A handful of local residents spoke to the Rutherford County Board of Education Thursday to express their support and opposition to a recent decision by the board to ban six books from school libraries.

Over 400 titles have been pulled from Wilson County Schools library shelves since July 1, in response to a state law that restricts access to books with sexual or obscene material.

The Middle Tennessee school district continued discussions about how to align district policies with state laws that instruct schools to ban books with sexual or obscene material at Tuesday’s policy committee meeting. Read more about the debate among school board members.

The Rutherford County Schools Board of Education voted to remove six literary classics from school libraries at Thursday’s regular school board meeting including “Beloved,” A Pulitzer-Prize winning novel from Toni Morrison about the horrors of slavery, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” a coming-of-age novel by Stephen Chbosky, and “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire, a novel which retells the “Wizard of Oz.” In addition, the board also banned “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi, “Queen of Shadows” by Sara J. Maas, and “Tower of Dawn, also by Sara J. Maas.

Rutherford County Schools leaders are expected to make a decision on whether to ban seven books Thursday in order to comply with state laws instructing school libraries to remove books with sexual or obscene material.