Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.” Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector
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Despite backlash about the number of book challenges in the state, Florida’s top education officials still want public school librarians to “err on the side of caution” when it comes to vetting books for sexual conduct that’s harmful to minors.
The State Board of Education approved the updated annual training during a meeting on Wednesday to reflect changes in the law aimed at limiting the number of book challenges. Despite the tweaks, parents, teachers, and free expression advocates say the training is confusing and dangerous.
The board attempted to clarify that school districts don’t have to remove from the shelves materials with sexual conduct entirely and could instead restrict those for certain grade levels. Additionally, people who don’t have children enrolled in the school district can only submit one book challenge per month. However, that exception doesn’t apply to parents who homeschool their kids.
Paul Burns, chancellor of K-12 public schools in FL, defends then-proposed African American history standards at a July 19 meeting. (Screenshot from Florida Channel)
“You may have heard that some educators still have questions about the training, but we want to be clear that this training helps keep appropriate materials in front of students and ensures that districts understand their responsibility of making sure that students do not have access to inappropriate materials,” said Paul Burns, K-12 Public Schools chancellor during the meeting.
School librarians, media specialists, and other staff involved in choosing materials students can access in public school libraries and classrooms must complete the training annually. Materials used during the training include a 42-slide presentation.
For example, the training slides state that instructional materials shouldn’t “contain any matter reflecting unfairly upon persons because of their race, color, creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, religion, disability, socioeconomic status or occupation” or “include unsolicited theories that may lead to student indoctrination.”
Florida is among the states with the most book challenges, according to PEN America and the American Library Association. In fact, people challenged 2,672 books in Florida schools and libraries in 2023, according to data from ALA published in March.
“PEN America Florida has grave concerns about this training. This is a document that we believe is dangerous,” said Katie Blankenship, the organization’s state director. “That is going to continue to cause book bans and censorship in our schools. It needs to be greatly reconsidered by this board.”
She continued: “While these may be strategies that you applaud personally, what you’re doing is in violation of our key constitutional foundation and laws and liberties. When you include instruction materials such as ‘Materials should accurately portray the ethnic socio-economic cultural, religious, physical and racial diversity of our society.’ What does that mean? We’re talking about books that we’re using in our classroom, would you like for them to stop teaching ‘Winnie the Pooh’ because animals actually can’t talk?”
Shifting blame
But when DeSantis signed the bill limiting the number of book challenges from nonparents in April, he said teachers and principals weaponized book challenges. Adults, such as school librarians, who provide children with content describing sexual conduct harmful to minors can face felony charges.
According to the training, books or other materials are harmful if they are:
Predominantly appeals to a prurient, shameful, or morbid interest
Patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a
whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors
Taken as a whole, is without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific
value for minors.
“The governor has come out blaming schools and librarians and media specialists for the so-called banning of books as he puts it, and yet they’re doing what they’re told to do based on the law with very little guidance,” said Andrew Spar, the president of the Florida Education Association. “And I think that’s still one of the concerns that I continue to hear from media specialists around the state is they are not getting clear guidance and there are no clear processes, and the so-called fixes that were implemented today … they don’t go far enough in really clarifying that.”
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