After book bans, one school district question traditional libraries | WUSF
Skip to main content
Search Query<br>Show Search
© 2026 All Rights reserved WUSF
Menu
Show Search
Search Query
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00<br>0:00
Available On Air Stations
On Air
Now Playing
WUSF 89.7
On Air
Now Playing
Classical WSMR
All Streams
WUSF's Wake Up Call
Our daily newsletter, delivered first thing weekdays, keeps you connected to your community with news, culture, national NPR headlines, and more.
Subscribe
Politics
Your Florida
State lawmakers are making decisions that touch your life, every day. Like how roads get built and why so many feathers get ruffled over naming an official state bird. Your Florida is a reporting project that seeks to help you grasp the workings of state government.
What comes after book bans? One school district questions traditional libraries
WUSF |<br>By<br>Douglas Soule
Published July 16, 2026 at 5:00 AM EDT
Listen • 4:14
iStockphoto
Florida has more school book removals than any other state, according to nonprofit groups tracking them.
After removing hundreds of books, Clay County is debating the purpose of high school libraries. School officials called it modernization. Critics see it as the next phase of the book debate targeting fiction books.
A Florida school district that has already removed hundreds of books is questioning whether traditional high school libraries are needed.<br>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.<br>“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."<br>ALSO READ : Despite budgetary pressures, this Florida school board spends big bucks on banning books<br>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.<br>“What would be a high-level function for that space in their school?” Gilhousen asked.<br>Chief Academic Officer Roger Dailey floated them as research centers and more: "School stores make sense,” he said.<br>He added high school students especially are checking out books at a low rate.<br>"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.<br>But who decides what's good or bad?<br>The district has removed classics like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and “The Color Purple.”<br>"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."<br>But Dailey said there’s an “endless supply of stuff that's totally inappropriate” in libraries.<br>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.”<br>“You wouldn't do that in the classroom, you’d say the standards matter, right?” he said.<br>Ferrell pushed back, saying a library’s role is not to support school curriculum.<br>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.<br>“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.<br>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.<br>It's not that she's against libraries changing.<br>ALSO READ: Public libraries struggle to get new books on shelves after distributor shuts down<br>"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."<br>She and other book access advocates say these kinds of conversations aren't just happening in Clay County.<br>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.<br>Not every school board faces as many complaints, but Ferrell said they feel similar pressures.<br>“For the most part, fear has taken over,” she said.<br>Districts interpret new library laws...