ENDORSEMENT: Vote for Bauman

Considering the community pushback in 2022 over the managed decline of the Community Library Network by the pre-2022 board, it behooves us to avoid electing trustees with that similar orientation. In the May 2023 election, two trustees were removed for their allowance of sexually explicit materials for minors after dozens of angry citizens brought books to meetings and read passages to the board. One of those incumbents had been on the board for 30 years and had also been a North Idaho College trustee for 22 years. For the May 2025 library board election, another candidate is running who has been an NIC instructor for 26 years and a trustee on the Post Falls School Board for 24 years. Shall we put another academic in place on the library board who is entrenched in college DEI? Or shall we choose a newcomer, Victoria Bauman: young, vibrant and family-oriented who is vested in the library because she has been raised in a traditional family who valued classic literature and is doing the same with her daughter?  

Per Mark Twain, “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” In our local libraries, the “good books” have been mostly removed from the libraries by CLN’s Collection Development Team and replaced with what I would deem second rate authors who seem to thrive on selling pulp fiction marketed to young people. So, while our schools turn out a large number of students who cannot read at grade level, we should at least keep our library filled with quality literature so that those who CAN read, read something worthwhile.

STEPHANIE SCHAD

Coeur d’Alene