contributed photo MCSD Director of Instruction Shauna Smith said there haven’t been any complaints lodged by parents regarding books or curriculum within the Marshalltown school district.

Many parents in school districts across the country have been requesting that books concerning topics like race and gender identity be removed from libraries and curriculums, but to this point, the Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) has not encountered these issues.

MCSD Director of Instruction Shauna Smith said there haven’t been any complaints lodged by parents recently.

“We haven’t seen any book or curriculum challenges made this school year at MCSD,” Smith wrote in an email.

Titles that have come under scrutiny by parents include titles like “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and “Milk and Honey.” The former depicts homosexual characters, and the latter is a book of poems and short stories about violence and abuse among other topics.

Whether or not any school libraries in MCSD have any of the books that have raised concerns for certain parents, is unclear, as Smith did not address that directly. However, she stressed that the district aims to provide a quality education for students.

“MCSD offers quality learning experiences for students every single day, with research-based curriculum,” Smith wrote. “We continue to value transparency and open lines of communication with our community.”

Rep. Sue Cahill (D-Marshalltown), who served as a teacher-librarian for six years at Woodbury Elementary School in Marshalltown and currently represents District 71 in the Iowa House, is passionate about the subject of challenged books. Speaking from her own experience as a teacher and not speaking for the district, she said she believes the books a child reads should not be up to the legislature or up to a school district, but to the child’s parents.

“In my mind, it’s not a political issue. It’s an individual parent issue,” Cahill said. “That is (the parent’s) right, and their responsibility to watch what their children read, and to watch and be able to regulate what their child is exposed to.”

As a teacher-librarian, one of Cahill’s number one goals was to encourage children to read books that made them happy and books that take them outside of their comfort zone. Being able to provide books with characters the students can relate to was a priority of hers.

“The students need to realize that they are represented as a person and (by) their background, whether it’s their ethnicity, their gender, their race or their socioeconomic background,” Cahill said. “That was part of that role as a teacher librarian, looking at diversity in books. Sometimes that diversity might make some people feel uncomfortable, and I do think that has been the issue across the country.”

Cahill said teacher-librarians go through an in-depth process to determine if a book was a good fit for the library’s collection. While they can’t read every single book that comes through the library doors, they look for books with high ratings and good reviews and books that are developmentally appropriate.

Cahill says she never had any questions about the books available in the Woodbury Library during her time as a teacher-librarian, and she hopes it can stay that way, with parents regulating as needed. Cahill is still teaching at Woodbury but is no longer a teacher-librarian.

If parents have any concerns about any of the books or curriculum being used, MCSD has a system in place for parents to bring those concerns forward. That system is detailed on the school district’s website under board policies 605.3 objection to instructional materials, 605.3 E1 instructions to reconsideration committee and 605.3 E2 request for reconsideration of instructional materials.

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Contact Susanna Meyer at 641-753-6611 or

smeyer@timesrepublican.com