Here we go – another round of top articles.
In May, we saw two older articles muscle their way into the top five. To give a little love to the more recent articles that they edged out, here are the two runners-up from the month:
7. Historic Downtown Building Finds New Life as Unique Venue Space
6. Flat River Cleanup Deemed a Success
And as for the top five, here are the most popular stories from May 2025, based on website views.
5. Lowell Twp Planning Recap: Aldi Receives Conditional Approval
We get it. It’s frustrating. For months, there has been talk about Aldi coming to town and so where the heck is the store, right?
My assumption is that this February article received a resurgence of interest because people are wondering exactly that. I wish I could tell you an exact timeline, but I don’t have that information. What I can tell you is that on May 10, 2025, we received an email from the township stating that the final plans had gone to the inspector’s office and groundbreaking should occur “soon.”
4. Year Ends Without Resolution to LAS Lawsuit
I am quite sure that this article from December made the top five list because of the No. 1 article below. So more on that in a moment.
However, if you are looking for an update on this case, there isn’t one. To say the judicial system moves slowly seems to be an understatement, and no action has been taken on the case this year.
3. Sen. Albert Introduces Legislation to Ban Gender Transition Procedures for Minors
We don’t always publish the guest columns and press releases we receive from government officials. If it sounds too much like campaign material or if it’s more about what the other party is – or isn’t – doing, we take a pass. But we almost always publish press releases about legislation that has been introduced because whether you like or dislike our elected officials, we think it’s important to know what they are working on in the capital.
2. Lowell Doctor Offers Direct Patient Care, No Insurance Required
After reporting on Lowell news for more than eight years, we have a fairly good idea of what is going to resonate with readers. Non-food business profiles often get a decent, but not overwhelming, number of views, but this one took us by surprise. It would have been far and away the number one article in a normal month.
FamilyDoc DPC obviously touched a nerve with readers (no pun intended). It’s a new medical clinic in town and one that operates on an old-school model of business: you see the doctor, and you pay the doctor. There are no insurance companies involved.
1. Lawsuit Filed Against Stefanie Boone
And here we have the number one article of the month. After years of being the subject of social media posts made by Stefanie Boone, the district librarian for Lowell Area Schools apparently decided she’d had enough.
Christine Beachler filed a lawsuit against Mrs. Boone alleging a “false-light invasion of privacy.” That essentially means someone is purposely portraying you to a large group of people in a false light. Mrs. Boone has said publicly that her comments aren’t meant to be personal, but it’s hard to imagine how accusing someone of being a “smut-peddling media specialist” could be anything but personal.
If you are inclined to feel it is unfair to be sued for something you said online, it might be worth pointing out that Mrs. Boone herself has filed a lawsuit against an Ada resident for things that person posted on social media. So, it appears that Mrs. Boone believes there are limits to what constitutes free speech online.
Rather than rehash what’s in the article above, I’d like to take a moment to address some of the questions I have heard from readers – well online commentators, really, since I don’t know that they actually read our articles. Here we go:
Why is there porn in the Lowell High School library?
There isn’t.
Ok, then why are there books with sexual content in the Lowell High School library?
From what I can tell, it seems there are three reasons for this:
- The books have literary merit that is not negated by the presence of sexual content. (Think: “The Kite Runner” and “The Color Purple”)
- The sexual content is a minor or incidental part of the book. (Think: “Eleanor & Park” and “Lessons in Chemistry”)
- Library staff didn’t know the extent of sexual content in the book when they purchased it.
That last one seems to be the reason why there are books like “A Court of Thorns and Roses” in the library. When I looked over the list of “questionable books” that were posted online by Mrs. Boone, this one stuck out to me because it wasn’t a classic and didn’t seem to have any deep themes. It’s more the literary equivalent of the summer blockbuster – wildly popular, a fun read and one that doesn’t require a lot of thought. (Well, it’s fun for some people; I gave up on page 100.)
So how does a book like “A Court of Thorns and Roses” – which is well-known nowadays as being racy – end up on a school library shelf? I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for any documentation the school had on file about the purchase to find out. Here’s what I got in return.
The book was purchased in 2015, which is the same year that it was published. All the reviews considered from that year recommend the book for around ages 14 or 15, and none of them state it contains explicit sexual content. There are some phrases that give a hint about the content – “sexual tension” and “consensual consummation,” for example – but I can see where a library aide in 2015 would simply think she was recommending the latest YA novel for purchase.
It’s worth noting that the publishing industry has started to recognize that the YA label may no longer be a good fit for all books geared toward teens. A “New Adult” designation is now being used to differentiate books that are considered more appropriate for older teens, and “A Court of Thorns and Roses” is an example of book now classified in that category.
Who buys these books anyway?
If you are asking who clicks the “buy” button, that’s Mrs. Beachler. However, when it comes to who is selecting titles, that seems to be a group effort with recommendations coming from library staff, students and teachers. The FOIA documents I received are an example of how library aides provide recommended lists for purchase.
Why isn’t Lowell Area Schools transparent about what books are in the library?
They are. You can find all the books right here.
But don’t take my word for it. Mrs. Boone has had high praise for the comprehensive information in the Destiny system. See here and here.
That doesn’t include classroom books, though.
True. Classroom libraries aren’t cataloged in a central way.
Mrs. Boone describes herself as an “experienced educator,” and it would be interesting to know how she approached the issue of transparency with parents to make sure they knew all the titles in her classroom library.
Why don’t you post excerpts from the books and let people decide for themselves?
Well, for one, I don’t have time to find and share excerpts from a hundred books. And two, it’s not my job.
I have posted the names of more than a dozen titles from Mrs. Boone’s “questionable list” as well as link to where her full lists could be found. People have all the information they need to research the books and decide for themselves what they think about them.
Why can’t we use AI to read the books in the library and flag potentially problematic content?
AI needs an input to give an output. It can’t “read” a book unless the book is fed into it. But novels are subject to copyright law, and there are ethical and legal barriers to entering copyrighted material into AI tools.
But let’s assume for a minute that we don’t care about the ethical and legal questions. In that case, we have to resolve the following issues before we can go any further:
- What AI tool are we using?
- How much is it going to cost?
- How is the district getting the digital texts to enter into AI?
- Who is feeding the 100,000+ books into the AI tool?
- What are we asking AI to flag while reading?
You’ll need to define the parameters for what you want the system to flag. Saying “sexual content” might seem logical, but AI will probably need more details about what constitutes sexual content – does that include nudity, kissing, thinking about sex or just actual sex? (You can see here what type of response you’ll get from AI if you ask it a general question without inputting the text of the novel.)
Then, we need to consider that what parents think is problematic could extend far past sexual content. Parents might also want to know about swearing, violence, religious content and more.
It feels like an awful lot of time, energy and money could be involved in having AI “read” the books. It seems like it would be easier for parents to do their own research and decide for themselves when a book crosses a line for their students.
Why can’t we put all the questionable books together on one shelf in the library?
Again, how are we defining what is questionable and who is responsible for determining that?
Not to mention, the court ruled against this practice in a 2003 case. In that case, a Texas district pulled all their Harry Potter books from the main shelves and required parental permission for students to access them. The court said in its ruling that schools can’t “restrict access (to books) on the basis of the ideas expressed therein whether religious or secular.”
Some Final Thoughts
The strange thing about this library controversy is that it has put me in the position of defending access to books that I wouldn’t let my younger kids read.
Is that because I like “porn for kids” as Mrs. Boone has accused Mrs. Beachler?
No. It’s because I think we should be very careful about allowing government institutions the ability to dictate what people can and cannot access. You might love having the romantasy titles removed from the shelves, but would you think the same if the district unilaterally decided to remove the Bill O’Reilly books, Christian devotionals and Left Behind novels too? (Those are all available to students right now.)
You might argue that the books you want removed are corrupting young minds, but a non-Christian might say the same thing about the devotionals and religious memoirs. Do we really want to head down that path of handing over power to the government to decide which argument is legitimate?
The reality is that we all have very different ideas of what is and is not appropriate for students. (And to be clear, the LHS Suggested for Seniors list is accessible by those who are 18, maybe 17. These are not young children.)
It seems dangerous – dare I say anti-American? – to want the government to make the decision about what is acceptable for our children to read. And to say parents don’t have enough information to make those decisions themselves is a hollow argument. There are plenty of tools and resources for parents to monitor their children; we don’t need the school district to act as a nanny. If a parent really feels like they can’t trust their children in the school library, they can restrict their access to it.
There is much more I would like to say, but we’ll leave it here for now.
Leave a Reply