Reading is so important,” Boden said, “but we also don’t want our kids reading literature that they’re going to need counseling for for the rest of their lives either.” Representative Elinor Levin, a Democrat from Iowa City is a former public school teacher who opposes this year’s bill, especially the ban on bookmobile visits to public schools. “Watching the bookmobile pull up at my local elementary school, there is no greater delight that I see on children’s faces, other than maybe running around a snow day,” Levin said. “It is incredible and it is powerful and I cannot think of a reason to take that away.”

Other critics say the bill would create barriers for students in schools that don’t have libraries or have limited book collections. Christopher Rants, a lobbyist for Des Moines Public Schools, says five of the district’s schools do not have libraries and about 12-thousand middle and high school students use their school I-D cards at Des Moines Public Libraries. “The Des Moines Public Schools has listened to what we’ve been told by the state: Be more efficient. You know, you’ve got to compete. Do more with less, eliminate duplications, find ways to be efficient,” Rants said, “so that’s what they’ve done.”

Representative Heather Matson, a Democrat from Ankeny, says the Huxley Public Library operates as the library for middle school students in the Ballard School District. “This lessons the burden to property taxpayers, both through school taxes and city taxes,” she said. Representative Helena Hayes of New Sharon says Republican legislators will try to find a way to let SOME of those agreements continue, but the bill is meant to reinforce guardrails. “The public schools and the public libraries operate on different standards and different rules,” Hayes said, “so to bring in a separate organization like that — a public library into the school — would be to have it functioning under other rules.”

The bill as currently written prohibits Iowa schools from entering into any agreement with a public library that would let students use a school I-D to access ANY books, electronic resources or other educational materials at the public library.