This Is Just Nuts (From the “Freedumb” State of Floriduh)

From The Washington Post:

Students arrived in some Florida public school classrooms this month to find their teachers’ bookshelves wrapped in paper — or entirely barren of books — after district officials launched a review of the texts’ appropriateness under a new state law.

House Bill 1467, which took effect as law in July, mandates that schools’ books be age-appropriate, free from pornography and “suited to student needs.” Books must be approved by a qualified school media specialist, who must undergo a state retraining on book collection. The Education Department did not publish that training until January, leaving school librarians across Florida unable to order books for more than a year.

Breaking the law is a third-degree felony, meaning that a teacher could face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for displaying or giving students a disallowed book.

Manatee County’s January directive, obtained by The Post, says teachers who maintain elementary and secondary classroom libraries must “remove or cover all materials that have not been vetted” in accordance with state law. Going forward, any classroom library books must be “reviewed by a media specialist using the FDOE guidelines” before they are “presented and approved” at a special school meeting and finally “signed off by the principal.”

When one teacher emailed Manatee Superintendent Cynthia Saunders with questions and concerns about the directive, Saunders replied that violating the state law on book collection amounts to “a felony of the third degree,” according to a copy of the superintendent’s email obtained by The Post.