TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida House is discussing a bill designed to discourage parents from going overboard on challenging books in school libraries.
If enacted, the bill would impose $100 fees on any parent or resident who wants to submit challenges to more than five books or who submits an objection to a book and doesn’t have a child enrolled in the school where the book is located, according to Politico.
Districts would have to return the fee money if Florida's State Department ends up approving their objection.
The bill is the first time since Florida began the practice of removing books from classrooms and libraries that a law has sought to curb book bans and limit the challenge rights of parents. Florida House staff say in the 2022-23 school year, there were more than 1,200 material objections to titles throughout the state. Only 386 of those titles ended up being removed.
According to reporting from the Tampa Bay Times in August 2023, roughly 64 percent of the roughly 1,100 books that were challenged at that time came from only two of Florida's 67 counties: Escambia and Clay.
At the time, 600 of the challenges (more than half of the total amount made by then) were submitted by two people.
One was a dad in Clay County who accused New York schools of doing "considerable harm" to his 15-year-old son, founded a group to oppose "progressive indoctrination" in schools, and sending in complaints for hundreds of books he found on the internet, including comments like "Protect Children!” and “Damaged Souls!” on photocopied complaint forms.
This is the sort of behavior that the bill looks to curb as Escambia County recently removed over 1,600 books from its schools' shelves pending a review to see if the books comply with Florida's ban on discussing gender, sexual orientation or "sexual conduct" in grade school.
Florida's controversies over books continued in Tallahassee when the civil rights Grove Museum submitted a full list of recommendations of books to be read in this year's monthly storytime program for young children. The annual program allows kids to engage with kid-friendly books including, among other things, books on voting rights and Black history.
According to reporting by the Orlando Sentinel, the State Department rejected Grove's entire slate of suggested books recommended by the civil-rights Grove Museum for the first six months, including Eileen Christelow's book "VOTE!". The book was on Florida's pre-approved list and rated for grades one through four, but officials deemed the books inappropriate for the time of year, not age-appropriate, or not on the Department of Education's pre-approved list.
Other rejected titles included Amanda Johnson's "Wind Flyers," a book offered for Black History Month and written about Florida’s connection to the Tuskegee Airmen, and Margarita Engle's "Drum Dream Girl,” a poem inspired by a girl of mixed heritage who broke Cuba’s taboo against female drummers.
A spokesperson for Florida's State Department stated that the "VOTE!" book was just being moved to a "more relevant time" of the year to discuss voter registration, but she couldn't say when the books would be returned and then pivoted to claiming that the book's approved audience was too old for a "storytime" event.
