Two years after Escambia’s book challenge woes began, community revolts against 'book jail'

Dozens of Escambia County parents, teachers, citizens and book lovers lined East Texar Drive surrounding the J.E. Hall Center Tuesday afternoon for a “Bring Back Our Books Rally.”

Hand-decorated signs put the spotlight on the 163 books in Escambia County Public School libraries still inaccessible to students while they are under evaluation for appropriateness, which is being coined by protestors as “book jail.” As book challenges increase by the day with seemingly little progress being made by ECPS to chisel down the list, they are growing tired of waiting.

Since ECPS received their first book challenge in June nearly two years ago, only 23 decisions have been made on citizen challenges: Nine books have been removed at all grade levels, eight books have been restricted at all grade levels and six books have been retained including the Bible, which is legally protected under Florida Statute 1003.45(1).

As of Tuesday, 223 citizen challenges remain, with 73% of those unavailable to students while under reconsideration, per the ECPS website. Averaging about 11 book reviews per year, which is the pace the district is going, would require 20 years to make it through the remainder of the current reconsideration list. For some Escambia County parents, residents and teachers, these indefinite restriction times are unacceptable.

Lilly Eubanks, co-organizer of Tuesday's "Bring Back Our Books Rally," said the purpose of the event was to show that these books have been in “book purgatory” long enough.

“What we’re doing is letting people know that we think that the books, the challenged books that were challenged in 2022, have been off the shelves for long enough. It’ll be almost two years,” Eubanks said. “We want to bring to light what those books are and who their authors are. What we’re going to do tonight is we’re going to try to read as many as the book titles as possible so that the public will be aware…. I hope that people will notice that a lot of the books are written by members of the LGBTQ community and people of color, and that’s why they’re being picked on, so to speak.”

Some of the author names read aloud during the two-hour public forum in Tuesday's board meeting included those of decorated authors such as Toni Morrison, Judy Blume and Margaret Atwood.

The book rally came the same day Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1285 Tuesday, which came shortly after his visit to Pensacola’s Warrington Preparatory Academy Monday morning. A portion of the bill focuses on giving parents back the power when it comes to book challenges. Through the bill, residents without children enrolled in their local school district are limited to one book challenge per month.

While the bill intends to restrict “activists” from clogging the district’s book challenge list, it does nothing to address the current challenges some school districts have been flooded with.

When DeSantis was asked by the News Journal Monday whether this bill would erase the piles of resident challenges that school districts are presently dealing with, he said it would not.

“I don’t think it necessarily would by the text,” DeSantis replied to the News Journal. “But I think that the issue is the fact that the legislature has weighed in like this should be evidence that how that was done was not consistent with the spirit of the law. So, let’s stop playing games with all of this. Let’s make sure that we get to education, not indoctrination, and really focus on that. And if we do that, I think everybody is going to be happy.”

On Escambia’s end, the district material review committees that are necessary for moving forward with book evaluations are at a standstill.

“We are in the process of determining a timeframe,” said ECPS spokesperson Cody Strother in regards to reinstating the book review committees.

Media specialists and teachers around the state have wrestled with deciphering each new round of legislation due to vague definitions, such as what defines “sexual conduct" in a book that constitutes a swift removal. Some districts around the state have erred on the side of caution to ensure compliance, leading to excessive amounts of removals.

One particularly problematic bill, Florida’s HB 1069, took effect July 1 and requires books considered to be potentially sexually explicit or pornographic to be removed from schools within five days. This left Escambia media specialists with 54 district libraries and thousands upon thousands of books to evaluate. Since evaluations started, 160 books have been reviewed for HB 1069 compliance and returned to school libraries.

While the district’s progress on the citizen challenge list has seemed slow-moving, media specialists are still working through lists of hundreds of books pulled for further review for their own purpose of meeting compliance for HB 1069. About 165 of the titles they are looking at overlap with those on the citizen challenge list.

Escambia's Northview Teacher Vicki Baggett has been leading the crusade on removing inappropriate books from school districts since 2022, often reading book passages before the board aloud. She particularly focuses on those that include profanity, sex scenes and most recently a children book that depicts two dads holding hands. Baggett said there is no warning on the district’s online book database for books like, “Bathe the Cat” by Alice B. McGinty, which depicts a homosexual relationship. Since books like "Bathe the Cat" do not contain any sexual content, they are allowed to stay on the shelves until a decision is eventually made.

“Why would you consider this age appropriate for small children when parents have no way of knowing about the LGBTQ content within this book to begin with?” Baggett asked the Escambia School Board Tuesday. “What about ‘Milo Imagines the World,’ a book we have reshelved in eight elementary libraries? This book has pictures of two women kissing, and they get married. Again, we’re calling on you board members, what is our policy on this? How can parents opt out for their children when Destiny never even mentioned this type of sexual orientation to begin with?”

Baggett has also taken her book battle to Santa Rosa County District Schools, where she spoke during the public forum portion of the April board meeting with support from a local chapter of Moms for Liberty.

Gulf Breeze parent Ilana Porzecanski has taken her concerns regarding Baggett's high volume of book challenges to DeSantis, warning Baggett may be abusing the book challenge process in the very way he warned about.

“In our county we have had a "bad actor" who does not reside in the county, nor have children in the public schools, submitting multiple book reconsideration requests per month. She has been doing this for almost one year,” Porzecanski wrote in her letter to DeSantis. “She has submitted the most book reconsiderations in our county and uses a power of attorney from a Santa Rosa County resident to do so. This is to circumvent the policy that states only parents, county residents and school district employees can submit reconsideration requests.”

In Santa Rosa County District Schools, only 24% of book challenges come from parents or a power of attorney on behalf of a parent. The other 76% come from citizens without children or in the school district, or those acting as a citizen's power of attorney, like Baggett.

“Parents, such as myself, in our county feel that she is abusing the system and taking away our parental rights by her numerous book reconsideration requests,” Porzecanski wrote.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Escambia County school book challenges: 163 challenged books remain