HB1467: Will the M4L Book Banners Get the Last Word?

The final meeting of the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) Library Media Workgroup will take place at 8:30 am on 12/19/22. It is an in-person meeting, held in Tallahassee. It is not scheduled to be broadcast on The Florida Channel and, despite it being scheduled at the last minute during the holiday break, workgroup members will be unable to attend virtually. It may only be attended by the conservative Moms For Liberty (M4L) members of the workgroup who seem to be disappointed with their inability to influence the FLDOE staff, attorneys and other workgroup members to issue a blanket ban on what they believe are sexually explicit/pornographic materials in public school libraries.

Will significant changes be made to the nearly completed online training or will the shady meeting merely be a Festivus-like “Airing of the Grievances” for the M4L participants?

For the 8 trained media specialists and library experts from across the state who agreed to help create the online training program, mandated by 2022’s HB1467, I suspect it has been a long 3 months. This was their task (statute):

F.S. 1006.31(2) defines state and district Instructional Materials approval processes. The sticking point for the M4L members of the workgroup has been the highlighted portion:

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The details of F.S. 847.012 , and the M4L members objections from essentially Day 1, are fully discussed in this post. As explained repeatedly by the FLDOE attorney, the “harmful to minors” statute set a rather high bar and focusing on individual passages (or an image or two in a graphic novel?) is not enough to satisfy the criterion, which must be evaluated by looking at the material as a whole. The statute defines “harmful to minors” material as:

(a) Predominantly appeals to a prurient, shameful, or morbid interest;

(b) be patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors; and

(c) Taken as a whole, is without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

It is the “and” before (c) that is so bothersome to M4L’s member Michelle Beavers:

“There is no law that mandates sexually explicit material needs to be in our library so it simply doesn’t. I mean, I don’t know how to more clearly say that but these kids do not need to be exposed to it. It’s just that simple and the law is meant to do that, but we’ve allowed the little word ‘and’ to take over this entire issue.“

Michelle Beavers, 12/06/22, FLDOE Library Media Workgroup

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The first meeting of the Workgroup, attended by only FLDOE staff and media specialist appointees, had an optimistic timeline.

The parent participants joined the work group on 9/27/22 and almost immediately the group became bogged down in the “harmful to minors” statute. After a series of zoom meetings, the entire group met face-to-face in Tallahassee on 11/21/22, for several hours, during which time they “finalized” the training, which was then “routed” through the FLDOE process.

Around the same time, the Florida Citizen’s Alliance (who authored series of book banning bills over the past decade) and M4L began an email campaign, making requests for changes to the training, including “clear and defined disciplinary procedures, that will be enforced, for media personnel who purchase prohibited books following the approval of the clarified policy.” The email campaign was encouraged online by the M4L members of the workgroup. 

One week later, at the virtual Workgroup meeting on 11/28/22, parent representatives presented additional ideas for the training, like those suggested by the mail campaign, frustrating the media specialists in the group. One specialist said “I’m just going to say this: it’s very frustrating that we all sat in a room together, and made decisions and then, when we all leave, more discourse is happening without all of us in the room… We all communicated in a room and looked each other in the eye ‘are you okay with this, are we okay with these slides as a workgroup appointed by the State of Florida,’ so it’s very frustrating that we are back here today, when we all were in the room together…” Beavers told the group “I am a parent and I can tell you, what we’re allowing isn’t okay.”

At that 11/28 meeting, it was decided that the parent participants could each create a bulleted list of their concerns, including items they would like added to the training and items, outside of the scope of the training, that they would like to discuss with senior leadership. These lists were to be discussed at the 12/6 meeting.

At the 12/6 meeting, M4L Michelle Beavers made it immediately clear that, after speaking to an outside attorney, she was no longer okay with suggesting districts have the option of allowing parents to either opt-in or opt-out of library use/books, believing that the presence of books with content like “Gender Queer” on library shelves “exposed (students) to harm, period, full stop.”

In several of the media reports I have read about that meeting (see here and here), the M4L members insist they are not book banners. Beavers was quoted as saying:

“There’s a misconception that we’re trying to ban books. Nobody’s trying to ban books. We’re trying to make sure they are age-appropriate for these children in our schools.”

https://www.wcjb.com/2022/12/08/disagreements-surface-over-school-librarian-training-florida-doe-workgroup/

If you watch the meeting (especially around 38:00), however, there seems to be NO misconception. When discussing Beavers’ sudden opposition to allowing any opt-in/opt-out options, FLDOE Deputy Chancellor for Educator Quality, Pauls Burns, asks what she would support in its place. Her reply, “What it would say is these books are not allowed in the library full stop period, they are not allowed.”

Beavers says she has created a list which “spelled out everything that could possibly be in a book that I am aware of that should not be in our libraries.” She says, “I think if this material is in the book and it is in our library and we have to figure out ‘should we let kids see it? Should we not let kids see it?’ At that point it shouldn’t be in our library. That’s just it. It shouldn’t be in. We need to use common sense and what that law was supposed to mean and not dance around this anymore.“

When a media specialist suggests “it’s good opportunity to have the options there because of parental choice.. we need to make sure that we hear all parents’ choices and honor all students” and asks “That’s really what parental rights is about, correct? The rights of all?” Beavers responds:

“No. it’s about protecting children and that’s what we are talking about doing here is protecting children, not worrying about if one particular parent wants that book in the library, doesn’t trump the rights of the parents who don’t want it exposed 

Michelle Beavers, 12/06/22, FLDOE Library Media Workgroup

Amber Baumbach, the FLDOE’s Director of Library Media & Instructional Materials and staff assigned to the Library Media Workgroup, clarified that Florida does not have a list of banned books, so including Beavers’ list in the training was not something the Workgroup could add but something Beavers could discuss with leadership. Beavers clarified:

“I wasn’t suggesting we give them a list of books, I was suggesting we give them a list of things, that if they’re in the book, it should not be there. Not that we give them a list of books but if you say , say ‘sadomasochism,’ if that’s in a book, it should not be on our shelves. ‘Pedophilia,’ if that is in a book, descriptive detail of an adult doing inappropriate things to a child, which is also illegal, if we had that in a book, it should not be on our shelves. It should be as simple as that, we can work as a workgroup and we can come up with these things but I believe we are at an impasse, I don’t believe that these librarians are going to in any way agree to any of this so I think it’s going to be a shorter meeting that we think because we are not going to agree on this.”

Michelle Beavers, 12/06/22, FLDOE Library Media Workgroup

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Sounds pretty much like book banning to me… In the end (no surprise), the group was unable to reach a consensus.

What was (a little) surprising was that the final scheduled 12/13 virtual meeting was cancelled and a face-to-face meeting was scheduled for the first week of Christmas vacation, 12/19, on a day that Amber Buymbach and most, if not all, of the media specialists were unable to attend. This prompted some to call the process “rigged from the get-go.”

Whether the final meeting will lead to any changes in the online training or merely an “Airing of the Greivances” is yet to be seen. It does appear that some of the M4L members are being giving special access with senior leadership outside of the sunshine.

With the online training due to the district on January 1st, the group is up against a deadline, seemingly giving the last word to the book banners. If the training is not changed, look for legislation address the M4L concerns in the upcoming session.

It is doubtful that this Festivus will be for the rest of us.

Happy Holidays, however you celebrate.