In Florida, school librarians are called "media specialists" and hold media specialist certificates. A rule passed by the Florida Department of Education last week states that a "library media center" includes any books made available to students, including in classrooms. This means that classroom libraries that are curated by teachers, not librarians, are now illegal.
Prepare for “route around the damage” moment where districts are going to start requiring teachers to get media specialist certified just to avoid the legal headache.
I am not a lawyer, but the fact that it is a felony seems particularly aggressive to me. Usually stuff like this (related to how a school is run) is usually administrative law and the school district would be the one responsible for insuring that it is enforced (so they might fire a teacher for non-compliance, but it would be the district itself being taken to administrative court by the state government for not following the law, rather than a specific teacher). This is also just bad in general, but the fact that the law criminally targets teachers rather than being put into the boring administrative code just shows how politically and ideologically motivated this is.
Prepare for “route around the damage” moment where districts are going to start requiring teachers to get media specialist certified just to avoid the legal headache.
I am not a lawyer, but the fact that it is a felony seems particularly aggressive to me. Usually stuff like this (related to how a school is run) is usually administrative law and the school district would be the one responsible for insuring that it is enforced (so they might fire a teacher for non-compliance, but it would be the district itself being taken to administrative court by the state government for not following the law, rather than a specific teacher). This is also just bad in general, but the fact that the law criminally targets teachers rather than being put into the boring administrative code just shows how politically and ideologically motivated this is.