For the second time in two years, community members are being asked to donate their time and effort to review books being complained about by at least two conservative Polk County residents, alleging they are “pornographic,” “violent” and/or “inappropriate” for any K-12 school.
Some frustrated observers say it’s a waste of time and money that could be better spent solving real problems.
The Florida Legislature has also taken notice of the burden book challenges are placing on school districts. A House analysis found that during the 2022-23 fiscal year, Florida school districts received 1,218 objections resulting in the removal of 386 books.
A bipartisan bill (HB 7025) would impose a $100-per-item fee on anyone who challenges six or more books or curricular materials a year. Districts would have to refund the fee if the challenge is successful.
Per PCPS district policy, a school-level committee deals with complaints first, spending hours reading and reviewing the books and filling out a district form about each book. The committee then meets to discuss the book before voting on whether to keep it in the school’s library. If a decision is appealed, the book must be reviewed at the district level.
This month, Polk County Public Schools posted a notice on its website asking for volunteers to serve on a district-level committee and review three books that individual school panels voted to keep. At least two women have appealed those decisions, saying the books do not belong in public school media centers.
Volunteers may include:
- Current PCPS parents/guardians.
- Current PCPS teachers or guidance counselors.
- Current PCPS certified media specialists.
- Current PCPS high school students.
“Selected volunteers will be provided with texts to read, and serve on review committees for the remainder of the 2023-24 school year,” the notice reads. “Applicants will be randomly selected and notified no later than Feb. 2.”
Those interested in volunteering can apply here.
Three new district-level challenges
In 2022, members of County Citizens Defending Freedom (which has since dropped “County” from its name) challenged 16 books in Polk County. Two committees met weekly for seven weeks, each deciding the fate of eight books. Ultimately, all were returned to libraries, with a few being housed only at the high school level.
This time, there are three books the district is being asked to reconsider after school-level committees returned them to media center shelves. The books are:
- “Assassination Classroom” (volumes 1-2) by Yusei Matsui — an anime series of books about a group of students in a Japanese middle school who are trying to kill their teacher, an alien octopus out to destroy the world.
- “Identical” by Ellen Hopkins — told in poetry form about identical twins, one of whom is involved in sex and drugs, while the other is being molested by their alcoholic father.
- “Living Dead Girl” by Elizabeth Scott — about a young girl who is kidnapped and sexually abused for years and then ordered to find her replacement when she gets too old for her kidnapper.
The complainants
Lakeland resident Yvonne Stagg filed a complaint about “Assassination Classroom” in April. Stagg, 71, wrote on a Polk County Public Schools “Request for Examination of Library Materials” form that she found out about the books from national news.
In September, Lakeland resident Debra Baublitz filed complaints with five Lakeland area high schools — Lakeland Senior, Kathleen Senior, George Jenkins, Tenoroc and Traviss Technical College — along with Auburndale, Davenport Senior, Lake Region, Ridge Community and Mulberry high schools, regarding several books, including “Identical” and “Living Dead Girl.”
In her complaint about “Identical” to George Jenkins and Kathleen Senior High schools, Baublitz pointed to 60 passages on numerous pages from start to finish. She said “Identical” is “obscene and inappropriate for anyone in K-12 … There are very few pages in this book where I haven’t found any objectionable content.”
Baublitz answered the question “What first prompted your concern?” by stating: “When the schools locked down 3 years ago, using the ruse of safety over the Coronavirus, the public school education system was placed in the spotlight. This was when I found out what students were being exposed to in the classroom. I started paying attention to the books, curriculum, and educational materials that were being used, and found out about certain organizations that were funding & promoting this very questionable content. I was quite appalled to find out what children were being shown & taught, especially the sexually explicit information that has no business in the classroom. This made me concerned, and I wanted to take action to make make the classroom a safe place again for students. The PCSB seems to feel like they know what’s best for the students. However, the parents are the ones who know their own child’s maturity level & they should be able to protect them from being exposed to sexually explicit content.”
Baublitz cited Florida State Statutes 847.012, 847.001, both of which deal with pornography, sexually explicit material, and child pornography, and 1006.34, which deals with materials in a school library.
Baublitz did not respond to several phone calls or emails.
None of the books she lodged complaints about are required class reading or taught in classes. They are housed in school media centers and voluntarily checked out by students.
How school committees voted
Committees are asked to consider if the book has literary merit and if the sexual or violent parts are prurient or essential to the story. In most cases, reviewers have said the books have literary merit and the sexual content is not there to arouse the reader, but is integral to the story.
Three Polk high school committees did elect to remove two books about which residents complained:
- Review committees at Frostproof Middle-Senior and Haines City High School voted to remove “The Haters” by Jesse Andrews, which Amazon calls a coming of age novel “about music, love, friendship, and freedom as three young musicians follow a quest to escape the law long enough to play the amazing show they hope (but also doubt) they have in them.”
- Mulberry High School’s review committee elected to remove “Living Dead Girl.”
However, most other committees voted to return challenged books to library shelves:
- At Lakeland High School, the committee voted 5-2 to retain the book “Living Dead Girl.”
- At Traviss, the vote was unanimous to retain “Identical,” although reviewer Scott Cunningham said it was “conditional on having a ‘trigger warning’ put on the back cover clarifying the content.”
- At Tenoroc, the vote was 5-3 to keep “Identical.”
- At George Jenkins High School, English teacher Victoria Odro voted to keep “Identical.” She said in the form she filled out that the book “exposes students to the different experiences that people can have while still maintaining a ‘normal’ outward persona … since the family is well-to-do, to find out the depth of trauma the girls experience reminds people that what they see on the surface is not always true.”
Ellen Hopkins, the author of “Identical,” has stated publicly, “Some of the material for the book came from friends, friends who are now strong successful women and you would never guess that abuse is in their past.”
Read a sample of “Identical” here.
Read a sample of “Living Dead Girl” here.
Read a sample of “The Haters” here.
School board member expresses frustration
School Board member Lisa Miller, who is not registered with any political party, said it is costing the district at least $25,000 to review books that are in few libraries, are not required reading and, in many cases, have rarely or never been checked out. It’s money she says could be spent better elsewhere.
“The group requesting the review is upset because in their words, ‘it’s not working’ because most of the books reviewed are voted to be kept by the committees who have read and reviewed the books,” Miller said. “Community members are upset that we are spending staff time and tax dollars to hold reviews when there is already a process in place for parents to keep their child from checking out any and all books from our libraries.”
Parents can log into the district’s parent portal, go to the page dedicated to their child’s school’s media center and opt their child out of reading any — or all — books in the school’s library. She said the school board’s job is to create policy, which they did in 2022 regarding this issue.
“The Superintendent’s job is to implement a process for parents to have a say in what their children can check out of the library. He has done that,” Miller said. “It is a process other districts and the state has recognized as successful. My focus is on our district’s overall reading scores. I started as a parent advocate. I believe in parents’ rights to parent their own children.”
A book reviewer weighs in
Heather Stambaugh-Mukherjee is on a book review committee at Kathleen Senior High School, which has read and evaluated one book every month since September — including “Living Dead Girl” by Elizabeth Scott, “Identical ” by Ellen Hopkins, and Judy Blume’s “Forever,” about a high school girl losing her virginity, first published in the early 1980s.
Records show she is one of six adults and two students on Kathleen’s review committee. The students’ names are redacted in district documents. The other five adults are:
- Jon Gulley, KHS assistant principal and the designee of the school’s principal.
- Amanda Roberts, a library media specialist.
- Megan Handley, an English teacher.
- Jason Roberts, who teaches English for Speakers of Other Languages (commonly known as ESOL).
- Michelle Ross, a parent of students.
Stambaugh-Mukherjee said she spends anywhere from 7½ to 9½ hours each month reading the book, reading professional reviews of the book and then filling out the form required by the district. She said that the two students on their committee were reading the books in addition to their heavy load of coursework and homework.
She agreed with Miller that the district already has a multi-level policy in place to protect children.
“I don’t think it’s a wise use of time or district resources.”
Heather Stambaugh-Mukherjee, Kshs Book Review Committee member
“I don’t think it’s a wise use of time or district resources,” Stambaugh-Mukherjee said in a series of text messages. “The subjects that are addressed in the challenged books provide important visibility for minority students (people of color and LGBTQ+ identities), students with traumatic experiences (sexual assault), and even important sex education. To challenge these books and attempt to remove them for all students district-wide seems like an unnecessary use of resources, since parents can opt out their kids individually. None of the books that are challenged are part of curriculum, so there are no books that are required reading.”
Stambaugh-Mukherjee is a licensed mental health worker and treats patients 13 years old and older, including those who have been sexually abused.
She said a large part of the review committee’s discussion has been the sad reality that child rape occurs in our community.
“I know that the things that were described in those pages actually happen to many, many people. I know that that was a major point of discussion that this absolutely happens to children and we talked about the value of teenagers seeing themselves represented in stories,” Stambaugh-Mukherjee said.
She added that she was frustrated that only one person who complained attended just one of the five review meetings they have held on books.
“People have been asking what’s going on with Kathleen voting to retain all the books, but they haven’t been there,” Stambaugh-Mukherjee said. “They care enough to file a complaint, but not enough to show up and hear our discussion on the book after we’ve put in the time. I think people would understand a little better if they showed up and heard us discuss it.”
Boosting sales: Schools must buy copies of challenged titles
An unintended consequence of book challenges is actually an increase in sales of the titles. Stambaugh-Mukherjee noted that schools have to buy extra copies of each book so committee members can review them.
“This review process is quite expensive,” she said. “The libraries don’t have enough copies for the committees to review, so new copies of each book must be purchased by the school board. We turn in the books when we’ve finished reviewing them, but that leaves the school board with excess copies that might not even be allowed into the libraries.”
Amazon shows a paperback copy of Hopkins’ “Identical” is selling for $12. Multiply that by eight for the Kathleen committee and that’s nearly $100 for one school. Multiply that times 10 schools and that’s $1,000 for copies of just one book. Multiply that times the five books LkldNow knows about and that’s $5,000 — money that could be spent on educational materials for students.
Issue sparks a federal lawsuit and a state bill
According to the free speech advocacy group PEN America, Florida has removed more books than any other state —1,406 titles — although bans throughout the U.S. are increasing.
“Over the 2021–22 school year, what started as modest school-level activity to challenge and remove books in schools grew into a full-fledged social and political movement, powered by local, state, and national groups,” the group reported last year.
This year, they say, it continues: “Amid a growing climate of censorship, school book bans continue to spread through coordinated campaigns by a vocal minority of groups and individual actors and, increasingly, as a result of pressure from state legislation.”
PEN America, Penguin Random House, and a diverse group of authors joined with parents and students from Escambia County to file a federal lawsuit challenging removals and restrictions of books from school libraries that they say violate their rights to free speech and equal protection under the law.
The Florida Legislature is also pushing back after numerous complaints from school districts about the resources required to organize reviews of dozens — or in some districts, hundreds — of books.
State Rep. Dana Trabulsy, R-Fort Pierce, chairs the Education Quality subcommittee and is sponsoring the legislation that would allow school districts to charge people a fee for objections to more than five books.
“I’m happy that we are digging in and trying to remove reading material that is inappropriate for our children,” Trabulsy told Politico. “But I think [book challengers] really need to be respectful of the amount of (challenges) that they are pouring into schools at one time.”
A student speaks
Ben Madden is a senior at Lakeland High School and serves on the Lakeland City Commission Youth Council. His mother is City Commissioner Stephanie Madden. He did not serve on his school’s review committee, but he said libraries should be filled with the highest quality books possible for young people to read.
“I know there is a lot of controversy on this subject. Personally, I believe that the damage a book can have on youth is very limited,” Madden said. “There is most likely way worse things on our phones. This being said, in a public school library, where there is limited space and money, I think our efforts should be set on filling every shelf with the best possible literature for students. It’s not that these new explicit books are terrible, but I think there’s better books for the space.”
He added that a distinction should be made between “old books banned for historical accuracy and new books banned for pointless obscenity.”
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