How “conservative” school officials protect obscene books and mislead concerned parents.
Behind-the-scenes schemes uncovered by Oklahoma MassResistance chapter in local school district.
But our strong approach made progress. Several terrible books were removed – without using their bureaucratic “reconsideration” process.
There’s more work to do there. But we have the momentum.
April 20, 2026
School library books with the most horrific graphic obscenity inside often have relatively bland looking covers and dull titles. But their effect on young minds can be profound.What goes on behind the scenes in a “conservative” school system when local citizens persistently demand that pornographic books be removed from the school libraries? We did a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to find out. The results are very disturbing.
The records revealed a coordinated effort by school administrators, staff, and board members to deflect, delay, and stonewall the concerned citizens at every turn. Their overall posture was one of institutional self-protection. At one point they deliberately misrepresented official records. They showed little sign of taking the concerns seriously, treating them instead as a nuisance to be managed rather than a legitimate issue to be addressed.
Despite that, the Oklahoma MassResistance activists – through aggressive persistence – still managed to force the removal of many books.
Shocking list of obscene books in Bartlesville, OK schools
Bartlesville, Oklahoma – a town of 38,000 in the northeast part of the state – is 67 percent “conservative Republican.” However, many parents there have decided to homeschool their children rather than send them to the public schools – so this general problem is not new.
Last August, our MassResistance group in Bartlesville noted that the “Take Back the Classroom” website listed 165 obscene or pornographic books in the Bartlesville school district’s 4 middle school and high school libraries. This was outrageous – and alarming!
Over the following months, our MassResistance chapter, led by a tenacious local activist named Eddie, pressed the school board and administrators for answers and action. It was a difficult road. By the end, many questions remained unanswered — and the district seemed content to leave it that way.
So in early January 2026, Eddie filed a formal FOIA request for the district’s internal emails and related documents. He received 320 files in response. They shed considerable light on what had really been happening behind the scenes.
Given that background knowledge, here are the highlights of what really happened:
Confirming that most of the books were actually in the school libraries!
On August 13, 2025, Eddie emailed the Superintendent asking for a personal meeting to discuss some inappropriate books in the school libraries. A meeting was set for Aug. 18 with the district’s Director of Operations. At that meeting, Eddie and Sandra, another local MassResistance activist, presented him with the list of 165 books.
The Director of Operations tasked the school librarians in the high school and middle schools with investigating Eddie’s list. On Aug. 25 the librarians responded that 140 of those books were currently in the school district.
On Aug. 27, the Director of Operations again met with Eddie and Sandra. He told them that 140 of the books were in the schools, and that the high school library had 37 of them. He gave them the librarians’ list of those books. But the list is very confusing and the numbers don’t add up to 140. Eddie continued to ask for an accurate, understandable list of the 140 books, but never received one.
Requiring that “reconsideration forms” be filled out for each book
At the Aug. 27 meeting, Eddie reiterated to the Director of Operations what he had said in the previous meeting: Those books all need to be removed. The FOIA emails show that the school staff had anticipated this, and had decided that Eddie and the others must be told to follow the official process. They would be required to fill out a bureaucratic “reconsideration form” and go through additional steps for each of the 140 books.
This process was adopted by the district in 1989 — long before sexually explicit content became a systematic problem in school libraries. The Director of Operations cited this process without any apparent discomfort, and gave no indication that he believed the books should be removed.
But Eddie said “no.” Citizens should not have to go through this to protect children from pornography in their school libraries. The meeting ended courteously. But the school officials continued to repeat the requirement of filing “reconsideration” forms to Eddie in subsequent communications. In the end, the citizens never backed down and no reconsideration forms were ever filled out.
Another line the district developed in internal meetings and repeated to Eddie was that “parents can request their student not be allowed to have access to books they find inappropriate.” While technically accurate, this places an unreasonable burden on parents — requiring them to individually opt their children out of materials that should never have been placed in the libraries in the first place.
Permission to go to the high school library to see for themselves
According to the Director of Operations, 37 of the flagged books were in the high school library — including some of the most explicit titles on the list. Eddie and Sandra asked to allow their group members to visit the Bartlesville High School library and review the books for themselves. It was not an unreasonable request from taxpaying citizens.
But the school officials kept stalling for weeks.
Eddie had told the Director of Operations that he planned to testify at the Sept. 15 school board meeting. The FOIA emails revealed that the Superintendent then notified the school board members that Eddie was coming. He also advised them that they should not respond to any questions Eddie asked at the meeting, but refer the questions to him.
But that didn’t help their situation. At the Sept. 15 school board meeting, Eddie distributed 6-page graphic excerpts of the high school books to each board member. During the public comments section Eddie read aloud from those pages. It shocked nearly everyone, and escalated the issue considerably!
At the high school library
As a result, three days later, on Sept. 18, the MassResistance group was allowed to go into the high school library and look through the books there. As we reported at the time, they found about 30 of the obscene books. They certainly weren’t hidden. Most of them were in plain sight and some were on a special display! The librarians clearly weren’t ashamed of the books; they were promoting them.
Who brought these books in?
Eddie repeatedly asked who had selected these books and why the administration considered them appropriate for students. He never received a direct answer. When the district did eventually respond, it said only that some of the books had been acquired by a librarian who had since retired “some years ago” — without naming the person or providing further detail.
In their internal emails, the librarians consistently downplayed the concerns. As one wrote, “Over the years, I have not encountered books in my space that I have deemed grossly inappropriate.”
They described to Eddie their current book procurement process, but only in very general terms. The official reply to Eddie was:
The district entrusts selection to its highly qualified librarians, who utilize current reviewing sources, established publications, and professional journals to find information on materials to purchase for the libraries … Those sources list reviews of the content and age appropriateness for each individual book.
However, it’s well known that virtually all of those book-industry “established publications and professional journals” have the same leftist pro-porn outlook as the publishers themselves. A Christian or other traditional publication would review those books far differently. The school librarians are relying on reviewers who share their biases.
“It’s Perfectly Normal” brought in for AIDS curriculum!
At their first meeting, Eddie showed the Director of Operations pictures from the book It’s Perfectly Normal, which is written for young children. It includes explicit drawings of nude adults and children, several in sexual positions or masturbating. According to Eddie, he was aghast at the pictures, and said that a book like that certainly didn’t belong in a school. Eddie pointed out that book was on the list.
School officials later informed Eddie that “It’s Perfectly Normal” had been purchased by a middle school library to satisfy the state’s AIDS curriculum requirement, but was now in a restricted area unavailable to students. How that book helps teach about AIDS was never explained.
School board member dismisses parents' concerns with leftist talking point
On October 2, board member Mandy Johnston sent Eddie a formal reply to his emails and September board meeting comments. Her letter directed him to the reconsideration process and added:
I cannot determine if I would allow my school-aged children to read specific materials based on excerpts alone. I would read the book in its entirety before making that determination. It would be a family decision.
This is a common leftist talking point that groups like the ALA give to library officials and school board members to use.
Eddie’s response was blunt: “Please do not insult my intelligence with such a flippant and patronizing answer.” He said her statement about needing to read books in full before judging them "tells the community everything it needs to know about your depraved values and moral vacuity."
The secret “weeding out” of numerous obscene books
The school district continued to publicly insist that no books would be removed unless the MassResistance group filled out reconsideration forms for each book, and the process was properly followed. But that’s not what really happened.
“Weeding out” is normally a legitimate process of systematically removing books that are worn out, damaged, outdated, duplicates, or never checked out.
But in this case, administrators used it to quietly remove books without ever publicly acknowledging that the citizens’ concerns had merit.
The FOIA records revealed that on multiple occasions, school officials coordinated behind the scenes to remove specific books through the weeding process — books that had been publicly raised as concerns by Eddie and his group.
On one occasion, Eddie informed the district that he intended to bring them explicit excerpts from two sexually graphic books in the middle school library. Administrators quickly ordered those books to be “weeded out.” Eddie was told the books were no longer in the library.
Those books — along with a dozen or more others that had been flagged in the internal emails — turned up on the district’s official weed-out log for that period, classified as “Poor Condition/Damage.” That label is telling: the weeding process exists solely to remove books for housekeeping reasons — wear, duplication, low circulation, or obsolescence. It has no provision for content-based removal. By using it to quietly pull books that had been publicly criticized, the district was exploiting a routine administrative tool to avoid any formal, transparent, or accountable process.
Final thoughts
Thanks to Eddie’s persistence, and the unwillingness of the MassResistance group to back down, at least a dozen books were removed from the libraries — books that would still be on the shelves if no one had pushed. The momentum is strong, and there will be more to report.
Perhaps the biggest lesson here is one that parents across the country are learning: it doesn’t matter how “conservative” a community is on paper. The school administrators and board members are often operating from the same playbook — delay, deflect, and protect the institution. Fighting back requires exactly the kind of documented, persistent pressure that Eddie and this group applied. It works.
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