Over Mike Andoscia’s eight years as a social studies teacher at North Fort Myers High School, he’d grown his classroom library to more than 600 books. When he came into school on Jan. 16, they were gone.
Ft. Myers Teacher Resigns After Classroom Library Is Confiscated
Credit: youtube.com
February 16, 2024

The people who try to convince you this isn't happening in Florida are lying. Via the Fort Myers News-Press:

Andoscia resigned after the school boxed up his library, placed the books in “administrative lockup” and told him to take them home, Andoscia said in an interview.

“[Principal Debbie Diggs] asked me why I just didn’t keep the books covered, and I said it’s absurd and it’s fascism and I’m just not going to participate in that,” he said.

Andoscia’s resignation is the latest flare-up over HB 1069 – a state law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, that requires school districts to restrict books that are deemed age-inappropriate or describe “sexual conduct."

Proponents of the bill say the law is intended to protect parental rights, not broadly ban books. But in practice, districts across the state have pre-emptively removed thousands of books to avoid potential criminal liability.

Andoscia, who had been teaching for 30 years, was already thinking about retirement. He knew it would be a “long year,” he said, but his daughter was a senior and he resolved to stick it out until she graduated.

But some things are just intolerable:

[...]

He was not, however, willing to censor the library for his students, who were primarily upperclassmen taking advanced classes in sociology, economics and philosophy.

“I did not want to communicate to the kids that this is OK,” Andoscia said. “That it’s perfectly reasonable to cover books up.”

So he took the project paper down before school started – a move that the administration tolerated until last month. Just one student checked out a book this year, he said – the George Orwell classic “Animal Farm.”

Andoscia is a sociology teacher, and much of his class material is available on YouTube. I think it was more than the book -- He talks about capitalism, he talks about current politics, he's exactly the teacher you want for your smart, engaged kids, and that's a problem in Florida.

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