Jacksonville’s NBC affiliate reports:
Brian Covey, a substitute teacher at Mandarin Middle School, posted a video on Jan. 27 showing rows of empty bookshelves in the school’s library. The jarring video quickly went viral and now has over 13 million views, it made national headlines and was even fodder on a late night talk show.
On Tuesday, First Coast News asked Gov. Ron DeSantis about Covey’s video, to which DeSantis replied, “That’s a fake narrative.” On Wednesday, nearly three weeks after the video was posted, Covey said he was fired.
As Duval County school leaders urged its educators to comply with the new law, this resulted in teachers removing and covering books in classrooms to make sure all books and literature are approved by the state.
Read the full article.
BREAKING:
A Florida teacher who worked as a permanent substitute since October was FIRED for posting a video of empty bookshelves at his middle school
He was fired the day after @RonDeSantisFL was asked about the viral video by the media and called it a “false narrative” pic.twitter.com/j0zTWKQLFc
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 17, 2023
The teacher, Brian Covey, was informed Wednesday evening that he was being let go for violating the school’s social media policy
The call came one day after DeSantis was confronted about Covey’s video and claimed it was a “fake narrative” and “not true” https://t.co/yZWLfPJKaK
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 17, 2023
DeSantis claimed that the shelves were empty because “they hadn’t put the books out yet to begin with.”
That is a lie.
The books were removed because teachers in Duval County were told to remove the books or risk violating Florida lawhttps://t.co/9PW86z95Hy
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 17, 2023
Covey tells https://t.co/JhoV1QDIJq that even though his video went viral after he posted it on January 27, he was never told that it violated the social media policy or that he should not post about school libraries until DeSantis was asked about his video
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 17, 2023
In his response to Covey’s video, DeSantis said unless a book is something “99% of people realize is wrong,” it won’t be an issue.
But in Duval, the head librarian classified Best Man, an innocuous book w/no sex but 2 LGBTQ characters, as “pornography”https://t.co/CYllff9AWC
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 17, 2023
UPDATE: Duval County Schools tells @FCN2go that Covey was fired because of his “misrepresentation of the books available to students in the school’s library and the disruption this misrepresentation has caused”
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 17, 2023
Duval County itself admitted it ordered the removal all non-vetted books from the shelves
The County says there are now “6,000 book titles approved for classroom use”
But there are 1.6 MILLION TITLES in Duval schools.
Therefore, lots of empty shelves like in Covey’s video
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 17, 2023