A Florida school district that has already removed hundreds of books is now questioning whether traditional high school libraries are still needed.
It’s a situation that book access advocates say represents an evolution in Florida's book banning practices, where school districts have already removed or restricted more titles than any other state.
“This is a bigger conversation that goes beyond any single book,” said William Johnson, director of PEN America's Florida office. "It's a conversation about the future of reading, intellectual freedom and what school libraries should look like in Florida."
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At a recent workshop, Clay County school board member Ashley Gilhousen mentioned it would be helpful to talk to school employees about what “they see as the benefits of the media center,” a common term schools use for libraries.
“What would be a high-level function for that space in their school?” Gilhousen asked.
Chief Academic Officer Roger Dailey floated them as research centers and more: "School stores make sense,” he said.
He added high school students especially are checking out books at a low rate.
"We're spending a lot of resources on a problem that I acknowledge exists, and at the same time, kids aren't actually reading the books at all, they're not reading the good ones either,” he said.
But who decides what's good or bad?
The district has removed classics like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and “The Color Purple.”
"Libraries are a place of self-selection and volunteer reading,” said Stephana Ferrell from the Florida Freedom to Read Project. “If you don't like a book, you don't have to read it, and I think we've lost sight of that."
But Dailey said there’s an “endless supply of stuff that's totally inappropriate” in libraries.
He said he thinks the district should apply the same standards to library books it uses for textbooks, referring to the current shelf selection as a “free-for-all.”
“You wouldn't do that in the classroom, you’d say the standards matter, right?” he said.
Ferrell pushed back, saying a library’s role is not to support school curriculum.
Dailey also mentioned options like pulling fiction books off the shelves, then putting them back on after review, or removing all books from "problematic authors.” And he said books need to be more aggressively weeded out.
“I think you're going to continue to see empty shelves at the high school and collegiate level in the future, because the younger generation, they consume information digitally, not on paper,” Dailey said.
But Ferrell said that doesn't mean books have to be sacrificed. She noted there are ways to increase checkouts, like giving high schoolers scheduled library time.
It's not that she's against libraries changing.
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"There are definite ways we can update a space,” she said. “We see our public libraries adding podcast booths and conference rooms and project stations. These are all great things to have, but what they also have is a large collection of books."
She and other book access advocates say these kinds of conversations aren't just happening in Clay County.
But the school district has removed more books than most others in the state. The vast majority of challenges have come from a single conservative activist.
Not every school board faces as many complaints, but Ferrell said they feel similar pressures.
“For the most part, fear has taken over,” she said.
Districts interpret new library laws differently, while private school vouchers have left many with fewer resources to review books. On top of that, some state officials have put pressure on school districts to remove certain books.
Meanwhile, several major Florida-based First Amendment lawsuits over book removals await rulings from federal appeals courts. Ferrell is a plaintiff in one of them.
The Clay County School District said in a statement that the conversations were part of an exploratory workshop looking to modernize learning environments.
“The broader ideas discussed during the workshop reflect an open-floor brainstorming session regarding how the district can best comply with evolving Florida statutes while adapting to low physical book circulation among high school students,” said Sabrina Thomas, spokesperson for Clay County District Schools, in an email. “Workshop discussions represent an exploration of possibilities, not finalized district policy.”
The district said any solutions would promote student success, calling the meeting “a forward-looking effort to modernize traditional spaces into high-functioning research hubs, digital media centers or collaborative spaces that reflect modern academic and professional environments.”
April Dawkins, president of the American Association of School Librarians, agreed libraries should evolve with the times.
"However, the conversation that I saw in that meeting did not make me think that that was what they were doing, that that was the intent of that conversation,” Dawkins said. “It felt more like this was a way to remove books that they found objectionable.”
The Florida Department of Education didn't respond to a request for comment.
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This story was produced by WUSF as part of a statewide journalism initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
