The Williamson County Schools board in Franklin, Tennessee, spent $61,400 on an outside review panel this summer to decide the fate of a single young-adult novel, according to invoices released this week.
The Williamson County Board of Education voted August 25 to hire a three-member outside review committee after a parent complaint about the novel 'All Boys Aren't Blue' reached the district office in Franklin, Tennessee. Superintendent Jason Golden signed off on the contract two days later. The panel was tasked with a single question: should the book stay on high school library shelves.
The invoice, obtained through a public records request, lists $61,400 in fees paid to the three reviewers over five weeks. That works out to roughly $4,093 per chapter of the 320-page memoir. The district's entire annual library acquisitions budget for all 22 high schools is $58,000.
"We could have bought every high school in this county a new set of library shelves for what we paid three people to read one book."— Kim Callas, Franklin parent and PTA member
The single book, the panel
Kim Callas, a Franklin parent whose daughter attends Franklin High School, first flagged the invoice at the August 25 meeting. She told the board the money could have funded tutoring for 200 struggling readers for a year. Callas said she supports removing books she finds objectionable but not at that price.
The line item that drew the most attention wasn't the reviewers' pay. It was a $3,200 charge for 'facilitation services' — a hired moderator brought in to run three two-hour panel discussions, none of which produced a public transcript. The moderator, whose name does not appear on the invoice, was paid more per session than a substitute teacher earns in a month.
Williamson County Schools removed nine other titles from library shelves in 2023 following a state law requiring age-appropriate content reviews, none of which involved a paid outside panel.
The vote nobody explained
The panel recommended the book be moved to a restricted section rather than removed outright, in a decision filed with the board September 2. Board member Sheila Cleveland voted against accepting the recommendation, saying the process should never have cost taxpayers anything. 'We could have bought every high school in this county a new set of library shelves for what we paid three people to read one book,' Callas said at the follow-up meeting.
The board voted 6-3 on September 2 to accept the panel's restricted-shelf recommendation. The contract with the review firm, Lantern Educational Consulting, expired the same day and will not be renewed for future book challenges, according to the board's own resolution.
The book stays. The invoice doesn't go away.
Man ARRESTED For Stealing Golf Cart Fleet
Only In America
Police in Punta Gorda, Florida, say a man drove off with six golf carts from a retirement community, one at a time, over three consecutive nights in late August.
Charlotte County deputies arrested Dwayne Hobbs, 41, on August 29 after a resident spotted him driving a cart with a community logo through a Walmart parking lot four miles from the gated development. Hobbs is charged with six counts of grand theft, according to the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office arrest report.
Deputies found five of the six carts parked in a row behind a storage unit Hobbs had rented under a false name three days earlier. The sixth was still running, keys in the ignition, parked at a gas station a block from the storage facility with $214 in fuel receipts stuffed in the glovebox.