As was most likely inevitable, local resident has utilized the Redlands Unified School District’s policy allowing the removal of books from school libraries and classroom shelves deemed to be age inappropriate for students to lodge a challenge of the King James Bible.
Last year, on August 19, 2025, by a bare 3-to-2 majority with members Candy Olson, Jeannette Wilson and Michelle Rendler prevailing and Melissa Ayala-Quintero and Patty Holohan dissenting, the board voted to allow virtually anyone to challenge a book on the basis of its “explicit” content and have it temporarily removed while an evaluation of whether it should be permanently banned will consider the first two such challenges lodged.
Under the library book policy, anyone who has knowledge about the presence of a particular book in any district school library can object to or challenge its “explicit” content, have the book in question within three days consequently temporarily taken out of circulation and then have it provided to a “district review committee” comprised of the superintendent, assistant superintendent of educational services and either the director of elementary or the director of secondary education. The district review committee then has two months to read and review the book and use a somewhat idiosyncratic or subjective numerical grading system ranking the book in question as to its sexual content, violence, social and educational context, suitability for the varying ages of students who have access to the library where it is available and the book’s potential for negative impacts on those reading it.
In December, the board voted to remove “Push,” a 1996 novel by Sapphire dealing with rape, incest and teen pregnancy, from library shelves and restricting “The Bluest Eye” a 1970 novel by Toni Morrison which takes as its themes an 11-year-old black girl’s impressions and feelings of inferiority informed by sexualized child abuse and perception that Caucasian features are more attractive than Negroid ones to students over the age of 18.
Wilson and in particular Olson have argued that there are books that are too sexualize and in appropriate for young minds. Critics have called the library materials policy a close-minded approach to life and experience as well as an outgrowth of Olson’s Christian religiosity, which she and both Wilson and Rendler are inappropriately imposing on others within an educational context.
Aaron Fernando, a Redlands who was previously critical of the book challenge policy, cited the Bible as inappropriate reading material because of its sometimes sexualized content.
Indeed, Judges (16): 1 references prostitution; Genesis (19): 33-36 describes an act of double incest, resulting in a father, Lot, impregnating both his daughters; Genesis (35): 22 describes a son having sexual relations with his father’s concubine; Genesis (38): 2 provides an account of Judah raping the daughter of a Canaanite; Genesis (38): 8-9 deals with masturbation; Genesis (38): 15-18 depicts Judah prostituting his daughter-in-law; 2 Samuel (13): 11-14 relates a tale of a brother raping his sister; 2 Samuel 16) 22 provides an account of King David’s son, Absalom, having it off with his father’s concubines; Ezekiel (16): 28 depicts unbridled prostiution; Ezekiel (23): 5-8 describes Aholah’s immersion in a culture of prostition; Ezekiel (23) :11-21 celebrates Abolah’s sister, Aholibah, endeavoring to outdo her sister in her “whoredom”; 2 Samuel (6): 20 describes King David indulging in wholesale public indecent exposure: 2 Samuel (11) provides a description of adulterous sex.
Fernando does not, in actuality, intend that the Bible be declared a prohibited text but instead is attempting to contract the district’s attitude toward it and that of other banned or restricted materials that contain similar passages.
In February, a panel consisting of Superintendent Juan Cabral, Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Patti Buchmuller and Director of Secondary Education Jean Joye recommended that the King James Bible remain available in the disbon the district’s libraries’ book .
The school board will consider the appropriateness of the Bible as student reading material at its next board meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, April 14 at 6 p.m. at district headquarters.