Brevard County School Board stops parents from reading explicit books, sexual material discontinued

Editor’s note: This report contains some explicit material read at the school board meeting.

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – A Florida law forced the Brevard Public School Board to discontinue a number of books after the board stopped parents from reading explicit passages during its meeting Tuesday.

Despite the school district having a formal review process for book reconsiderations, parents who were frustrated with the reportedly “slow” process attended the meeting to utilize the new law, HB 1069, which was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in May.

The law said parents “shall have the right to read passages from any material that is subject to an objection.” If the school board denies the right to read passages due to content that is “pornographic” or “harmful to minors,” the school district shall discontinue use of the material.

The school district’s website currently has a list of 31 formally challenged books “pending” a decision. The process has taken a lengthy amount of time to be reviewed by the district’s book review committee, as Florida’s Voice previously reported.

Some of the books read during the meeting include: House of Sky of Breath by Sarah Maas, Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres, Beautiful by Amy Reed, People Kill People by Ellen Hopkins, The Infinite Moment of Us by L. Myracle, among other titles.

During public comment, a group of parents individually read explicit passages until Chair Megan Wright stopped them. She gave “two warnings,” which allowed each person to read two books containing the explicit content.

Moms for Liberty Indian River Chair Jennifer Pippin read an excerpt from Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres.

“I see his penis jutting from his shorts. He grabs it by the root, ‘lick it,’ he says in his thick voice, pressing my head,” Pippin said before Wright cut her off.

“I’m gonna ask you to please stop reading this book,” Wright interrupted.

During the meeting, Wright asked Board Attorney Paul Gibbs to clarify.

“You warn them once, and if you stop them again, they’re no longer remain with the ability to speak, is that correct?” Wright asked.

“There’s no set rules, you are in charge of the meeting, so…” Gibbs said.

Parents continued to read explicit passages, two per person, prompting a handful of books to be discontinued.

The school’s legal team is researching whether speakers stopped from reading books due to inappropriate language would need to be discontinued.

According to the school district, five books that were being formally challenged were stopped from being read due to sexual content. Five formally challenged books were stopped due to language.

Of the books that had not been formally challenged, two were stopped from being read due to sexual content and another stopped for language.

They noted that all the titles not on the formal list that were stopped from being read aloud would be pulled from schools effective immediately.

Wright expressed frustration and spoke highly of their book review policy, which included removing the books from shelves that have been formally challenged for the time being until they are reviewed.

Wright added the “media attention” makes Brevard County “look horrible.”

Board member Jennifer Jenkins said she believes “when a minority of opinions is not winning, they feel the need to circumvent rules or abuse rules, and that’s what we witnessed here tonight.”

Board member Katye Campbell also reiterated her stance to support the boards policy and said she “gets frustrated.”

“I know the legislature put it in there, but I don’t like that, and run around, because we were doing a good job,” Campbell said. “So I am going to reiterate again. It’s been said several times by board members, we have a good policy, we need to follow it.” 

In regards to the board members comments, Pippin told Florida’s Voice the group was “not circumventing rules.” Pippin previously led the charge to have books discontinued during the Indian River County School board meeting on Aug. 28.

“They [board members] said a lot of time last night we were are going around their policy and procedure. No. The law trumps policy and procedure. State law trumps board policy and procedure,” Pippin explained.

“We weren’t circumventing the law. We were following the law,” she said.

Pippin believes that reading the books out loud saves “literally hours and hours” of taxpayer money.

“Why go through the process that takes so much time and money, when it can literally be solved in 30 seconds per book?” Pippin said.

Brevard Moms for America, another group supporting parental rights, said they are “disheartened” to witness school board members “reprimanding parents for utilizing a law intended to assist them in the removal of inappropriate materials.”

The group said the current policy Brevard has in place is “unacceptable, as it is projected to take 15 years to complete,” the post said.

“HB 1069, meticulously crafted by our legislators and governor, was designed specifically to bolster parental rights.”

Staff previously told Vice Chair Gene Trent that the review committee would “probably go through 15 to 19 books per year – so it would go a little bit slow.”

In addition, each book would need to be added to the agenda for the board to approve the group’s recommendation and members of the public would be allowed to address each book.

This process during Tuesday’s meeting took about an hour to complete for one book, Sold By Patricia McCormick, which the board voted to keep in high schools by a vote of 4-1. Trent voted against the board’s recommendation.

According to BookLooks, the book contains “explicit aberrant sexual activities including rape of a minor.” The book has been previously discontinued by Clay, Martin, and Manatee school boards according to a list released by the state.

One passage of the book said the following, which was read by a parent during public comment:

A man with lips like a fish comes into my room and says, “You’re lucky to be with Habib.” He is squeezing my breast with his hand, like someone shopping for a melon. […] He unbuckles his belt. “Once before, she sold Habib used goods.” The fish-lips man removes my dress. I wait for myself to protest. […] Then he is on top of me, and something hot and insistent is between my legs. He grunts and struggles, trying to fit himself inside me. With a sudden thrust I am torn in two.”

Sold by Patricia McCormick

Trent said he believes the book is in “clear violation of state statute.”

“There’s no reason to go after the innocence of our children – plain and simple. This will not be the last time I will be saying it and hopefully this won’t be the last time that our parents will be speaking up,” Trent said.

“It’s disgusting, and you need to do better,” Trent said.

Wright said in “her opinion” she didn’t think the book violates the law.

“Nothing in it would make me mad if my child in high school got their hands on it,” Wright said.

Susin proceeded to ask the board’s attorney if the book violated law.

“Since we [board members] don’t need to be defining statutory law, I’m sure you looked at this book and said, ‘does this or does this not violate statutory law?’ What was your opinion on that?” Susin asked.

“I don’t formulate an opinion on this book,” Gibbs responded. “If you want me to provide you and a legal analysis, I would have to draft a legal analysis.”

Susin said he would like a legal review on some of the books, but did not receive support from fellow members.

Campbell said she thinks the State Board of Education “have been intentionally vague,” and she thinks “they want to allow us to retain some home role.”

Trent said he hopes they continue “to have, or show the confidence in this committee, as this committee moves forward. Something tells me that’s not going to be the case… so you’ll be the judge of that.”

During public comment, Moms for Liberty Brevard member Julie Bywater expressed frustration with Gibbs.

“‘I don’t know’ should not be an acceptable answer from your legal counsel. I highly encourage that you seek wiser counsel,” Bywater said.

Previous failed actions

Some conservative members on the school board attempted to take a shortcut to remove the explicit books from the shelves in November, however, the effort failed by a vote of 2-3.

During the November meeting, Trent made a motion to accept the state’s list of removed/discontinued books for 2022-2023, and remove them from the district’s school libraries.

Florida’s Voice looked into the 23 books that are found on the state’s list, all of which contain “explicit” passages, as reported by BookLooks.

The predicted move to read the books during the December meeting was briefly mentioned by Wright during the November meeting.

Wright said the “reality of what we’re going to see happen is, that everyone’s going to come forward and read the books” at the board meeting.

In September, the board considered removing “non-agenda” public comment from the live stream amid controversy over parents in other districts reading explicit book excerpts to the school board. However, the board decided to keep their public speaking policy as-is.