DeSantis says he’ll sign Florida bill limiting challenges to school books by nonparents

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that he will sign legislation restricting challenges to books in public schools, blaming “activist” teachers and others of making a “mockery” of his parental rights legislation by filing frivolous challenges.

The 2021 Parental Rights in Education Act, sometimes referred to as “Don’t Say Gay,” allows parents the opportunity to review, and potentially object to, school library books that they find “inappropriate,” with the goal of removing questionable material from school libraries, even if other families are OK with the content.

Especially targeted was LGBTQ content.

What followed were wholesale challenges to books and other material, requiring their removal from libraries and classrooms pending sometimes protracted reviews of their suitability.

Legislation passed during this year’s legislative session (HB 1285) allows only one challenge per month unless the challenge comes from the parent or guardian of a child in a public school.

“It is done intentionally, and it is part of an agenda, and that’s wrong,” DeSantis said during a news conference.

“I mean, schools are there to serve a community. Schools are not there for you to try to go on some ideological joyride at the expense of our kids,” he said.

The Legislature hasn’t sent the bill to DeSantis yet, but he said that he will sign it once that happens.

DeSantis appeared at Warrington Preparatory Academy, a charter school that opened last year at the site of a consistently poorly performing public school.

The bill is an omnibus pertaining to state education policy. The governor highlighted the book challenge changes plus language that expedites charter conversions, requiring districts to allow charter operators access to the facilities to devise a turnaround plan. Districts couldn’t remove resources or charge rent and would have to maintain the building. Children in the public-school zone would be first in line for charter school admission.

‘The Bluest Eye’

House member Jennifer Canady, a Republican from Polk County, mentioned a new bar on placing students in dropout prevention programs “solely because of a disability.” Students who are placed in those programs would be entitled to individualized goals “so we are focused on what they need to do in order to be successful,” she said.

“This bill is going to require that we treat students as the individuals that they are and make sure that they are in the best learning environment for them,” Canady added.

As for book challenges, legislation approved in 2022 set up a more orderly system for them, including review by the Florida Department of Education.

Still, books drawing challenges and sheltered from access by kids have included bestsellers including “The Kite Runner” and “The Bluest Eye,” the latter by the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison, plus “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson about growing up Black and queer.

In Jacksonville, books about Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, which are on the state’s recommended list, were unavailable to students for months pending reviews.

During the 2022-2023 school year, PEN America recorded 1,406 book ban cases in Florida, which accounted for 40% of the national total. That organization is suing the Escambia County School District over its banning policies.

DeSantis insisted he is only after books that aren’t “age and developmentally appropriate.”

“You should not be having books in these schools, particularly in younger grades, that are sexually explicit, that are promoting ideology like gender ideology. We don’t believe you teach a kindergartener that they can change their gender — that’s just not appropriate, that’s not what parents want to be taught in our schools,” he said Monday.

Litigation

PEN America and the Florida Education Association, representing classroom teachers, have complained that the laws are so vague that they invited districts to overly restrict access to material. The state laws don’t directly threaten felony charges for violations, but the Duval County district has warned teachers that that could happen if they expose children to material deemed pornographic.

To DeSantis, such concerns are “performative; that’s political. You’re trying to be an activist when you should be trying to be an educator.”

He did concede: “It’s from all ends of the political spectrum — I mean, there’s some people that really think all these books that have been in school are inappropriate; there’s other people that know that they’re appropriate but are trying to act like Florida does not want these books in.”

Overall, “it’s being done to create a narrative that somehow, oh my gosh, all these books are, quote, banned. No book is banned in Florida. The most grotesque pornographic books that are in schools that have been removed because they’re inappropriate, you can go buy it in a bookstore if that’s what floats your boat, you’re able to do that. But do not jam that down the throat of a sixth-grade child,” the governor said.

“…Just as it’s wrong for a school district, an activist teacher, a school union to try to impose an agenda on a student, it’s also wrong for a citizen activist or parent to do these passive-aggressive false challenges to try to act like somehow we don’t want education in Florida,” he said.

“If you are trying to be an activist, if you’re trying to withdraw valid materials as a way to basically lodge a protest, you’re going to be held accountable for that, because you’re depriving the students of their right to be able to have a good education.”

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