The Conway School Board celebrated several campus achievements at its Nov. 12 meeting, ranging from award-winning campus gardens, volleyball state champions, campus safety achievements and campus national recognition.
Community member, conservative activist and podcaster Jimmie Cavin spoke at the end of the meeting to share his displeasure with reading materials available in the district’s libraries.
Cavin said he found the presence of certain “highly inappropriate” and “sexual” books in the Conway School District “very disturbing” and requested for reading materials in the Conway School District to be reviewed.
Cavin cited “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews and “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Pérez as two of these “inappropriate” books he hoped to see removed, but said he intended to continue to send FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests to find more.
“This is an issue, and [these are] not the only two books that are in this district,” Cavin said.
Cavin said he would have read excerpts from the books to the board but decided against it due to a young audience member.
Cavin said he intended to remove certain books from the Conway School District libraries.
“When I find those books, and I’ve already got two, and I’m going to find more, then I am personally going to challenge those books to go through that review process,” Cavin said.
Cavin said, “This is something that is very disturbing. We have a very good community with very positive things in our school. This is one of those things that’s a really bad thing, and we can’t put our head in the sand on it.”
“If parents want their children to have that material, it’s called Amazon. Go buy it. But public schools should not be providing that material, and I certainly shouldn’t be funding it with my taxes,” Cavin said.
David Naylor, president of the board, said, “This is not only a state issue, it’s a national issue … I am absolutely against these books … I will do whatever I need to do to make sure that these libraries are where they need to be and cleaned up.”
Superintendent Jeff Collum said the Education Department recognized the district as a National Blue Ribbon School.
“This week was another shining star moment…We were invited to D.C.. We were recognized in front of all 50 states…We were one out of 356 nationwide…[We] were in the top one percent.”
Collum also spoke on several of the district’s school safety achievements.
“Since my arrival, I feel like this is one area in which we have done a considerable amount of work,” Collum said.
Collum said the district had been granted over $1 million in two years from the Department of Education to be put toward school safety and that the district had implemented and upgraded safety and surveillance equipment.
Collum said he was contacted by the Department of Education and identified as a public school safety subject matter expert.
Collum said that he and Deputy Superintendent Jason Black were Arkansas’s only two public school safety subject matter experts.
The meeting also celebrated campus achievements in gardening.
At the meeting, Ryan Raup, a fourth-grade teacher at Ellen Smith Elementary, was recognized as the 2025 Arkansas Best Education-Based School Garden.
The garden, which consists of 12 beds, is self-sustaining and frequently helps provide food for school lunches.
Leslee Tell, who teaches culinary arts at Conway High School, was celebrated as the 2025 Arkansas Best Overall Garden for her hydroponic, soil-free garden.
Tell said she intends to use some of the grant money to help fund a Wampus Cat Coffee on campus.
The meeting also celebrated the Conway High School volleyball team, who won the 6A state championship Nov. 2.