Florida schools must do more to purge ‘inappropriate’ books, commissioner says
Tampa Bay Times | By: Jeffrey S. Solochek | September 24, 2026
The big story: Saying Florida parents continue to find too much age-inappropriate material in their children’s schools, state education commissioner Henry Mack instructed districts to do a better job of removing such books from their shelves.
Those that don’t will be held accountable, Mack warned officials in a seven-page memo delivered to superintendents and charter school leaders on Wednesday.
“A process that depends on a parent discovering explicit material, reading it in a public meeting, and then forcing a district response is not only severely flawed; it is administrative neglect masquerading as either ignorance or ineptitude. Whatever it may be, it is unacceptable and must end,” Mack wrote.
His directive comes two weeks after the state released its 2025-26 challenge and removal list, in which the vast majority of districts reported removing no materials. Days later, Mack told the State Board of Education that the time had come to address “the smut, the porn, the inappropriateness that is still infiltrating our libraries in our schools.”
In his memo, Mack called out Hillsborough County — which also came under fire for books from former commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas — as an example of how the current model does not work. He noted that parents continue to appear before the school board to read passages filled with explicit sexual content, with the district slowly reacting with reviews.
Mack included excerpts from three books — Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, A Court of Wings and Ruin, and The Bluest Eye — to bolster his point.
“That content is not acceptable in a district school library,” he wrote, adding that if such materials remain available to students, a district is not following state law or Board of Education rule.
Districts that don’t comply with the laws and rules could face a loss of funding, he stated. In addition, the State Board might apply restrictions on acquiring additional library materials until a district shows that its current collection and selection procedures follow the law.
He then offered a nine-point model for districts to follow to conduct book reviews over the next 90 days.
“Make no mistake, the Department will hold districts, and the superintendents who lead them, accountable for failing to protect students from inappropriate content and material,” Mack wrote.
Anti-censorship advocates immediately took note of the commissioner’s move. They’ve pushed to keep books in schools unless there’s a formal challenge in which the community can have a full discussion about the content, as laid out in state law.
Lawmakers in 2025 looked into changing the law that includes consideration of literary merit — not just excerpts — when reviewing school books, but no proposals passed. No Florida statute defines age appropriateness in library materials, but the state does have laws relating to items harmful to minors.
