Teachers across Florida are preparing for increased censorship as the 2022-23 school year begins. Conservative legislation like the “Don’t Say Gay” and “Stop WOKE Act” officially took effect over the summer, placing added pressure and parental surveillance on teachers while censoring conversations surrounding gender, sexuality, and race. The two bills, in addition to a suite of three other educational censorship laws, regulate whether and how educators may discuss certain subjects and ideas. In both pieces of legislation, parents have been given the power to litigate against the teacher and school for discussing anything they determine falls under the prohibited categories.
Since the language used in the legislation is vague and open to interpretation, teachers are already reporting harmless educational books being banned from the classroom. As confusion continues and administrators jump to extreme measures to protect themselves from litigation, entire LGBTQ+ identities and the country’s honest racial history are being erased from Florida’s public school education system—and the children who need that representation and visibility the most are the ones who will feel the greatest loss.
“What’s going on is having a disastrous effect on schools as they prepare for the new school year,” said Jonathan Friedman, PEN America’s director of free expression and education programs. “It impacts, in particular, LGBTQ+ individuals or students of color, who may not have access to books that can mirror their lives, but also everybody in the access to diverse literature, stories from different perspectives, stories that offer critical lenses on society today. It is a backlash to emerging identities and how they are moving in from the margin that is driving a lot of the erasure.”
The Collier County School District recently placed a warning label on more than 100 books in the district’s library system related to race or LGBTQ+ identity. The labels are in the district’s online catalog, and physical labels are also attached to hard copies of the same books.
In Brevard Public Schools, Jane Cline, assistant superintendent for elementary leading and learning, said teachers are “taking a pause” entirely on classroom libraries until they are able to retrain media specialists to vet all books available to students.
In Palm Beach County, teachers were told to remove certain books from their classroom libraries and that all instructional materials available to their K-12 students, including classroom libraries, must be reviewed for compliance. Teachers have also been told to fill out an extensive checklist to see if the school’s library media specialist needs to review their class library.
In Brevard Public Schools, Jane Cline, assistant superintendent for elementary leading and learning, said teachers are “taking a pause” entirely on classroom libraries until they are able to retrain media specialists to vet all books available to students.
In Palm Beach County, teachers were told to remove certain books from their classroom libraries and that all instructional materials available to their K-12 students, including classroom libraries, must be reviewed for compliance. Teachers have also been told to fill out an extensive checklist to see if the school’s library media specialist needs to review their class library.
In Miami-Dade County, the school board voted to ban a sexual health textbook for middle and high schoolers from the system’s classrooms out of fear that it would not be in compliance with the law. The same school board only reversed their decision after they realized they would be out of compliance with state law that requires a sexual health textbook. The book in question addresses emergency contraception; natural methods like withdrawal; gender identity; and sexual orientation.
A middle school social studies teacher in Miami-Dade, who requested to remain anonymous, said he is concerned about how the new laws will impact his curriculum, which includes civil rights and landmark LGBTQ+ rights cases. “How do I teach those now?” he said. “It’s definitely more challenging, and it seems more daunting. Now it’s kind of like teachers versus parents.”
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