Seminole schools yank 31 books based on complaints from other counties

Seminole County Public Schools removed 31 books from their high school libraries last month, not because a Seminole parent complained about the novels but because another Florida school district had yanked them based on objections from someone in their county.

The Seminole district said it pulled the books from shelves based on state guidance advising schools to “check any books that have been removed or restricted due to a challenge in other districts.” The state advice added that those volumes should be “carefully considered” before being stacked on school library shelves.

The books removed from Seminole high schools include the award-winning “Looking for Alaska” by John Green, which includes a few short sex scenes, “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher, which is about a teenager’s suicide, and several novels by Ellen Hopkins, whose work depicts drug addiction and sexual abuse, among other difficult topics.

The Florida Department of Education on Aug. 30 released its list of more than 380 books removed from public schools during the 2022-23 school year because of challenges filed by parents or other residents.

Seminole is still reviewing books on the state list — it was about 60% done at the end of September — but so far had removed 31, put nine under review and decided that three would need parent permission to be checked out, said Katherine Crnkovich, a district spokeswoman, in an email.

For parents and educators alarmed by book bans, the action seems a part of an unfortunate game of follow the leader, one that ignores the formal book complaint process the school district has adopted. The Seminole school district said it has not had any book objections filed this school year.

‘Under cover of darkness’

Karen Calvo, a Seminole mother of three whose children attend the county’s public schools, said the books seemed to be pulled “under the cover of darkness” and represented the outsized influence that conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty — which pushed for new state laws making book challenges easier — now have on school library collections.

Calvo asked that her maiden name be used in this story to avoid problems for her children and the educators in their schools, one of whom told her books had been packed up and removed from a high school library.

In September, the Seminole chapter of Moms for Liberty sent a Seminole County School Board member a list of nearly 60 books it argued contained “inappropriate material” and should be removed, and at a board meeting members read aloud from library books they said were pornographic, hoping to get them pulled.

This week, on Facebook the group said it was “great news” that many of the books on its list had been taken off the shelves. “We have more books to challenge and we continue working on cleaning up the libraries,” the post read.

SCPS allows parents to limit library access for their children, so Calvo said that makes removing books unnecessary.

“The biggest thing for me is I want my kids to have access to any books they want,” she said. “If you don’t want your kids to have access to certain books, then your kid doesn’t have access. So why are you stopping my kid from accessing it?” she said.

Florida’s new state law (HB 1069) passed in the spring — which makes it easier to challenge books with sexual content — combined with the state book list and the state guidance means districts are “quietly removing books,” even if no one in their county has filed an objection, said Stephana Ferrell, a founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which opposes books bans.

“Quiet, soft censorship to our students’ detriment,” she said.

Florida tops in book bans

Florida led the nation in school book bans in the 2022-23 year, according to PEN America, a free speech and expression group, fueled by new state laws passed by Republican leaders who said they wanted to get rid of pornographic and other inappropriate material from schools.

PEN America said many books are being wrongly labeled as pornographic. Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, however, has pushed back against what it calls a “book ban hoax,” claiming it only wants to remove books unsuitable for children.

The Florida Freedom to Read Project, which has been gathering lists of books pulled from public schools, predicts more will be cut from school libraries this school year.

The state guidance, approved in January, told schools to “err on the side of caution” when selecting books, to be mindful that providing books with sexual content that is considered “harmful to minors” is a third-degree felony, and to review the state list once available.

“This FLDOE list puts a lot of pressure on the districts,” added Ferrell, an Orange County mother.

Orange County Public Schools said it is not using the state list to guide its review of books. But the Flagler County school district is, according to public records requests that Ferrell’s group recently sent to all of Florida’s school districts. Most districts have not yet responded, she said, but others are likely at least reviewing the list and checking their collections, she said.

Nearly half the books on the state list were removed from schools in Clay County, where one father — who leads the Florida chapter of No Left Turn in Education — has filed hundreds of book objections and told the state he has plans to object to about 3,600. This summer, he challenged the book “Arthur’s Birthday,” part of the series by author Marc Brown made into a PBS children’s cartoon, according to reports from Popular Information and the Pensacola News Journal, among others.

The state’s list of removed books means what is happening in Clay, a small school district near Jacksonville, could be influencing library choices from Miami to Pensacola. Book objected to by Moms for Liberty members and highlighted in book reviews by Book Looks, a website started by a former Moms for Liberty member in Brevard, also populate the state list.

A media specialist in another Central Florida school district fears the book “The Poet X” will be removed from her high school’s library. It was pulled by Clay schools last year, so is on the state list.

The media specialist said she has until the end of the month to review the nearly 70 books in her high school’s library that also appear on the state list. Because many of the books in question touch on sexual conduct, most will have to be packed up and removed, she said, even if they are “fantastic” and “wonderful” and speak to the challenges many of her students experience in their lives.

High school educators struggle to get students to read on their own, so removing books that might encourage them to read more is particularly distressing, said the media specialist, who asked not to be named for fear of job repercussions.

Award-winning ‘The Poet X’

Elizabeth Acevedo’s “The Poet X” is a National Book Award winner described by its publisher as a novel written in verse that tells the story of an Afro-Latina teenager who “feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood” and “pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook.”

The media specialist said the poetry format of “The Poet X” limits the text on each page, which is perfect for her students learning English as a second language, and the heroine speaks to her school’s large Hispanic population. But one poem in “The Poet X” is about masturbation and she fears that will doom it

The media specialist said she is reading HB 1069 and Florida statutes as she reviews the books, worried about keeping books she shouldn’t, yet finding it heartbreaking to get rid of them.

“I’m losing sleep over this. I’m losing weight because it’s literally making me sick,” said the educator, who has worked for Florida public schools for nearly 20 years. “I already feel that my job is in jeopardy,” she said. “I’m trying to protect the school and my colleagues.”

Calvo, the Seminole mother, was one of about 200 people who packed into a school board meeting last month to speak about book bans. Moms for Liberty members read aloud from books they called “disgusting” and pornographic, hoping they’d be removed from schools.

But the majority of the crowd that night wanted books to remain in school libraries, saying out-of-context passages shouldn’t be used to judge a whole book. Calvo read from a sexually explicit part of the Bible, a “snippet out of context,” to make that point.

The board listened as people read aloud but took no action. That made it all the more upsetting to Calvo when she later learned about books pulled from her oldest child’s high school.

“Most people don’t want this to happen, and yet it happened,” she said.