- April 25, 2024
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The Volusia County School Board unanimously took a step forward in updating its policy on the media selection of print and non-print items at its meeting on Tuesday, March 28, following a lengthy discussion during its workshop earlier in the day and over an hour of comments from the public at the regular board meeting.
The policy is being updated due to recent legislative changes about vetting books in schools, and the changes agreed upon by the board include: specifying that materials selected are in compliance with state statutes; incorporating language about what can be defined as “harmful materials,” “harmful to minors,” “obscene” and “sexually-oriented material.; outlining how a book review committee should be composed; and stating that a principal may remove material he or she deems to be in violation of Florida law during the purchasing process.
The policy will return to the board for final approval likely during its first meeting in May. The board was voting approve the advertisement of the proposed changes.
School Board member Ruben Colon, based on his observations at what's happening at the state level regarding book challenges, said this won't be the last time the policy is changed.
"What's coming is extreme, and if you don't think it's coming, it's coming," Colon said.
No teacher in Volusia County Schools has been asked to take down classroom libraries, Colon said, but a time will come soon where teachers will be asked to card catalogue the books in their classrooms. And if a book is challenged, it will go through the same process as outlined in the policy for books in school libraries.
Despite no formal request in place, some teachers in the district have taken down or covered their classroom libraries.
Colon said he wouldn't be surprised if new laws are soon passed that will bypass the district's review process and put the authority at the hands of the Florida Department of Education. At that point, the district will need to be discussing how to protect teachers, he said.
"Those are the lemons that we're being dealt to sort out, so I don't think that anybody on this board, one way or the other, is extreme on one side or the other, but we've got some really bad rotting lemons right now that we're all having to deal with," Colon said. "Nobody is comfortable with this situation."
Parents, teachers and religious leaders spoke about the issue at the meeting, with the majority of speakers expressing impassioned pleas to the School Board regarding the importance of books and reading in the classroom in light of the 19 "challenged" books currently going through the district's review process.
English teacher David Finkle said he was in his 31st year teaching at VCS and that he has always had a classroom library with no objections to any of the books. Finkle, the district's Teacher of the Year in 2005, said it's become a challenge to get students to read in recent years, as many would rather spend time on social media.
"My biggest concern is that we should be creating lifelong readers," he said. "That's our mission statement. Lifelong learners means lifelong readers and we're making all books suspects. You can't be pro-literacy and anti-book."
The day he has to remove his classroom library, Finkle said, is likely the day he'll resign as a teacher.
Amy Armistead, a pastor in Daytona Beach, said she had read several of the challenged books and that she couldn't "overstate the positive and powerful impact" it had on her to read such stories. As an example, she said the book "Sold" by Patricia McCormick led to her launching an organization on her college campus to address human trafficking.
"It was said at previous school board meetings that these books are non Christian and as a pastor, I disagree," Armistead said. "These books cultivated my sense of compassion to make the world a better place, a foundational pillar of my faith. These stories make our curriculum stronger."
Other speakers, however, felt that the books being challenged contained explicit material that could be considered pornography.
Parent Trish Townsend said the policy needs to be written "crystal clear and concrete" so that parents and students are in charge. This is our school system, she said.
"We're talking about these opt-in and opt-out things for these policies – this implies right now in our society that I trust what's happening in the school systems and I trust the administrators and teachers," Townsend said. "I do not."
Jenifer Kelly, the chapter chair for Moms for Liberty Volusia, said she wanted to address the claim that Moms for Liberty was seeking to ban books, explaining that the challenged books are available in public libraries and for purchase in stores.
"A school library is different than a public library," Kelly said. "There is no parental guidance or consent in a school library, and restricting any child from the entire library to protect them from harmful content is just not an acceptable option."
She also denounced the allegation that Moms for Liberty is "racist" and anti-LGBTQ. The books were challenged due to their sexual content, Kelly said.
After hearing from the public, board members stressed that the item before them was simply a review of the media selection policy, and that the proposed changes were minimal.
School Board member Carl Persis said that, as a former educator and principal, he is also passionate about the issue.
"There have been parents upset about books ever since there have been books," he said.
While he was in favor of adopting the policy, he said he was against school principals having the authority to pull books off the shelves due to complaints from a couple parents. All challenges should go through the formal review process, he said.
"Certainly, I support the rights of parents who do not wish their children to read a certain book," Persis said. "Absolutely — Those parents have that have that right, but as has been said so many times tonight and before tonight, a parent's right stops with their child and it isn't for every child."
School Board Chair Jamie Haynes said she was "heartbroken" over the issue. She said when the topic was first brought up, she didn't want to believe there were sexually explicit books in school libraries, as well as books that contained a high level of profanity.
This issue has turned into an issue among adults, she said, not the children in the school district.
"I'm not extreme," she said. "I can't stand extreme ... We're here to academically educate children in a safer environment."
