Library Access Data 22/23 School Year
How Popular Are Parental Restrictions on Library Access in FL? Some districts in FL have allowed parents to restrict their student's library access. In most cases, less than 1% of parents chose to restrict their student.
The Florida Governor has signed into law HB1467 which was marketed as a library transparency bill. All media (books, ebooks, films, audio, other supplemental materials) accessible in K-12 media centers and classroom libraries must go through an approval process that includes a certified media specialist. K-5 libraries must also include an online, searchable database of all materials made available to students for any Florida citizen to review. At the end of every school year, each school district is responsible for reporting any objections or removals of library materials to the Florida Department of Education. From there, the state will disseminate a complete list that combines all the district data collected for purposes of statewide consistency in library media materials.
In response to the rise in book challenges and the other "parental rights" laws, many districts have implemented a multi-level library access system where parents can choose to limit what books their child has access to in the library. Each district took a varied approach, so in order to combine the data we narrowed the options to either no parental restrictions or parental restrictions. Restrictions range from banning particular titles or topics to avoiding "mature" (for the grade level) content, but the most restrictive levels either require parental permission to check out or have no checkout access.
Citrus Schools in particular is a huge concern, and it is actually our most recent data (as of 1/5/23). The default level of access for all students is NO check out access until the form has been turned into school officials. District representatives shared with us that two options are given on the required form (as well as some typos):
As of January 5, 2023, the were 655 parents that completed the form without designating a selection. Rather than ask to resolve this error on the computerized form, the district allowed the system to default "no access" for these students. Additionally, there are still 3,320 students whose parents have not completed the online form. The numbers in our charts for Citrus reflect the decisions of the parents that made the effort to complete the forms in their entirety, but there are actually 3,975 out of 15,794 Citrus students that still do not have check out access in their school library due to parent error or lack of engagement.
Why did Citrus choose opt-in versus opt-out as the default? Well, it's a tactic of the conservative special interest groups to reduce overall access to materials they seek to restrict. They say requiring parents to take the extra step of opting in ensures a student doesn't gain access to something a parent wouldn't knowingly grant them access to. But, by default most parents assume they have opted their student into all available resources like the school library when they enroll their student at a particular school.
Citrus wasn't the only district to start the 22/23 school year off following the demands of the conservative parents' groups for an opt-in system. Indian River, home to Moms for Liberty founder Tiffany Justice, started with a similar required parental opt-in. They soon realized about a month into the 22/23 school year that more than half of their student population was, by default and not by parent indication, restricted from check out access in the school library. Instead of sticking to bad policy, SDIRC leadership decided to switch the default to full access after seeing that parental restrictions were not the popular choice.
We would love to know why Citrus Schools has not decided to reevaluate the original policy now that they know restriction is the unpopular choice. It's not surprising that public school parents overwhelming trust their educators to provide access to resources that will help with their student's education. We welcome the opportunity for our students to excitedly devour a new book, and our Media Specialists are a huge help in recommending books they will connect with.
Indian River accounts for the largest portion of restricted students. While not a large school district in comparison to our top 10, Indian River has a very vocal school board member that uses the meetings as a place to sow distrust in their library collections. Moms for Liberty Chapter Chair, Jennifer Pippin, has viciously attacked over 150 books - going so far to file police reports against some of them. Of course after investigation the Sheriff's office declined to move forward with charges, but Pippin has not given up her fight.
We have official statements from district representatives to backup this data. If you would like access to verify what you see here, please email us at [email protected].