DeSantis again calls book banning a ‘hoax’ but wants laws tweaked

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday again lashed out against what he calls the “big hoax” that Florida leaders ban books, saying his administration only wants to remove pornographic material from school shelves not “classic books.”

But he also said he would support lawmakers who want to rein in “activists who will go in and challenge almost anything” and go after “bad actors” in Florida’s school districts whom he accused of making political hay out of book challenges.

The governor, speaking in Orlando with members of the conservative Moms for Liberty group by his side, said the news media have falsely reported the state wanted schools to yank books like “Charlotte’s Web” and “Romeo and Juliet” from its shelves.

But the laws DeSantis signed in the past two years and rules his administration have approved — including one that tells librarians to “err on the side of caution” when selecting books — have led districts across Florida to pull, if not those specific titles, hundreds of other classic novels for fear of violating state mandates.

In Osceola County, for example, the school district this school year ordered removed from classroom libraries “Emma” by Jane Austen, “A Farewell to Arms” and “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway, “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck and collections of poems by Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe.

“Adult book, please remove from your classroom ASAP,” reads the notation next to the Poe volume on the district’s rejected book lists.

Michelle Jarrett, Osceola’s library media supervisor, said in a recent interview that district media specialists want to keep books available for students but are also fearful of violating a law that can strip them of their professional licenses, a view echoed by school librarians statewide.

“People are absolutely frightened because no one wants to lose their teaching certificate, whether they are a teacher, media specialist, or administrator,” Jarrett said.

The district decided any book considered “adult fiction,” even if a classic, had to go to comply with Florida’s new law, though that pained educators.

“I hope that the community recognizes that our media specialists have done everything they can to keep as many books as they can in the hands of our kids. That’s our goal, always,” Jarrett said.

‘Clearly not appropriate’

To start his news conference, DeSantis showed a video of several books that involved descriptions and drawings of sexual acts. He said those books, with “things that are clearly not appropriate for school-aged children,” are the target of his administration.

But he urged the Legislature to pass a law to “fine-tune” the school book challenge process so that residents could not hijack it and “just come in and try to throw sand in the gears just to make a political statement.” He did not offer specifics, however.

Book challenges filed by a father in Clay County, near Jacksonville, accounted for more than a third of the books challenged and removed from Florida school libraries last year school year. The father, president of the Florida Chapter of No Left Turn in Education, a conservative group, has called many books “poison” and threatened to challenge thousands of them.

Statewide, there were 1,218 book objections filed in the 2022-23 school year, with 386 books removed from school shelves, according to the Florida Department of Education. More than half came from Clay and Escambia County schools.

The Florida House has proposed a bill that would fine some residents for filing too many unsuccessful book challenges.

But the governor and his supporters also blamed school leaders for book challenges.

Though he did not provide details, DeSantis said he asked Education Commissioner Manny Diaz to prevent “bad actors” in school districts from “depriving students” of classics by “politicizing” book objections.

“This book ban hoax is nothing more than political propaganda,” said Alicia Farrant, an Orange County School Board and Moms for Liberty member, who ran for office urging the district to remove books she found offensive from public schools.

She had previously objected to some of the same books DeSantis highlighted in the video. Those included “Gender Queer,” which Orange County Public Schools removed several copies from three high schools in 2021, and “Let’s Talk About it: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human,” which Seminole County Public Schools had a never-checked-out copy of at one high school and removed in late 2022.

Farrant thanked DeSantis for efforts to “protect the innocence of our children,” quoted a Bible passage and said the state faced a “battle between good and evil that is targeting our children.”

But the district she helps oversee removed more than 670 books this fall, both classics and popular novels, for fear they violate new state rules that ban making descriptions of any “sexual conduct” available to public school students. The books include classics such as John Milton’s 17th-century epic poem “Paradise Lost,” “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” “Jude the Obscure” and “Madame Bovary.”

300 removed in Collier

In Collier County in Southwest Florida, the school district packed up and put in storage about 300 books, including classics like “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, in its effort to meet state laws.

In Escambia County in the Panhandle, the school district in the fall pulled about 1,400 books from its libraries — including works by Agatha Christie and Charles Dickens — to review for compliance with the new law, according a list obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which opposes school book bans.

Stephana Ferrell, the group’s director of research and insight, said state law now requires every book on a classroom or library shelf to be reviewed by a certified media specialist.

That means some books are unavailable until a media specialist can review them, she noted, not because schools are playing games but because they are trying to comply with the law.

A state memo sent to districts in October said school collections should not include “sexual conduct,” a broader definition than in the state pornography law, and must match the students’ “age group.” That, plus the state’s “err on the side of caution” warning led to many districts to remove lots of books from school shelves.

“That’s why that happened, not because some activist was out there trying to prove a point,” said Ferrell, an Orange County mother of two school-age children. “It’s not the fault of our districts and our educators that these laws and vague and punitive.”

“They brought a wrecking ball when a hammer and nails were all that a district needed,” she said. “They took a wrecking ball to our libraries.”