Greenville County School District delay book fairs for school year

GREENVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) – The Greenville County School District said the State Board of Education passed new regulations that have caused the district to change its stance on book fairs.

The new regulation , that began on August 1, requires school districts to ensure teaching materials, books, or other materials presented to students, are age appropriate and do not contain sexual content.

“We want to protect our employees, media specialists, teachers, anyone who might be involved in any respect with these book fairs,” said Tim Waller, Greenville County School District spokesperson. “We want to protect them against accidentally violating the state regulation. We decided this year just not to have them (book fairs).”

The Greenville County School District said due to a quick turnaround between this regulation and book fair season, they have not had enough time to plan how they would examine every book that comes through.

Leaders said due to this reason, they are pausing book fairs for this school year while they find a different option.

“When I say pause, that means simply that we plan at some point in the future to go back to having book fairs; we love book fairs,” said Waller.

We spoke with other school districts, such as Spartanburg School District 5. Leaders at District 5 said they will continue book fairs this school year despite the new regulation.

Greenville County leaders said they are also spending time, money and resources in other areas to comply with the regulation.

“We’ve been forced to purchase scanners for each of our schools, where they can scan the barcodes on books to create a public database because part of the requirement is parents anywhere can log into a website or database and see what books are available to their children along with teaching materials,” said Waller.

Leaders said the district has set aside money for every school to have five days of clerical assistance where extra people can come in and help catalog books.

We reached out to the State Board of Education about the issue, and they responded with the following statement:

“The Department commends the District on its vigilance. The SCDE will offer its support for finding vendors that can give schools and families peace of mind that they are providing age-appropriate materials to our students.” -Jason Raven, SCDE spokesperson.

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