Broward County is pulling dozens of books off the shelves ahead of the new school year. The county is joining school districts across the state in complying with a state Board of Education initiative.
School officials in Broward have released a list of 55 books that, they say, are in the process of being removed from their libraries.
This stems from a meeting between state education officials and Van Ayres, the Superintendent of Schools for Hillsborough County, back in June. In that meeting, state officials stated that they had found several books deemed inappropriate for public school libraries and made it clear that they wanted all districts statewide to remove those types of books.
“These are nasty, disgusting books that have no place in a school in Florida,” said Ryan Perry, Chair of the Florida Board of Education.
“These people that you trust to review these materials are abusing the children of your county,” said Kelly Garcia, member of the Florida Board of Education.
Ayres told the panel that he wanted to make sure that those books did not exist anymore in his county by the time school started.
“When our [20]25, [20]26 school year starts, I want to be assured that there is absolutely zero, none, zero inappropriate material in our libraries,” he said.
Earlier this year, when the state legislature was in session, State Rep. Hillary Cassel (R-Dania Beach) argued for a new roadmap to examine books in the state’s public school libraries.
“If that means one book gets taken off the shelf, that shouldn’t be to protect our kids from reading a single paragraph of one of those 57 books, I’m here for it. Vote up!” she said.
While her initiative failed in the legislature, the list of 57 books she’s referencing closely mirrors a list of books Broward County says it has in hand.
According to the list, some of the books include “Forever” by Judy Blume, “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire, “This Book is Gay” by Juno Dawson, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George Johnson, “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess and “Sold”, a book about human trafficking by Patricia McCormick.
Some books include sexual situations such as “A Stolen Life” by Jaycee Dugard as well as “Sold”.
Stephana Ferrell with the Florida Freedom to Read Project said the move is the state’s effort to ban books in libraries.
“Let’s be clear: all of the 55, none of those were in elementary schools. We have yet to find those books in elementary schools,” she said.
She also claims that the legal process to remove books from school library shelves was not followed this time; instead, it came from a statewide directive.
“One parent objects or one person objects, but the community decides the outcome of the objection,” said Ferrell.
Ferrell added parents should have the final say on what material their children can read.
“Parents have always had the ability to speak one-on-one with their school librarian and say, ‘I would like to set these boundaries for my children because these are the boundaries we keep at home,’ and if there’s concerns, they can place limits.”
In a memo, the Broward school district said they’ve completed the process of identifying the books, but added that the district did not have all of the titles on the shelves.
Several lawsuits are making their way through the courts, which are focused on other previous book removals in the state.