TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – Hillsboro County Public Schools Principal Van Ayers was burned Wednesday by state education leaders for deleting books from certain libraries.
In May, Board of Education Manny Diaz wrote to the district about a specific book on school library shelves. A few weeks later, the Florida Attorney General demanded that Hillsboro County schools quickly pulled several books and called them “patentably porn” and harmful to minors.
In response to the letter, the director ordered the state list to remove hundreds of books from the shelf and review them.
“These are troubling, disgusting books that have no place in Florida schools,” said Ryan Petty, vice-chairman of the State Department during the meeting.
The Hillsboro County school was in front and center Wednesday amid discussions about books belonging to the school shelf.
Last month, Board of Education Manny Diaz and Attorney General James Usmieyer wrote to the superintendent saying that inappropriate books still say they are in the school’s library with “porn” and books that are harmful to minors.
“The day we received our list, all of them were no longer available to students,” Hillsboro County Principal Van Ayers told the state board of education on Wednesday.
State education officials questioned why the book was still available before the letter and whether he acted promptly enough.
Principal Van Ayers said he responded immediately and asked for deletion and review of 600 books, including those mentioned in the letter. State officials challenged whether that was enough.
“These are obviously pornographic material. They don’t exist in the grey area,” state Education Secretary Manny Diaz said.
“We’re going to step up the process to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Ayers assured state officials.
By the end of the meeting, state officials had issued an order to supervisors to delete 57 books within the next two weeks.
“My suggestion is that these roughly 50 books should remove them, don’t review them, don’t rely on media experts,” state Board of Education President Ben Gibson.
A school district spokesman said they plan to follow and will still review the remaining hundreds of books.
This comes after Ayres was criticised for handling the situation during a school board meeting Monday night.
At a school board meeting, members expressed concern that the process could cost up to $500,000 for districts already financially tied up.
