Process for Banning a Book
Each state and school district has its own guidelines or mandatory requirements to follow when determining whether or not a book should be banned from the classroom and school library. Given that this project compares 2022-23 book bans in Florida and Maine, I’ve decided to continue to focus on these two states and outline what their specific processes are for someone to attempt to ban a book in either of those two states. The steps for Maine outlined here are a recommended process published by the state Department of Education. Florida’s steps are requirements put forth by the state Department of Education.
Maine
Throughout this entire process, the Maine School Management Association is clear that no materials are removed from classrooms or libraries until the final decision is made. This could be either (1) the complaint being resolved and the book remains or (2) the School Board reviews and votes to determine whether the book is removed or remains.
The process that the Maine School Management Association recommends for challenging a book in the classroom or school library is as follows:
Florida
Florida House Bill 1467 has been effective since July 1, 2022. It aims to make the process for selecting materials to be used in the classroom more transparent by requiring that district school boards hold meetings that are open to the public when the board makes selections. This bill is particularly helpful for this project because it also requires that the Florida Department of Education publishes the list of materials that were removed by district school boards. This annual list is what I pulled from for the data under Comparing Florida & Maine.
Florida House Bill 1069 has been effective since July 1, 2023. It requires that all materials used for instruction related to reproductive health are approved by the Department of Education. The Bill gives parents/guardians the right to read the materials before they’re used in classroom instruction. It also requires Florida school districts to have a process in place for when materials face objections.
Since House Bill 1069 has been in effect, the Florida Department of Education has been dealing with an immense number of objections from citizens. Ironically, Florida needed to make a change to the Bill “to rein in frivolous objections to materials available in classrooms and libraries.” While all parents should have the right to know what students are being taught in schools, Florida saw the highest volume of book ban proposals in its history over the past year, and they’re questioning whether some calls for banning books like the Bible and Killing Jesus: A History have been made by bad actors. Senate President Kathleen Passidomo said, “What happened is people went overboard and they started objecting to the classics like Shakespeare, which I think is ridiculous.” Therefore starting on July 1, 2024, House Bill 1285 will go into effect, which limits the number of book challenges by people who do not have a child enrolled in the local school district to one per month. Additionally, the Florida House approved a $100 processing fee for any citizen without a child enrolled in their school district who has unsuccessfully challenged five materials.
As House Bill 1069 states that school districts should have a process in place for those who want to object to materials in classrooms, let’s look at Miami Dade’s process for objection to instructional materials. It’s important to call out that according to Florida House Bill 1557 (Parental Rights in Education) and the Miami Dade School Board Policy Manual, if any complaint is filed in schools objecting to materials that include content that is pornographic or depicts or describes sexual content, then the district will remove the material(s) within 5 school days of receiving the complaint. The material(s) will then be made unavailable to all students at the school where the complaint was filed until the complaint is resolved. However the Miami Dade process documentation also mentions that materials cannot be removed from the schools until a final decision is made. This confusion has led to a recent number of Florida parents calling for a more clear process to be put in place.
