It's Not Working Part 7, The PCPS District Wide Book Reviews: Are Reviewers Simply Ignoring or Just Not understanding Florida Law?

The results are in. On what planet does this make any sense?

This is the seventh post in an ongoing series about the continuing saga of age-inappropriate books in the Polk County Public Schools. You can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6 if you have not read them yet. This is a longer post, to show the actual votes of the review committees, please open in SubStack.

A collection of articles, interviews and videos about this issue can be found here.

On March 27, 2024, Polk County Public Schools District Level Book Review held a district wide book review for five books (Click the title to see the challenged content, WARNING: Not Suitable for Minors under the age of 18). Links to all the review committee paperwork is at the bottom of this story. All of these books are available for any parent to purchase online if they wanted their minor aged child to have access.

Content of Identical by Ellen Hopkins

Content of Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Content of Milk and Honey by Rubi Kaur

Content of Assassination Classroom Volume 1

Content of Assassination Classroom Volume 2

The results of the reviews are in, and should be on the way to the Polk County School Board for a public vote on each title. Those results will be posted a little later in the article, along with relevant documentation. But first, let’s take a look at the review process. The District Wide Review took place over 2 meetings. The first meeting took place on February 21, 2024. The committee was given a copy of each of the five books, and the legal statutes that would be used to determine their decision. These will be extremely important when we discuss the results. The second meeting took place on March 27, 2024, and the committees discussed the books and voted their suggestion. The School Board is expected to discuss on April 23rd, at the Work Session.

This seems very straightforward: If it has non-curriculum, and describes sexual conduct, including ANY TYPE OF intercourse, it cannot be accessible to minor children, then it cannot be in school. This can be confirmed by watching the two school board attorneys at the March 19th School Board Work Session. A board member even confirms this is not about opinions, it is about the legal statute. Attorney Wes Bridges confirms the reviewers need to consider the CRIMINAL CODE Click the image below to hear the conversation.

Spoiler alert. The committees either don’t understand the Criminal Code, or the simply chose to ignore it. You can see the March 27th meeting for yourself by clicking the image below. We blurred out the two students who were included on this committee to decide if content was appropriate for……..students. You really can’t make this stuff up.

Why do I say they don’t understand or just ignored the law?

Here’s a few examples, all reviews, acknowledgments of understanding Florida Law and Statutes, and votes are accessible below:

Examples from Identical, a book about a father repeatedly raping his 14 year old daughter causing her to develop split personalities.

These are District Employees, they not only signed a letter acknowledging graphic sexual content in school is a CRIMINAL OFFENSE, but voted to RETAIN. And I’ve saved most ludicrous Identical review for last. Even though Stacy Davis CLEARLY told every review committee member before each vote that these books are not curriculum, but self selected library books, one teacher REPEATEDLY tried to say this (and other books supported “Health Standards” (irrelevant by Florida Statute for self selected books, and completely opposite of what the two attorneys stated), and used that connection to vote to keep them. She did this for the other books as well. Can you please make it make sense?

In the past, we learned that the School Board members are not supplied with these review forms from the District, nor do they receive the content of the books from the District when they are challenged. So you might be more informed on these challenges than the only 7 people that bear legally responsibility for the content available to student in our media centers. These books will be discussed at next weeks Work Session, it will be interesting to see if the board members are provided with this information.

In the case of this District-Wide review, NOT ONE of the complainants was notified that review was going to happen, and in the case of all but one complainant, they didn’t know until they received a letter from Superintendent Heid. He says he will make his recommendation to the Board, who is supposed to go to the Board for a final decision. That has not happened in one instance in over 28 months, let’s see what happens.

Here are links to the reviews for all five books.

District Book Review Comments and Vote for Identical by Ellen Hopkins Committee voted to retain 12-4

District Book Review Comments and Vote for Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott Committee voted to retain 12-4

District Book Review Comments and Vote for Milk and Honey by Rubi Kaur Committee voted to REMOVE 12-4 (My personal theory is that this book was voted to remove because of extremely graphic images)

District Book Review Comments and Vote for Assassination Classroom Volume 1 Committee voted to retain 16-0

District Book Review Comments and Vote for Assassination Classroom Volume 2 Committee voted to retain 16-0

Thanks for reading and sharing. Stay tuned for the next post, we’ve discovered a book at Davenport High School that has such graphic content it will leave you speechless.