ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday held a news conference in Lake Nona to defend recently-enacted state laws mandating district K-12 schools develop and follow an approval process for contested reading material, what’s since seen scores of books pulled from school shelves for review temporarily or otherwise.
Beyond this, the governor previewed proposed legislation meant to punish “activists” who he says are now flooding these processes by submitting books such as dictionaries and the Bible for review in acts of “frivolous objection.”
“If you go to a school board meeting objecting — (if) you have a kid in school, OK, but if you’re somebody who doesn’t have a kid in school and you’re gonna object to 100 books, no, I don’t think that that’s appropriate. So I think the legislature is interested in limiting what the number of challenges you can do and maybe making it be contingent on whether you actually have kids in school or not,” DeSantis said. “...Then what you can also do is, if you object to, like, “To Kill a Mockingbird” or Hank Aaron, that obviously is frivolous objection. Those books should be in school. Then maybe after one or two frivolous objections, you have to pay a fine because you’re putting people to go through all this. So we’re toying with a lot of things in terms of that process.”
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This bill — HB 7025: Education — was filed in January and at latest is expected to head to the Florida House floor for debate.
The bill authorizes school districts to assess a processing fee of $100 for each objection to a material by a resident or parent whose student is not enrolled in the school where the material is located if the parent or resident has unsuccessfully objected to five materials during the calendar year. The bill also requires the school district to return the fee if the objection is upheld.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES STAFF ANALYSIS | CS/HB 7025 | Objection to Materials (excerpt) | posted 2/1/2024 5:35 p.m. to www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2024/7025/?Tab=Analyses
Flipping the script on those who may accuse Florida of banning books, DeSantis claimed “ideological left folks” are the ones purportedly fanning a movement to ban books rejecting gender fluidity and ideology.
“Just understand, curating a book or not in a library for middle school kids is not the same as saying the book is banned. You have to make decisions about what books you want. I mean, you can have books about Frederick Douglass, there’s probably hundreds of books. You know, maybe you have a half a dozen. That doesn’t mean every other book about Douglass is banned, it’s just, you made a decision about which one do you want to have in that library?” DeSantis said.
The governor, who would decry “virtue signaling“ and “performative nonsense” during his statements Thursday, entered the room after a video was played with a preamble warning of “graphic images and language that is not suitable for children.” The footage served to illustrate the explicit nature of reading materials DeSantis says are “being injected” into Florida schools, claiming news outlets would need to “cut the feed because it’s graphic.”
A near-identical video was shown before another one of DeSantis’ news conferences last March. The video seen by DeSantis’ Lake Nona audience on Thursday similarly ran through snippets and screenshots from books such as “Flamer” by Mike Curato, “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe and some others to make the point a second time.
Before concluding with the “FLORIDA: EDUCATION, NOT INDOCTRINATION” tagline now often favored by state leaders in school-related public messaging, the video in part showed a screenshot of a headline from The Palm Beach Post — “Anne Frank, MLK among authors whose books schools reviewed under new Florida laws,” published in September 2022 — to claim that the media outlet and others were actively lying about how Florida was banning classic books such as Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl” and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” However, reading the article reveals in short order that its focus was on the Escambia County School District’s review, and approval, of 15 titles that included Frank’s diary and King’s letter.
“You saw some of the books that, quote, were challenged, or that the media ran with, things that are not in any way in violation of any type of Florida law and things ranging from things like the biography of Roberto Clemente, which not only was something that is welcome, it was actually on the book of the month for the Florida Department of Education. You’ve seen people challenge the Bible. You’ve seen people challenge dictionaries and act like, ‘Oh, my gosh, in Florida, you had a teacher in (the) Bradenton area that put paper over all the books, oh the state law, we’re not allowed to-’ this is fraudulent,” DeSantis said.
The Pensacola News Journal in October 2022 obtained a redacted copy of one woman’s objection to the Bible in Escambia County district schools, in which she cites Scripture to allege promotions of “sexism, sex, violence, genocide, slavery, rape, and bestiality,” adding her argument that the purpose of the Bible was to “indoctrinate children in Christianity.” The article, titled “Escambia County Schools reverse decision to restrict access to Bibles in school libraries,” recorded how county schools were then instructed — per a review process that the district states it developed to comply with state law — to remove the Bible from their libraries’ general collections for it to undergo a good faith review like any other title flagged for potentially containing sexual conduct. Before that could happen though, the district reversed course within the week, deemed the Bible exempt from such review (pursuant to state statute 1003.45(1)) and ordered it returned to shelves.
The governor was joined at the UCF Lake Nona Cancer Center by Florida Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., who similarly claimed that while districts’ new review processes are working to parents’ benefit, they were also being abused by “activists.”
“Because of Gov. DeSantis’ leadership, parents have a real process and communities have a real process to look at what the materials are in schools and deem what is inappropriate. When I’m out visiting schools and get the opportunity to speak to parents, so many of them thank us and thank the governor for having this process in place to actually have access to what’s available in school, transparency, and have the ability to object. So today we’re here to set the record straight and we’ll continue to set the record straight as long as it takes. In Florida, we always support a process that protects parents’ rights and protects children. Both are important and here in Florida that is exactly what we have done. This process is designed to prevent activists from inserting inappropriate materials into our children’s classroom.”
The event comes a day after DeSantis and his wife, first lady Casey DeSantis, held a news conference in Tallahassee to announce cancer innovation fund awards.
Watch the news conference again in the media player below:
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