Q&A of the Day – How Books End Up in Florida’s School Libraries
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
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Today’s Entry: Brian, I have a question for you about the book removals from school libraries. The reporting on book removals by school districts because of concerned parents outing what’s really going in them is always slanted in one direction...ie Moms for Liberty gets books banned...etc. What I’d like to know is how books graphically depicting sexual material, that reads like a fantasy romance novel, gets in these school libraries in the first place. I think that’s the most important point and question. It’s not just that these types of books are inappropriately accessible for children to read in schools. It’s that these books are evidently being purchased with taxpayer funds and placed there in the first place.
Bottom Line: I love the point you’re making as it goes hand in hand with one of my isms – the Premise. If the premise of anything is false, anything built on the false premise is as well. In the context of book removals by School Districts from school libraries across Florida, the most instructive point isn’t that Florida’s law is flawed, or that Moms for Liberty or other concerned parents/groups are out to try to ban books. It’s that inappropriate material which lacks educational value has been brought into public school libraries in the first place. Today’s note was on the back of news this week out of Indian River County in which Moms for Liberty led a successful effort to have books which contained sexually explicit material removed from public school libraries. So, in answer to your question, what’s the process by which books are selected to enter school libraries...? Let’s get to it.
Before discussing what the current process for school library book selection is in Florida, let's look what the former process looked like, which is still in place in many school districts across the country, and is what was in place when the books in question were placed in school libraries originally.
- State Board of Education delegates authority to School Districts
- School Districts delegate authority to schools
- Schools delegate authority to the Media Specialist aka librarian overseeing libraries
And through the series of delegations that ultimately led to local decisions at the school librarian level you’re able to see how and why there could be libraries containing significantly differing books. If the only person minding the store is a school media specialist and if they’re agenda driven or even just a bit careless, it’s easy for books which lack educational value or appropriateness to make their way into school libraries. So that’s how we got here. As for what Florida’s recently enacted law calls for...it’s like this...
The Florida Board of Education maintains a Library Media Services division. The mission of the division is to: Support district library media supervisors and other stakeholders; ensuring that school librarians create and maintain quality library programs that foster the love of reading and the effective use of ideas and information by both students and faculty. School media specialists must undergo annual training provided by the Florida Board of Education’s Library Media Services division. All new materials which are brought into school libraries, including supporting materials for lesson plans, must be approved by the school’s media specialist.
The media specialists are still directly accountable to the schools they work for and to the local school districts which govern them, while the local school districts are held accountable by the state. Given the newness of the recently enacted law, and corresponding Florida Board of Education rule, we’re in a bit of a transition period. You might recall certain schools and school districts removed all or most books for a review process after the law went into effect. Some schools and school districts were more diligent than others. While it’s possible there are rouge media specialists out there intentionally allowing sexually explicit material in the libraries, what we’ve seen called into question to date, a la Indian River County this week, appears to be legacy books that hadn’t been reviewed remaining in place.