In the Columbia County School District, for example, a solitary non-parent successfully instigated multiple book bans in May, seemingly outside of the district’s procedural rules. A subsequent open records request revealed that the district’s media policy had been quietly changed to “make it far easier to remove or restrict library books while limiting public oversight,” according to the Freedom to Read Coalition of Columbia County (FTRCCC). Procedural changes like these are common on school boards, facilitating unpopular policies that allow them to quietly remove potentially controversial books. SB 248, introduced this year in the Georgia state Senate, may make this even easier. The law would establish the Georgia Council on Library Materials Standards, a 10-member council appointed by state leaders, which would create a grading system to determine standards for materials held in the state’s school libraries, allowing materials deemed “obscene” to be banned.

This article is miswording the actual findings. It’s not that 22,810 unique book titles have been banned, but that there have been 22,810 instances of book bans