By Ana Go\u00f1i-Lessan, The News Service of Florida <\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s education commissioner is directing school districts to set stricter rules for reviewing library and classroom books or face \u201ccorrective measures.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a seven-page memo sent Wednesday evening, Commissioner Henry Mack told superintendents and charter school leaders to continuously audit books, review their collections and remove instructional materials that contain sexually explicit material, even if a parent or county resident has not submitted a complaint in that district.<\/p>\n
\u201cReactive review,\u201d is insufficient, wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cMake no mistake, the Department will hold districts, and the superintendents who lead them, accountable for failing to protect students from inappropriate content and material,\u201d Mack added.<\/p>\n
The Department of Education followed up with its own social media post: \u201cSEXUALLY EXPLICIT and INAPPROPRIATE content has NO PLACE in Florida schools. Florida school districts will be held ACCOUNTABLE for failing to protect our children from this type of content. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mack cited a recent school board meeting in Hillsborough County where parents spoke during public comment and recited passages from books in circulation they deemed inappropriate for students, including \u201cBeyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out\u201d by Susan Kuklin, \u201cA Court of Wings and Ruin\u201d by Sarah J. Maas, and \u201cThe Bluest Eye\u201d by Toni Morrison.<\/p>\n
\u201cA review that remains incomplete, or that leaves parents to locate the next title, does not meet the duty required of you by statute,\u201d Mack wrote. \u201cParents should not be required to place this material on the public record for district leadership to examine what is already in circulation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mack wants school districts to cross-check the DOE\u2019s official list of removed books with their own list of instructional materials and library books for review. In his memo, Mack said if a book is included on that list and was removed in another county, a district that has the same book is \u201crequired\u201d to review it.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral districts, including Clay, Escambia, and Nassau, have already removed or discontinued substantial numbers of titles following review. Delaying until a district becomes the subject of the next public controversy is not an acceptable approach,\u201d Mack wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Current Florida law says a school district can review and remove a book after a complaint has been made that a book is pornographic, obscene or isn\u2019t age appropriate. Books can also be removed as part of a regular selection process in which a media specialist can decide to remove them if they are outdated, rarely circulated or no longer relevant to the curriculum.<\/p>\n
School librarians and media specialists are required to go through training to distinguish which books are age appropriate and to \u201cerr on the side of caution.\u201d The training instructs librarians and media specialists that if they would not be comfortable reading the passage from the book in a public meeting, to \u201clean towards\u201d not placing it in a school library.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The law does not explicitly require district personnel to immediately remove the book or to double check the list of already removed books in other districts for preemptive review.<\/p>\n
Mack outlined a nine-point plan for the next 90 days for school districts to follow to improve their removals of age-inappropriate books from school shelves.<\/p>\n
If a district does not comply, it risks losing state funds, grants, Florida Lottery money or any other funds appropriated by the Legislature.<\/p>\n
\u201cA process that depends on a parent discovering explicit material, reading it in a public meeting, and then forcing a district response is not only severely flawed; it is administrative neglect masquerading as either ignorance or ineptitude,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWhatever it may be, it is unacceptable and must end.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ana Go\u00f1i-Lessan, The News Service of Florida Florida\u2019s education commissioner is directing school districts to set stricter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-410424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}