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Parents' bus requests carry big cost for schools
Parents' bus requests carry big cost for schools

Yahoo

time14-05-2025

  • Business
  • Yahoo

Parents' bus requests carry big cost for schools

GUILFORD COUNTY – Guilford County Schools officials have not had much luck getting parents to stop signing up their children for school bus transportation that they have no intention of using, which is costing GCS millions of dollars. Faye Crowder-Phillips, the GCS executive director of transportation, told the Guilford County Board of Education in early 2024 that closing the large gap between the number of students assigned to buses and the number actually riding buses was one of her goals, but an update presented to the school board on Tuesday night showed almost no change in the numbers. In February 2024 Crowder-Phillips told the board that 29,159 students regularly rode school buses, but another 13,000 were assigned to buses at the requests of their parents even though they never rode. In Crowder-Phillips' presentation Tuesday night, she said there currently are 29,381 students riding buses, with more than 13,300 assigned but who never ride. That costs GCS money because it greatly contributes to reducing GCS's transportation system efficiency grade, which reduces how much of the system's expenses the state will reimburse. Crowder-Phillips said Tuesday that other changes that have been made over the past year, including use of a new bus route scheduling system, have increased the efficiency rating from 80% in the 2022-23 school year to 84.48% now. The state average is over 90%. Superintendent Whitney Oakley said that although more steps can improve that rating, including making more group bus stops instead of house-to-house stops, GCS probably can't hit 90% because it provides transportation to magnet programs for students who live in different attendance districts. Many school districts don't do that. In other business, the school board approved asking the Guilford County Board of Commissioners to approve an additional $50 million in bond funds to pay for HVAC and roofing projects at 11 school campuses, including these in High Point: Ferndale Middle HVAC work ($11.7 million), Johnson Street Global Studies roof replacement ($1.9 million) and Welborn Middle/Kearns Academy HVAC work ($6.1 million). The school board also received a long-expected GCS staff recommendation to close Southern Elementary School after Allen Jay Elementary in High Point and Sumner Elementary south of Greensboro are rebuilt. The Southern Elementary attendance district then would be divided between Allen Jay and Sumner. The board also heard complaints from five people about Summerfield Elementary School removing a children's book, 'And Tango Makes Three,' from the library after a complaint from the conservative group Moms for Liberty. The book is based on the true story of two male penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo who took in an orphaned baby penguin and raised it together. The book is often criticized by conservative groups as pushing a 'homosexual agenda.'

Beloved Florida indie bookstore faces backlash after removal of LGBTQ titles
Beloved Florida indie bookstore faces backlash after removal of LGBTQ titles

Yahoo

time06-05-2025

  • Business
  • Yahoo

Beloved Florida indie bookstore faces backlash after removal of LGBTQ titles

Staff members at Bodacious Bookstore & Café, an independent bookstore in Pensacola, Florida, say that when they were instructed to remove LGBTQ titles from the shelves, some refused, while others resigned in protest or quietly hid queer books to protect them. 'I started working at Bodacious because I love books and being surrounded by stories and knowledge,' said a former employee, who asked to remain anonymous because she fears retaliation from the bookstore's owners. She said she began crying when Beth O'Connor, the bookstore's interim manager, directed her to remove LGBTQ books. When she refused, the former employee said, O'Conner sent her home and told her to re-evaluate whether she wanted to work at the store. 'It was heartbreaking to see us removing them — especially starting with LGBTQ+ titles,' the former employee said. O'Connor didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Book censorship has reached historic highs over the past several years, with titles centered on LGBTQ issues and queer characters among the most banned and challenged in public schools and libraries. Independent bookstores have been dependable holdouts amid the growing conservative push, with many proudly featuring 'Banned Book' sections, but in Florida's Escambia County — arguably ground zero for the country's book censorship battle — even a beloved indie bookstore isn't immune. Bodacious Bookstore & Café is in Pensacola, the largest city in Escambia, Florida's westernmost county, which is on the Alabama border. The county, which made headlines last year after its school district pulled 1,600 book titles from shelves, also sits at the center of two federal lawsuits on book censorship. The first suit — filed in May 2023 by the nonprofit organization PEN America, Penguin Random House and a group of authors and parents — argues that the Escambia County School District's initial removal of over 150 books, many of them addressing topics related to LGBTQ issues or race, violates students' First Amendment rights. The suit is ongoing. The second lawsuit, also filed in 2023, challenges the school district's removal of the children's book 'And Tango Makes Three,' about two male penguins who raise a chick together. In September, the school district in that suit agreed to return three dozen books related to race and the LGBTQ community to shelves as part of a settlement agreement. Now, many of the same stories are under scrutiny at Bodacious Bookstore & Café, owned by businessman and philanthropist Quint Studer and his wife, Mary 'Rishy' Studer. According to one current and three former employees, management began reviewing all store materials after receiving a complaint from a customer against profanity on a greeting card. They said that what began as a purge of purportedly profane materials, including greeting cards, stickers and book titles with swear words, quickly escalated into the quiet removal of more than 60 books from the store. Roughly half of the books that were removed, the current and former employees said, featured queer stories or authors, including celebrity memoirs like Billie Jean King's 'All In' and Elliot Page's 'Pageboy,' as well as young adult novels like Casey McQuiston's 'I Kissed Shara Wheeler' and Alice Oseman's popular 'Heartstopper' series. Others included sex education books, popular young adult romances that don't feature romance between LGBTQ main characters, such as 'The Summer I Turned Pretty' by Jenny Han, and even books about the history of book banning. Quint Studer and Studer Entertainment & Retail President Jonathan Griffith declined an interview. On Monday, Travis Peterson, a spokesperson for the Studers, said in a statement on behalf of the bookstore that it removed greeting cards that featured profanity because they were 'inconsistent with our brand values.' 'We also began a thorough review of our inventory to ensure that books with explicit or graphic sexual content were not easily accessible to young children,' the statement read, adding that the review is ongoing. The statement continued: 'At no time were any books removed because of LGBTQ+ (or any other) subject matter, authorship, or genre. Any assertion to the contrary is not true, especially if made by former employees who are no longer involved with our operations. We stand by our decision as a privately owned bookstore to determine what titles and merchandise are suitable for our shelves or easily accessible by young children. Our goal is to be a welcoming place for every child and every family, and we believe that means not prominently displaying books and merchandise with profanity or explicit content.' Bodacious Bookstore denied in a statement on Instagram last week that any specific categories are being banned. However, it said it 'did temporarily pull some titles for review.' 'While many have returned to the shelves or been relocated to more appropriate sections, some will not return as we adjust our offerings,' the statement read. Nichole Murphy had been a volunteer at Bodacious Bookstore since 2023 helping to facilitate book clubs and community events. She had just begun working at the store on April 2 when, just six days later, the book removals started, she said. Murphy said she was on the floor the day management began pulling LGBTQ titles from the shelves. She refused to participate in the removals themselves, she said, but was then directed to delete the titles from the store's inventory system, which she reluctantly did. She spoke out, informing management that the exclusive removal of LGBTQ titles was discriminatory and that it violated the company's own core mission, vision and values of inclusion and integrity, she said. In resistance, she hid queer books and documented each title removed from the system. 'I refused to pull any books from the shelves. There were never criteria for the books being removed,' she said. 'Management started pulling anything that looked queer — books with pictures of two girls kissing on the cover or romance books with main characters that have the same pronouns. These were not sexually explicit or profane materials.' Murphy, the former employee who asked to remain anonymous, and a current employee who requested anonymity due to fears of retaliation from the Studers, said O'Connor told them that she had a meeting with Rishy Studer, who, O'Connor said, told her to remove the LGBTQ books. O'Conner told the employees that Studer also directed her to then pull the witchcraft books, which the former employees say was an attempt to disguise the targeted queer removals. Murphy resigned on April 22, and books were still being removed up until her last day, she said. At least five of the bookstore's 10 staff members, including Murphy, told NBC News they have resigned since the books began to be removed. Regarding the meeting between O'Connor and Rishy Studer, Quint Studer said in an email that Rishy 'never mentioned any specific titles or categories' and that 'all conversations regarded language in the children's area.' O'Connor didn't respond to a request for comment about the meeting. According to Melissa Smith, the former manager of Bodacious Bookstore who resigned on April 28 over the store's alleged censorship practices, it isn't the first time LGBTQ books have been targeted. Smith, who joined Bodacious in 2021, took pride in building its book club community and ensuring the store offered diverse and representative reading materials. She wasn't in the store when the most recent removals began, as she had been on family and medical leave since early March. However, in July 2022, while she was out on vacation, she said, the store implemented a stealthy policy to exclude LGBTQ books from the children's section after a customer complaint about the book 'Melissa' by Alex Gino, about a young transgender girl. Despite the policy, one book, 'My Mommies Love Me,' was mistakenly ordered for Mother's Day and quickly pulled last month during the broader removal of queer titles, according to Murphy and the two former staffers. 'I even created a banned-book section in the store in February because of customers' demand for these titles,' Smith said. 'That's the whole point of books: to either see yourself represented or understand someone else's experience. While the bookstore maintains it isn't banning books or LGBTQ content, vetting books only to create a 'family-friendly' space, Murphy and the two employees who asked to be anonymous also reported the removal of queer greeting cards and pride stickers, including a Mother's Day card that was mistakenly identified as representing a queer family. Several former employees, authors and community members have questioned whether the definition of 'family friendly' includes LGBTQ families. Young adult author Ginny Myers Sain was scheduled to visit the store on April 26 for National Independent Bookstore Day to promote her new release, 'When the Bones Sing.' However, she canceled her appearance after the store failed to clarify which books were being targeted for removal and what qualified as 'family friendly,' later posting a widely shared statement on Facebook condemning the shop for censorship. 'We expect independent bookstores to be leading the charge against this sort of thing, not leaning into it,' she told NBC News. 'Readers are counting on us. As someone who writes for teens, I feel that obligation particularly deeply. All kids deserve to be able to walk into their local bookstore and see themselves reflected and celebrated in the books they find there. And everyone knows that, in history, the people banning books have never been the good guys.' According to former employees, bookstore management is using the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media to vet titles for removal or potential return to the shelves. While educators, librarians and families commonly use the platform to evaluate age ratings in books and media, Murphy and one of the employees who asked to be anonymous argue that it was never intended as a tool to restrict access to books. It remains unclear whether employees will be permitted to special-order queer books or other titles no longer carried in the store, as many report that all orders now require management approval. 'My manager told me that as a private business, they don't have to sell or cater to certain people, implying queer families can shop elsewhere,' said the current employee who requested anonymity. 'From both a political and business standpoint, I think it was a stupid decision to pull the books, because that's actually more political than not pulling them.' The employee said none of the removed titles have been returned to shelves, though the Studers contradicted that both in their public statements and to NBC News. This article was originally published on

Beloved Florida indie bookstore faces backlash after removal of LGBTQ titles
Beloved Florida indie bookstore faces backlash after removal of LGBTQ titles

NBC News

time05-05-2025

  • Business
  • NBC News

Beloved Florida indie bookstore faces backlash after removal of LGBTQ titles

Staff members at Bodacious Bookstore & Café, an independent bookstore in Pensacola, Florida, say that when they were instructed to remove LGBTQ titles from the shelves, some refused, while others resigned in protest or quietly hid queer books to protect them. 'I started working at Bodacious because I love books and being surrounded by stories and knowledge,' said a former employee, who asked to remain anonymous because she fears retaliation from the bookstore's owners. She said she began crying when Beth O'Connor, the bookstore's interim manager, directed her to remove LGBTQ books. When she refused, the former employee said, O'Conner sent her home and told her to re-evaluate whether she wanted to work at the store. 'It was heartbreaking to see us removing them — especially starting with LGBTQ+ titles,' the former employee said. O'Connor didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Book censorship has reached historic highs over the past several years, with titles centered on LGBTQ issues and queer characters among the most banned and challenged in public schools and libraries. Independent bookstores have been dependable holdouts amid the growing conservative push, with many proudly featuring 'Banned Book' sections, but in Florida's Escambia County — arguably ground zero for the country's book censorship battle — even a beloved indie bookstore isn't immune. Bodacious Bookstore & Café is in Pensacola, the largest city in Escambia, Florida's westernmost county, which is on the Alabama border. The county, which made headlines last year after its school district pulled 1,600 book titles from shelves, also sits at the center of two federal lawsuits on book censorship. The first suit — filed in May 2023 by the nonprofit organization PEN America, Penguin Random House and a group of authors and parents — argues that the Escambia County School District's initial removal of over 150 books, many of them addressing topics related to LGBTQ issues or race, violates students' First Amendment rights. The suit is ongoing. The second lawsuit, also filed in 2023, challenges the school district's removal of the children's book 'And Tango Makes Three,' about two male penguins who raise a chick together. In September, the school district in that suit agreed to return three dozen books related to race and the LGBTQ community to shelves as part of a settlement agreement. Now, many of the same stories are under scrutiny at Bodacious Bookstore & Café, owned by businessman and philanthropist Quint Studer and his wife, Mary 'Rishy' Studer. According to one current and three former employees, management began reviewing all store materials after receiving a complaint from a customer against profanity on a greeting card. They said that what began as a purge of purportedly profane materials, including greeting cards, stickers and book titles with swear words, quickly escalated into the quiet removal of more than 60 books from the store. Roughly half of the books that were removed, the current and former employees said, featured queer stories or authors, including celebrity memoirs like Billie Jean King's 'All In' and Elliot Page's 'Pageboy,' as well as young adult novels like Casey McQuiston's 'I Kissed Shara Wheeler' and Alice Oseman's popular 'Heartstopper' series. Others included sex education books, popular young adult romances that don't feature romance between LGBTQ main characters, such as 'The Summer I Turned Pretty' by Jenny Han, and even books about the history of book banning. Quint Studer and Studer Entertainment & Retail President Jonathan Griffith declined an interview. On Monday, Travis Peterson, a spokesperson for the Studers, said in a statement on behalf of the bookstore that it removed greeting cards that featured profanity because they were 'inconsistent with our brand values.' 'We also began a thorough review of our inventory to ensure that books with explicit or graphic sexual content were not easily accessible to young children,' the statement read, adding that the review is ongoing. The statement continued: 'At no time were any books removed because of LGBTQ+ (or any other) subject matter, authorship, or genre. Any assertion to the contrary is not true, especially if made by former employees who are no longer involved with our operations. We stand by our decision as a privately owned bookstore to determine what titles and merchandise are suitable for our shelves or easily accessible by young children. Our goal is to be a welcoming place for every child and every family, and we believe that means not prominently displaying books and merchandise with profanity or explicit content.' Bodacious Bookstore denied in a statement on Instagram last week that any specific categories are being banned. However, it said it 'did temporarily pull some titles for review.' 'While many have returned to the shelves or been relocated to more appropriate sections, some will not return as we adjust our offerings,' the statement read. Nichole Murphy had been a volunteer at Bodacious Bookstore since 2023 helping to facilitate book clubs and community events. She had just begun working at the store on April 2 when, just six days later, the book removals started, she said. Murphy said she was on the floor the day management began pulling LGBTQ titles from the shelves. She refused to participate in the removals themselves, she said, but was then directed to delete the titles from the store's inventory system, which she reluctantly did. She spoke out, informing management that the exclusive removal of LGBTQ titles was discriminatory and that it violated the company's own core mission, vision and values of inclusion and integrity, she said. In resistance, she hid queer books and documented each title removed from the system. 'I refused to pull any books from the shelves. There were never criteria for the books being removed,' she said. 'Management started pulling anything that looked queer — books with pictures of two girls kissing on the cover or romance books with main characters that have the same pronouns. These were not sexually explicit or profane materials.' Murphy, the former employee who asked to remain anonymous, and a current employee who requested anonymity due to fears of retaliation from the Studers, said O'Connor told them that she had a meeting with Rishy Studer, who, O'Connor said, told her to remove the LGBTQ books. O'Conner told the employees that Studer also directed her to then pull the witchcraft books, which the former employees say was an attempt to disguise the targeted queer removals. Murphy resigned on April 22, and books were still being removed up until her last day, she said. At least five of the bookstore's 10 staff members, including Murphy, told NBC News they have resigned since the books began to be removed. Regarding the meeting between O'Connor and Rishy Studer, Quint Studer said in an email that Rishy 'never mentioned any specific titles or categories' and that 'all conversations regarded language in the children's area.' O'Connor didn't respond to a request for comment about the meeting. According to Melissa Smith, the former manager of Bodacious Bookstore who resigned on April 28 over the store's alleged censorship practices, it isn't the first time LGBTQ books have been targeted. Smith, who joined Bodacious in 2021, took pride in building its book club community and ensuring the store offered diverse and representative reading materials. She wasn't in the store when the most recent removals began, as she had been on family and medical leave since early March. However, in July 2022, while she was out on vacation, she said, the store implemented a stealthy policy to exclude LGBTQ books from the children's section after a customer complaint about the book 'Melissa' by Alex Gino, about a young transgender girl. Despite the policy, one book, 'My Mommies Love Me,' was mistakenly ordered for Mother's Day and quickly pulled last month during the broader removal of queer titles, according to Murphy and the two former staffers. 'I even created a banned-book section in the store in February because of customers' demand for these titles,' Smith said. 'That's the whole point of books: to either see yourself represented or understand someone else's experience. While the bookstore maintains it isn't banning books or LGBTQ content, vetting books only to create a 'family-friendly' space, Murphy and the two employees who asked to be anonymous also reported the removal of queer greeting cards and pride stickers, including a Mother's Day card that was mistakenly identified as representing a queer family. Several former employees, authors and community members have questioned whether the definition of 'family friendly' includes LGBTQ families. Young adult author Ginny Myers Sain was scheduled to visit the store on April 26 for National Independent Bookstore Day to promote her new release, 'When the Bones Sing.' However, she canceled her appearance after the store failed to clarify which books were being targeted for removal and what qualified as 'family friendly,' later posting a widely shared statement on Facebook condemning the shop for censorship. 'We expect independent bookstores to be leading the charge against this sort of thing, not leaning into it,' she told NBC News. 'Readers are counting on us. As someone who writes for teens, I feel that obligation particularly deeply. All kids deserve to be able to walk into their local bookstore and see themselves reflected and celebrated in the books they find there. And everyone knows that, in history, the people banning books have never been the good guys.' According to former employees, bookstore management is using the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media to vet titles for removal or potential return to the shelves. While educators, librarians and families commonly use the platform to evaluate age ratings in books and media, Murphy and one of the employees who asked to be anonymous argue that it was never intended as a tool to restrict access to books. It remains unclear whether employees will be permitted to special-order queer books or other titles no longer carried in the store, as many report that all orders now require management approval. 'My manager told me that as a private business, they don't have to sell or cater to certain people, implying queer families can shop elsewhere,' said the current employee who requested anonymity. 'From both a political and business standpoint, I think it was a stupid decision to pull the books, because that's actually more political than not pulling them.' The employee said none of the removed titles have been returned to shelves, though the Studers contradicted that both in their public statements and to NBC News.

Trump is right to tariff these pro-DEI penguins. Do dire wolves next.
Trump is right to tariff these pro-DEI penguins. Do dire wolves next.

USA Today

time09-04-2025

  • Politics
  • USA Today

Trump is right to tariff these pro-DEI penguins. Do dire wolves next.

Trump is right to tariff these pro-DEI penguins. Do dire wolves next. | Opinion Trump has made clear that wokeness is dead in America. Well, few have flaunted destructive diversity, equity and inclusion policies more than penguins. So they must face tariffs. Show Caption Hide Caption Dire wolves extinct for 13,000 years recreated from ancient DNA Colossal, a Texas-based biotech company, revealed that it successfully recreated extinct dire wolves. Of all the tariffs President Donald Trump has rolled out, my favorite – and I do love them all, just like I'm going to love patriotically paying $579 for a new phone charger – are those slapped on the penguins of the unpopulated Heard and McDonald Islands. Since taking office, Trump has made clear that "wokeness" is dead and America will no longer be taken advantage of on the global stage. Well, few have flaunted destructive diversity, equity and inclusion policies more than penguins. For starters, they are black and white simultaneously. They sometimes form same-sex couples, like I read about in the children's book 'And Tango Makes Three,' which I'm trying to get banned from my local school district even though I don't have children. According to PBS, which I hope President Trump defunds because it shares overtly sexual information about penguins, 'Some female penguins may have one to three partners in one season and some males may have one or two partners.' Penguins are dangerously pro-DEI, and they must be tariffed And, perhaps worst of all, a group of penguins in the water is called a raft, while a group of penguins on land is called a waddle. YOU GET ONE GROUP NAME, PENGUINS, MAKE UP YOUR MINDS! These vulgar, flightless birds present a clear danger to the minds of America's children, so the 10% tariff Trump hit them with is more than appropriate. All the penguins have to do is stop being woke and the tariffs will (maybe) go away. Opinion: Trump is intentionally murdering the stock market. Imagine if Biden did that. On Sunday, CNN host and noted penguin sympathizer Jake Tapper interviewed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and said, 'The Heard and McDonald Islands have zero human inhabitants. They had zero exports. They had zero imports. They do have a lot of penguins. Why are you putting import tariffs on islands that are entirely populated by penguins?' Rollins smartly responded, 'I mean, come on, whatever. Listen, the people that are leading this are serious, intentional, patriotic.' Penguins give us nothing. Of course, Trump should slap tariffs on them. That's right. These serious, intentional and patriotic people know that filthy, amoral foreign penguins deserve to be smacked with harsh tariffs. It shows the American people the Trump administration knows exactly what it's doing and is in no way run by dozens of children standing on each other's shoulders wearing trench coats so they look like adults. Besides, what does America get from these stupid penguins? Nothing. The Heard and McDonald Islands, which, if you believe in 'maps,' are located somewhere between South Africa and Australia, have never once sent us a package of succulent penguin meat. Liberals will argue that's because no humans live there, and penguins aren't good at harvesting and shipping their own meat. But that's the kind of lazy thinking that made us suckers in the global trade order. Opinion: My Rihanna bra haul tells you all you need to know about Trump's tariffs Trump's tariff plan is going well and everyone loves him and thinks he's doing a fantastic job, with the exception of the leaders and residents of every other country on earth, U.S. consumers who are about to see Amazon prices rise astronomically and anyone who was hoping to retire within the next decade or so. As Rollins told CNN: Whatever. Dire wolves must also be subject to stiff Trumpian tariffs While we're on the subject of smart policies, I'm hopeful the Trump administration will swiftly move to put tough tariffs on dire wolves. As you might have heard, three of the previously extinct Ice Age predators were recently resurrected by the Dallas-based company Colossal Biosciences, using DNA from ancient bones. The dire wolf puppies may appear adorable and reminiscent of the loyal creatures from 'Game of Thrones,' but their days of taking advantage of America should be over. We have a sharp trade deficit with dire wolves, in that we give them the privilege of no longer being extinct, and probably some food, and they give us nothing but a sense of wonderment and perhaps a mild fear that this all is going to go terribly, terribly wrong. Tariff the dire wolves, President Trump. They, like the penguins, need to learn who's boss. Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @ and on Facebook at

Gay Penguins Face Florida's Classroom Speech Regulations
Gay Penguins Face Florida's Classroom Speech Regulations

Yahoo

time27-02-2025

  • Politics
  • Yahoo

Gay Penguins Face Florida's Classroom Speech Regulations

One Florida school district is facing a legal battle over its decision to ban a book about gay penguins. In 2022, the state passed the Parental Rights in Education Act, which banned classroom discussions on sexual orientation or gender identity "in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students." While the law initially applied only to kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, the Florida Board of Education later expanded the law to all grades. Several Florida school districts began removing books from their collections that could possibly violate the new law—including And Tango Makes Three, a picture book depicting two male penguins who raise a chick together. In 2023, the authors of the book filed a lawsuit against one school district that removed the book, arguing that "the Ban's vagueness, in combination with its harsh penalties, make it more likely to be applied expansively—such as to public school libraries—at the expense of the authors' free speech rights and the students' right to receive information." The state disagrees. In a November court filing, lawyers for the school district argued that authors don't have a constitutional right to demand their books be made available at school libraries. Instead, the school board has "the First Amendment right to choose what message is conveyed through its curation of the library collection," adding that "when the Board selects books to be made available in its school libraries, it is the government speaking, not the books' authors." So who's right? "The removal of And Tango Makes Three is constitutionally suspect because it appears to be driven by school authorities' disagreement with a particular viewpoint or perspective," says Aaron Terr, the director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group. "And when school authorities remove books from libraries out of hostility to a viewpoint or ideology, that raises serious First Amendment issues." Terr notes that in 1982, "a plurality of the Supreme Court held that public schools have discretion to determine the content of their libraries. But they can't exercise that discretion in a narrowly partisan or political manner." This isn't the only time Florida has been sued over a school district's attempt to ban the gay penguin story. In September, a group of major publishers launched another lawsuit, this time targeting another Florida law that bans any school library book that "describes sexual conduct." "The argument that library books are government speech really defies logic and is, I think, just an excuse for censorship," Terr explains. "Libraries contain books presenting a wide range of ideas and perspectives, many of which clash with each other. So if they're all speech of the government, then the government is babbling incoherently." The post Gay Penguins Face Florida's Classroom Speech Regulations appeared first on

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