Minnesota High School Students Walk Out Against Controversial Book Policy

A Minnesota High School saw students walk out yesterday after a new book policy went into effect. The students took to the halls, then went outside their High School to sit and read in protest of the exclusion of books from the school library.

Fox 9 in the Twin Cities covered a portion of the new book policy that was enacted back in November. In November, the Saint Francis School District, according to Fox 9, "approved a Library Materials Policy that required books to be filtered through the Book Looks website. According to the policy, books with a three rating or higher on Book Looks’ zero-to-five rating scale are considered problematic."

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St. Francis High School Student Walkout
byu/cj81906 inminnesota

A post to the Reddit /Minnesota sub was made by a student who was part of the walkout.

I am a proud SFHS student today. About 100 of us walked out during the school day today. This was in protest of the recent book ban put in place by the ISD15 school board.

Students walked out with banned books and read in front of the school’s main entrance. We were supported by staff and families in the district.

The website BookLooks.org, which was the website of the St. Francis School District, used for its list of 'safe' books for students, posted on its website Sunday that it was shutting down. Here is the message that was on the website:

As of Sunday March 23, 2025 BookLooks.org will be ceasing operation and taking down all of our reports from the site.

It has been quite the ride with many ups and downs since God called us to this work in 2022, but after much prayer and reflection it has become apparent that His work for us here is complete and that He has other callings for us.

We give thanks to Him for the opportunity to do this work, and we are grateful for the kind words of support from all those who found this work useful. Our charge was always to help inform parents and it would appear that mission has been largely accomplished.

We pray that publishers will take up the torch and be more transparent regarding explicit content in their books so that there will be no need for a BookLooks.org in the future.

Thank you and God bless!

The St. Francis School Board was to meet last night to discuss the book policy moving forward, with Fox 9 reporting last week that "the status of the ratings website will be discussed in a committee on Monday ahead of the school board meeting."

Image Credit: St. Francis Area Schools via Youtube

The school board meeting room was packed with residents, parents, and students voicing their thoughts on the book policy last night.

I reached out to the St. Francis School District for comment on last night's meeting results, and will update this when I hear back.

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Source: MN High School Book Ban Results In Student Walk Out