The Crook County School District has redirected Steins Pillar Elementary School students from using the county’s public library to using other local elementary school libraries amid mounting pressure from some community members over the library’s content for children.

Among the concerns: books about race and gender.

The move comes as the Crook Cook County Library, too, faces growing concern from community members over children’s books that reflect the LGBTQ community, as well as other books that include references to puberty and human development, according to April Witteveen, the library’s director.

Those concerns filled a library public board meeting Thursday, with some attendees spilling out into the hallway, Witteveen said. Representatives from regional LGBTQ groups expressed the need for fair access to books about gender and identity for youths. Other members of the public voiced alarm that such books have been available for youths.

In the meeting, board members discussed with the public the possibility of labeling LGBTQ books and adding to the library’s children’s collection books reflecting conservative or Christian perspectives on topics such as sexuality and development, said Witteveen.

Witteveen said the library will not be labeling any books about the LGBTQ community for now. She said in an email: “We will continue to purchase titles that reflect the needs of our diverse community.”

But she said that the library will be adding content in the children’s area that reflects conservative and Christian values. She said in the email that the library “was already aware of this need and has been working over the past 2-3 years to add more materials to the juvenile collection that speak to our Christian community.”

In an email Friday, the Crook County School District informed parents that it would be sending students from Steins Pillar Elementary School, which doesn’t have its own library, to Barnes Butte Elementary and Crooked River Elementary schools for the remainder of the year, rather than to the public library, according to a copy of the email obtained by The Bulletin.

The district’s superintendent, Sara E. Johnson, said in the email that families in recent weeks had “expressed concern and reservations about this partnership because of some controversial books and other materials public libraries may have available.”

Johnson said in an interview Monday that the district made this move to ensure that it can monitor the appropriateness of books available for young students, which it cannot do when sending kids to the public library. Johnson noted that the district has a database through which parents can monitor the books their kids are reading.

“We value choice for parents,” she said. “For me to take them to a place where I don’t have a list of the books, I can do better.”

Johnson said she has received numerous emails asking for her to advocate on the issue of what books should be available for the district’s young students, but said she does not see it as her role to do so. She said schools are “not necessarily the best place for national conversations and to make points.” She added that she’s confident there will be books in the elementary schools that families are comfortable with.

But the increased scrutiny over the availability of these books for children comes as Americans are at odds over the teaching of race and gender in classrooms. The debate has grown particularly tense around what elementary school students are taught about sexual orientation and gender identity.

Jason Carr, district spokesman, acknowledged Monday that the school district has taken in concerns over topics like critical race theory and “pornographic material” over the previous months, which are focal points in the national discourse in conservative media. Carr confirmed that books with these topics are not in the district’s libraries “whatsoever.”

Carr added that the district’s decision to send students to its own schools rather than the library had little to do with the library’s meeting Thursday. He said the district is now assessing where Steins Pillar students will get their books next year.

Witteveen said that, since becoming director, she had never seen a crowd as large as the one that attended the Thursday meeting. She said some attendees clarified that they had no interest in books being banned from the library. But she maintained that the library will stay true to its sole mission of free access to information.

Witteveen said the library’s meeting Thursday was mostly cordial, with only a few moments of tension. One of the few moments of tension came in regards to a book called “Rick,” by Alex Gino, which is about a middle school teen questioning his identity. She said the attendee was concerned that the book was about pedophilia.

Becky Groves, a 60-year-old Prineville resident who runs a local child care service and who attended the meeting, also said a person in the meeting claimed that within the book were links to materials about pedophilia. Groves said the link was actually for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit suicide hotline for LGBTQ youths.

“There’s people out there comparing LGBTQ people to pedophiles all the time,” she said. “We live in an age where people should be educated by now.”

Groves served for 10 years as the president of the Central Oregon chapter of the LGBTQ group PFLAG. She then became the group’s vice president, facilitating its meetings in Prineville, and she’s now the treasurer of another support group called Prideville. Groves, whose son is gay and whose granddaughter attends Steins Pillar Elementary School, said she’s concerned about what’s going on with the library and the school district.

Though she said the meeting was largely even-tempered, and said Witteveen handled the situation well, she believes there shouldn’t be restrictions on children’s access to books about gender or diversity. She said these are the books she reads to her children in her child care facility, adding: “I think kids that grow up hearing those kinds of books are more kind and friendlier as they grow up.”

Groves, too, believes there are increased pressures happening broadly to restrict access to LGBTQ literature. But, she added: “I feel like the more we cave to these people the more powerful they get.”