Brevard school board shoots down Trent's motion to use state list as guide to ban books

Policies greenlighting the work of a book review committee were on Tuesday night's meeting agenda, but before the Brevard school board could get to them, newly elected vice chair Gene Trent sprung a motion to adopt a list of nearly 300 books to ban.

And while the motion ultimately failed, it set off a flurry of conversation and comments that permeated the meeting, with Trent promising to bring it up again and members of the public disrupting the meeting with displeased comments and applause throughout the night.

The list, which appeared to be based off the Florida Department of Education's list of books removed by districts around the state, would trigger the removal of 298 books from all classrooms and libraries at Brevard Public Schools except in the case of AP courses, Trent said, allowing the book review committee to "pick up at ground zero" Books not already in BPS' system would be placed on a "do not purchase" list.

"We need to move forward," he said. "We owe it to the public."

The meeting was plagued with confusion and vocal frustration from the audience surrounding the motion, which was not on the agenda. An amended version was proposed by Matt Susin and approved for a vote after newly elected Board Chair Megan Wright seconded the amended motion.

The motion did not pass, with newly elected Board Chair Megan Wright, Katye Campbell and Jennifer Jenkins voting against it. However, there was confusion among audience members regarding whether it had passed, with Wright flip-flopping on her position.

"They all have failed the state statute test, the ones that are on here for Clay," Wright said, referring to the county with the lengthiest list of removals. "I don't know that we have all these in here and ... I don't want to give up -- we don't know if we even have these books."

Tuesday's meeting: Brevard Public Schools approves book review policy; not known when committee will resume

Lead-up to policy approval: Brevard Schools book review committee set to resume soon; unclear who will be on it

Both Campbell and Jenkins opposed the original motion and the amended motion. Campbell argued that Trent shouldn't have brought the item as a motion and instead should have had a discussion about it at the end of the meeting, though Board Attorney Paul Gibbs said there's been "sufficient time (for the public) to comment on book removals" and Trent's move was legal.

Campbell also took issue with the list not providing details as to why the books were removed or if they were only removed for certain grade levels, adding that she did not want to give up her authority to other counties.

"Your motion is pretty broad," Campbell said. "What (I) have a problem with is taking a blanket thing that I haven't had a chance to look at and I don't really know what the reason were that these were removed, or what grade levels they were removed from. I just can't go with another -- I don't want to cede my authority as a board member to another county."

Jenkins read a couple of titles from the list, including "The Little Rock Nine" and "Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation."

"When you lay in the mud, you're going to come up dirty," she said. "I ... love that you did this in a room full of educators. I bet they respect that move, and parents, and people who support public education. Job well done."

Susin made a move to remove only books already challenged in Brevard and on the state's list, though he added that he had "no doubt" that the other books on the list may eventually be challenged.

"These are not ones that we've actually gone through, our public hasn't been able to speak to and everything like that," he said, adding that he had read the books from Brevard. "I was given the opportunity to walk through, and there's some pretty repulsive stuff."

While all members of the board but Jenkins approved Susin's amendment for a vote, Wright, Campbell and Jenkins voted against its passage, and it failed.

The board voted on a policy regarding their book review process and one related to instructional materials later in the meeting, with both policies passing unanimously. One of those policies allows the book review committee, which has been paused since June, to resume, though it wasn't immediately clear when they would meet again. While the review process has been paused, books awaiting review are off the shelves. They remain off the shelves until they can be reviewed.

Two members of the review committee have quit -- Trent's appointee, Michelle Beavers, moved, and Susin's appointee, Sheri-Lynn Diskin, resigned with a letter explaining that she was disappointed in the review process.

"I feel committee members may have participated with individual goals in mind and used the process as a platform to share their beliefs, without intent to seek a compromise," she wrote. "Sadly, when individuals are unwilling to 'listen' to one another, actually speak to make themselves heard rather than listen to one another, everyone loses. In this case, it is the students of Brevard County schools."

About 12 out of 27 people spoke against book bans during public comment, while one person warned the board that they could be sued for books that violate state statute. Deborah Crisafulli of Brevard's Moms for Liberty Chapter said she had asked several high schools to check to see if challenged books were still on school library shelves. They were not.

"Books are not dangerous unless you do not want an educated society," Rachele Jolley said. This section of her comment was cut from the public recording.

Vanessa Skipper, vice president of Brevard Federation of Teachers, spoke about missing being a teacher. She said it would be impossible for her to teach as well as she used to given the board's policies on instructional materials because teachers must get approval for supplemental materials they use.

"Teachers are drowning in a supplemental material approval process that is a knee-jerk response to House Bill 1069," she said, adding that it can take up to a month for a decision to be made on these requests.

Katie Delaney said she worked with the legislature on HB 1069 and warned the board about breaking state statute.

"Right now, there are books in our libraries that violate state statute, and right now, today, you all can be sued for every individual book that's in the library that breaks statute," she said.

Prior to the passage of the book policies, Wright said she expects to revise the review process in the near future.

"I think we're going to have to touch this thing probably every six months, unfortunately, and maybe every 60 days with this policy," Wright said.

Though his move to use the state's list failed, Trent vowed to bring it up again.

"It's going to take 15 years to get some of these books out from in front of our children," Trent said.

"We tried. I'll try again, and every time it gets voted down, the ones up here that are voting no are voting for keeping those in front of our children."

Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at 321-290-4744 or fwalker@floridatoday.com. X: @_finchwalker.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Brevard school board won't use list from Florida districts to ban books