Now that the School Board has drawn up a policy for handling improper instructional materials, perhaps parents can expect the government school libraries will be cleaned up, finally.

It should cause embarrassment that schools in adjoining Clay County had have hundreds of inappropriate books removed while virtually nothing has been done in Duval County.

The new policy is a mass of legalese and not yet official until the language is clarified. But it is intended to direct the superintendent how to proceed on cleansing the school libraries of porn and other material unsuitable for young people.

Essentially the new policy directs the schools to follow state law and tells people how to file a complaint. It also sets forth a process for the evaluation of books.

It requires the superintendent to make an annual report to the state education commissioner, listing objections received and materials removed.

It might be even better if the board also required monthly reports of how many books its media specialists have reviewed, so it would know something is being done.

It also should include a requirement to review all books already rejected by adjoining counties. If the media specialists tasked with ensuring all books comport with state law are wasting time by reviewing books such as the Hardy Boys or Nance Drew, this would refocus them on actual problems already identified.

The superintendent also should be required to make it easier to find materials in the schools. The system does not even know how many books are in school libraries and the database is difficult to navigate and utilize.

As reported earlier, it took Eye on Jacksonville only a few minutes to find inappropriate material in one local school library, even with the difficulties presented.

When the new policy is put into effect, which may be two months away, we would expect groups seeking to protect children and families to be filing objections — unless somehow the local school libraries already are devoid of pornography.