Teachers in Manatee County, Florida, are being told to make their classroom libraries — and any other “unvetted” book — inaccessible to students, or risk felony prosecution. The new policy is part of an effort to comply with new laws and regulations championed by Governor Ron DeSantis (R). It is based on the premise, promoted by right-wing advocacy groups, that teachers and librarians are using books to “groom” students or indoctrinate them with leftist ideologies.
Kevin Chapman, the Chief of Staff for the Manatee County School District, told Popular Information that the policy was communicated to principals in a meeting last Wednesday. Individual schools are now in the process of informing teachers and other staff.
Teachers in Manatee County lamented the news on social media. “My heart is broken for Florida students today as I am forced to pack up my classroom library,” one Manatee teacher wrote on Facebook.
Another Manatee teacher called the directive “a travesty to education” that interfered with efforts to “connect with books and develop [a] love of lifelong learning.”
In an interview with Popular Information, Chapman said that the policy was put into place last week in response to HB 1467, which was signed into law by DeSantis last March. That law established that teachers could not be trusted to select books appropriate for their students. Instead, the law requires:
Each book made available to students through a school district library media center or included in a recommended or assigned school or grade-level reading list must be selected by a school district employee who holds a valid educational media specialist certificate, regardless of whether the book is purchased, donated, or otherwise made available to students.
In Florida, school librarians are called “media specialists” and hold media specialist certificates. A rule passed by the Florida Department of Education last week states that a “library media center” includes any books made available to students, including in classrooms. This means that classroom libraries that are curated by teachers, not librarians, are now illegal.
The law requires that all library books selected be:
1. Free of pornography and material prohibited under s. 847.012.
2. Suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented.
3. Appropriate for the grade level and age group for which the materials are used or made available
Chapman says that school principals in Manatee County were told Wednesday that any staff member violating these rules by providing materials “harmful to minors” could be prosecuted for “a felony of the third degree.” Therefore, teachers must make their classroom libraries inaccessible to students until they can establish that each book has been approved by a librarian.
In response to the policy, some teachers packed up their classroom libraries. Others covered up the books students are no longer allowed to read with construction paper.
Restoring student access to classroom libraries is a complex process. First, someone must cross-check each book in their classroom library with the district library catalog. If the book is available in the district libraries, that means it was approved by a media specialist and can be made available to students again. But any book not currently held in the district libraries must be individually evaluated and approved by a librarian.
And that’s just the beginning. Materials prepared for an upcoming Manatee County School Board meeting include a 21-point list of procedures to ensure that classroom libraries comply with the new rules.
As a result, one Manatee teacher reported being forced to take Sneezy the Snowman and Dragons Love Tacos off the shelves pending review. Other teachers, fearing criminal liability, are telling students not to bring in “unvetted” books from home:
Chapman said he was not aware of teachers being told specifically to prohibit students from bringing books from home but, as a policy, “all materials we use in a classroom are all state approved.”
One high school teacher in Manatee County told Popular Information that they would not comply with the new policy. The teacher has spent the year carefully curating books donated by parents or sourced from their personal collection. “I’m not taking any books out of my room,” the teacher said. “I absolutely refuse.” The teacher spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing that speaking out about the policy could put their job at risk.
Librarians in Manatee County are now expected to review thousands of books in classroom libraries to ensure compliance with the new law. Manatee County has 64 public schools and 3,000 teachers, many of whom maintain classroom libraries. Chapman said that every school in Manatee County has a media specialist but that the process could take a while because it is “one person” and “they are human.” Any book approved for K-5 students must also be included on a publicly available list.
Similar policies will be implemented in schools across Florida. Some Florida schools do not have a media specialist, making the process even more cumbersome.
That review must also be consistent with a complex training, which was heavily influenced by right-wing groups like Moms For Liberty and approved by the Florida Department of Education just last week. Any mistake by a librarian or others could result in criminal prosecution. This process must be repeated for any book brought into the school on an ongoing basis. But librarians and teachers are not being provided with any additional compensation for the extra work.
Stephana Ferrell, a co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, said the new policy followed “a pattern of fear-based decisions that prioritize staying in good favor with the Governor over doing the right thing for our students.” Ferrell said she blamed “the Florida Board of Education that passed this rule change last Wednesday without an ounce of consideration for its impact.” Now, “thousands of students are without classroom access to fun and engaging literature.”
Ironically, Manatee County is making thousands of books inaccessible to students just in time to celebrate “Literacy Week” in Florida, which runs from January 23 to 27. Only about 50% of students in Manatee County are reading at grade level.
“Err on the side of caution”
Popular Information asked Chapman if Manatee County librarians and teachers were expected to remove books that violated the Parental Rights In Education Act, known by critics as “Don’t Say Gay” or the Stop WOKE Act, which limits classroom discussion of racial issues. Chapman did not answer the question directly, saying only that librarians are expected to apply the “specialized training for media center specialists” approved last week by the Florida Department of Education. That training, Chapman says, includes “new definitions of inappropriate material.”
The Parental Rights In Education Act prohibits all instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in K-3 classrooms and instruction in other grades that is “not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” But the law applies only to “[c]lassroom instruction by school personnel or third parties” — not library books. Similarly, the Stop WOKE Act is limited to classroom instruction.
The teacher training approved by the Florida Department of Education, however, does not inform librarians that the Parental Rights in Education Act and Stop WOKE ACT do not apply to library books. Rather, librarians are told: “There is some overlap between the selection criteria for instructional and library materials.” One slide says that library books and instructional materials cannot include “unsolicited theories that may lead to student indoctrination.”
A subsequent slide provides a list of “unsolicited theories that may lead to student indoctrination,” which includes information about “sexual orientation or gender identity.” It also includes a variety of topics related to race, including “Critical Race Theory” and material that might make someone feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” as a result of their race. The training instructs librarians to “err on the side of caution.”
As Popular Information reported earlier this month, Manatee County schools have already removed several books from school libraries because they contain LGBTQ characters or themes.
This interpretation of the law runs directly counter to the arguments the DeSantis administration is making in court. In federal court filings, lawyers representing DeSantis insist that the Parental Rights in Education Act does not apply to library books. Nevertheless, the DeSantis administration, through its media specialist training, is encouraging a much more expansive interpretation of the law.
Please notice the similarities of what the Nazis did with what DeathSantis and the republican leaders in red states are doing now with the don’t say gay laws. The Nazis started with getting rid of the literature and any gay positive news or newspapers. They made laws restricting and outlawing gay meeting places just like the red states are doing with drag queen shows. Also they made gay associations and gay supporting groups to disband and forbid them from existing just like in Florida where no gay straight alliance clubs can now be formed in schools supporting the gay / LGBTQ+ kids. There is so much more in the video that shows how DeathSantis and his advisors are following the Nazi play book to eliminate the LGBTQ+ community, to rid the state of the gay and trans people. Such as using thugs called Brown Shirts to attack and scare gay establishments which reminds me of the Proud Boys gangs. Arresting and stopping events claiming they were preventing crime and if they got a gay person in the arrests or anyone with any public indecency in their record they made a big deal of making an example of them, claiming the need to protect the public and the children. One of the reasons that the Nazis hated the gays was they did not produce Aryan children which was the goal of the movement. Similar to the current white nationalist / Christian nationalist that claim that same sex marriage is not a true marriage and that same sex families are not real because same sex couples can not produce offspring. In their minds there is not enough white kids being born. Please note the same things said about homosexuality then are the same things said about gays today by republicans, including what the religious evangelicals today say about same sex marriage not producting children. Hugs
Of all the things this piece of pond scum has been accused of doing or lying about this is not one I care about other than it seems it was an illegal marriage to allow an end run around immigration laws. As for family groupings and relationships that are adult and consensual in my opinion it is not one’s business except the people involved. Mind your own business is the way I look at it. If multiple people want to be in a consensual relationship with each other why should anyone else care. I don’t. Why should the government be involved in regulating how many people can be in love or which adults can have consensual sex? And absolutely no religion has a say in how non-members arrange their relationships or sexual encounters. Hugs
Two years into his mysterious marriage to a woman—and five years before they divorced—George Santos invited friends to celebrate his engagement to a man, The Daily Beast has learned. “Good evening everyone! As you all may already know Pedro and I have decided to join our toothbrushes! Lol and a very few friends have been selected to share this special moment with us!” Santos wrote in a 2014 Facebook “engagement dinner” invitation.
The invitation was shared with The Daily Beast by Santos’ old roommate, Greg Morey-Parker, and the boyfriend, Pedro Vilarva, confirmed that the future congressman planned the celebration. Vilarva told The Daily Beast the engagement party “never happened” because he rejected Santos’ proposals. “He asked me 3x but I didn’t accept it,” Vilarva wrote in a text. “There was never a party [or] anything in regards to it.”
Same-sex marriage became legal in New York state in July 2011. Santos’ divorce was finalized in 2020 two weeks before he filed paperwork to run for the US House.
According to Santos’ former roommate, Santos told him he could make money by marrying a Brazilian woman so that she could obtain US citizenship.
The boyfriend told The Daily Beast the engagement party “never happened” because he rejected Santos’ proposals: “He asked me 3x but I didn’t accept it.” https://t.co/ZArB0SDgH8
A man who was 18 years old when he began dating and then moved in with George Santos—while the future congressman was married to a woman—says he was lied to, too.
“He used to say he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor,” Pedro Vilarva told The New York Times of his 2014 romance with Santos, who was then 26. “One day it’s one thing, one day it’s another thing. He never ever actually went to work.”
Vilarva said Santos once gave him tickets to Hawaii that did not exist—and then he found out he was wanted on theft charges in Brazil.
“I woke up in the morning, and I packed my stuff all in trash bags, and I called my father and I left,” he said.
Kirk is a well know republican racist bigot. So he thinks a white centered white straight history is the only history to be taught. Hugs
“I am enthusiastically behind Ron DeSantis saying that Black-centered education has no place in Florida schools, obviously. It’s bigoted from its premise.
“First of all, Western culture is better and it’s a thoughtcrime to say it out loud. Number two, Blacks were sold into slavery by other Blacks. Can’t say that out loud, Thomas Sowell wrote that in great detail.
“Number three, when Blacks were given opportunities to return home, they did not want to return home. Blacks didn’t want to leave.
“I mean obviously, slavery is reprehensible and terrible and awful, but there’s a lot more to that story than people would ever want to acknowledge and admit, which is more Blacks have come to America voluntarily than ever came in the slave trade.
“More Blacks have come to America voluntarily since the 1980s, whether it be from West Africa, from the Caribbean, than ever came in the slave trade.” – Charlie Kirk, on yesterday’s show.
It doesn’t matter who sold them into slavery, and it doesn’t make it alright if black tribes sold members of other black tribes into slavery. SLAVERY IS WRONG. Also, the history courses are pretty much WHITE-CENTRIC. Why is THAT OK? Why shouldn’t black AND white children learn about black history? It’s as much a part of our nation’s history as white history. Go pop your zits in private, Charlie, and leave the rest of us alone.
“Number three, when Blacks were given opportunities to return home, they did not want to return home. Blacks didn’t want to leave.
WTF? Charlie, were first generation slaves offered the chance to return to their homelands? I think not. If this even happened it would have been generations later. That would be like someone offering anyone of us whose families have been here for generations the opportunity to return to the motherland. Ones family and life are now here. The lunacy of these bigots drives me crazy.
It’s how Liberia was setup, but they had to be able to pay to return there. It wasn’t a ‘free’ trip. So that’s why most Black people wouldn’t have ‘wanted’ to leave. Not to mention that people don’t like forced migrations… Once moved, why move again?
If someone wanted to “return” me to Scotland, I might take them up on it. I’d love to live where it rains most of the time, everything is deep fried, and men wear skirts to special events.
But if they just wanted to “return” me to a random chunk of Europe carved out as a dumping ground for anyone of European descent, where a non-English language was spoken by the locals and all the customs were foreign, that would be a completely different matter.
And that’s the kind of “return” that was offered to African Americans after the War of Secession.
I’ve made it a rule to not listen to dropouts tell me what to be ought included or excluded from school curriculum. I only listen to dropouts talking about school when they’re talking about ways to keep people in school.
Florida rejected a proposed Advanced Placement course focused on African American Studies because it included study of topics like the Movement for Black Lives, Black feminism and reparations, according to a list of concerns provided to CNN on Friday by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office.
The state also said the course framework for the study of reparations – the argument to compensate Black Americans for slavery and other historical atrocities and oppressive acts – includes “no critical perspective or balancing opinion in this lesson.”
The state Department of Education on January 12 informed the College Board, the organization that oversees the Advanced Placement program, that the course violated state law and rejected its inclusion in Florida schools.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration has concerns with six topics of study on the syllabus for the new AP African American Studies class, according to a list provided to CNN, including the study of the Movement for Black Lives and reparations,https://t.co/Nbhi350j3W
I wrote up an acceptable black history curriculum for Florida:
– Once upon a time, there was a kind of embarrassing practice where some people were forced to do jobs — even though it wasn’t as bad as some people like to say. And the same thing existed in Africa too, so it wasn’t the Americans’ fault.
– All of the divinely-inspired Founding Fathers wanted to end it.
– Eventually, the North invaded the South, and the South fought back valiantly. But the North overwhelmed it by throwing overwhelming, sacrificed bodies of soldiers at the brave defenders — who only wanted to be able to have their own laws and culture without woke, federal interference.
– Then the North told all those workers they didn’t have jobs anymore.
-The North tried to make those people serve in government for about 10 years, but everyone agreed that it was a disaster, and things went back to normal.
– Those people liked to call themselves “colored.” Some of them had some good qualities like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, who were both Republicans and loved guns. They opposed the Ku Klux Klan, which was created by the Democrat Party.
– Eventually, there was a guy named George Washington Carver. He invented peanut butter. He was also a Republican.
– Not much happened for a long time. Eventually there was the great Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a Republican too. He taught everyone that it is wrong to talk, or even think, about skin color.
– Then Obama became president and brought Democrat racism back.
Neo-Confederates in the US have been pushing their bizarre ,revisionist history of the Civil War and slavery for as long as I can remember.. This is the first tine a state government has turned those lies into an official state sanctioned history..
The thing is, every revisionist lie about slavery, and the cause of the Civil War they tell is contradicted by contemporary documents from the Civil War: the articles of session by the various states, the constitution of the Confederacy, the Congressional record of the Confederacy, public speeches by confederates, such as the infamous Cornerstone Speech.
If the media examined what happened in the Nazi murder camps using the “both sides” approach they’ve adopted today, they wouldn’t denounce the Holocaust as evil. They’d tell us what happened and then insist on getting the Nazis’ “point of view.”
A previous draft version of the concerns sent to CNN by DeSantis’ office included an objection to the study of “The Black Power Movement and The Black Panther Party.” The draft version asserted that “The Black Panther Party (BPP) was based on the ideology of Marxism- Leninism. Goal of the BPP was to fundamentally change or overthrow the American government.” However, in an updated version of the state’s concerns, the references to the Black Panther Party were removed and replaced with an objection to the study of “Black Queer Studies.”
There is NOTHING in education, especially higher education, that students should not be exposed to so they have a good knowledge of WHAT IT IS. That is what education is about, for Christ’s sake, not keeping people in ignorance! Any student of history, certainly of U.S. history, should know what the Black Panther Party was. Any high school student should be familiar with what it was, should know what Marxist-Leninism is! And why should they not be made familiar with contributions made to society by gay people in the Black community?!
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. By Ta-Nehisi Coates
I went to university at one of NYC’s city colleges and it was possible to major in religion. In fact it is possible to major in religion at many public universities. I probably disagree with much of what is taught in thise departments, but I would never approve of the state banning the classes. Which is just another example of how the right wing engages in cancel culture and stifling free speech. Yet the media would have us believe the left engages in it.
At least 50 children found cleaning Midwest slaughterhouses
A recent Department of Labor investigation found at least 50 children working overnight shifts cleaning slaughterhouses across the Midwest. NBC’s Julia Ainsley has more on how the federal government is now looking into whether any of the children were victims of human trafficking.
Scottie's Playtime 