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Courtesy: Brian Covey/Twitter

A Florida teacher was fired this week after posting a video of empty bookshelves that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called “a fake narrative” at a time when teachers in the state are removing or covering books in public schools to comply with new state laws.

Brian Covey, a substitute teacher at Mandarin Middle School in Jacksonville, Fla., posted a <a href="https://twitter.com/JagsFanBrian/status/1618977880696041474" target=_blank>video </a>to Twitter last month showing rows of empty bookshelves at the school’s library.

Covey is one of several teachers in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/01/31/florida-hide-books-stop-woke-manatee-county-duval-county-desantis/" target="_blank">Duval and Manatee counties</a> who have posted <a href="https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1617602435111088129" target="_blank">photos </a>or videos in recent weeks showing how school districts are responding to new Florida laws regarding books and other materials available to children in classrooms and libraries. Duval County Public Schools, the district for Mandarin Middle School, <a href="https://www.teamduval.org/2023/01/23/district-taking-further-steps-to-comply-with-florida-laws-on-library-books/" target="_blank">urged educators </a>last month to follow the new laws and “err on the side of caution” to determine whether a book “is developmentally appropriate for student use.”

“They removed every single book from my children’s classrooms …” Covey <a href="https://twitter.com/JagsFanBrian/status/1618765896511819777" target=_blank>wrote </a>on Jan. 27. “I read books about the consequences of this when I was in school …”

When DeSantis was asked about the empty bookshelves in the viral video at a news conference Tuesday, the governor denounced it as misinformation.

“That video, that was a fake narrative, that was not true,” the governor told reporters, adding that the school “hadn’t even put out the books to begin with.” “What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to act like somehow we don’t want books.”

On Thursday, Covey said he was informed by Duval County Public Schools that he had been fired. Covey told The Washington Post that he received a 45-second phone call from Education Staffing Solutions (ESS), the organization the district contracts to hire substitute teachers, telling him that his services were no longer needed after he was told he “had violated their cellphone and social media policy.”

“I was never told not to take any videos in the library,” said Covey, 39, of Jacksonville. “I had no communication from the district or anything about what I was doing until DeSantis was asked the question and he kind of blew it up.”

Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for DeSantis, said Monday that Covey was obfuscating the facts to “politicize” the schoolbooks issue. Duval County Public Schools spokeswoman Tracy A. Pierce told The Post on Monday that because the video had misrepresented what was available to students, the district and ESS agreed that it was grounds for termination.

“In discussion between the district and ESS regarding this individual’s misrepresentation of the books available to students in the school’s library and the disruption this misrepresentation has caused, it was determined that he had violated social media and cellphone policies of his employer,” Pierce said in a statement. “Therefore, ESS determined these policy violations made it necessary to part ways with this individual.”

The district has pushed back against Covey in recent days. After announcing on Friday that books about baseball legends Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron were among the 6,000 books that have been approved under the new state law, the district posted a <a href="https://twitter.com/DuvalSchools/status/1626693916165656582?s=20" target=_blank>video</a> to Twitter arguing that Covey’s viral video “shows less than half the story.”

“Yes, those shelves were empty,” the district wrote. “But they were in a room full of books.”

Covey pointed out to The Post that the 6,000 books approved by the state is 0.375 percent of the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/thousands-books-including-black-hispanic-historical-titles-review/story?id=97082518" target="_blank">1.6 million</a> book titles that Duval County Public Schools says need to be reviewed. <a href="https://twitter.com/JagsFanBrian/status/1626786574301028353" target="_blank">Covey </a>and <a href="https://twitter.com/MadeByTim/status/1626725301022519296" target="_blank">others </a>noted in separate photos and videos how the shelves in the district’s video were far from full.

Schoolbooks have become a hotbed of controversy nationwide, with a historic rise in the number of schoolbook challenges and removals in the past two academic years. Parents have filed thousands of attempts to pull books from shelves, often citing the texts’ sexually explicit content — although the majority of books targeted are those by and about people of color and LGBTQ individuals, per analyses from PEN America and the American Library Association.

Florida has been at the forefront of the schoolbook wars. District officials there have launched reviews of the appropriateness of teachers’ books as part of <a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1467/BillText/er/PDF" target=_blank>House Bill 1467</a>, the new state law mandating that schools’ books be age-appropriate, free from pornography and “suited to student needs.” When a teacher raised concerns about such book removals, at least one school official warned the teacher that violating an older state law <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/01/31/florida-hide-books-stop-woke-manatee-county-duval-county-desantis/" target=_blank>could lead to third-degree felony charges</a> for distributing “harmful materials” to minors. It is unclear what the consequences for violating H.B. 1467 are, though a Florida Education Department spokesperson previously suggested breaking the law could lead to penalties against teachers’ licenses.

Hide your books to avoid felony charges, Fla. schools tell teachers

The new state laws have led to pushback from parents and educators against DeSantis, a potential presidential candidate who has won acclaim among conservatives for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/10/trump-schools-desantis-youngkin-gender-race-2024/?itid=lk_inline_manual_16" target=_blank>executive actions</a> and legislation limiting discussion of race and gender in schools.

This month, the College Board announced that it was revising an Advanced Placement course on African American studies by eliminating <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/02/01/ap-african-american-studies-curriculum-desantis/?itid=lk_inline_manual_8" target=_blank>lessons</a> on Black Lives Matter and the reparations movement. This came after Florida officials claimed the course lacked “educational value,” and DeSantis said it included “woke” curriculum and was an example of liberal “indoctrination.” This week, DeSantis warned that he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/02/14/desantis-florida-ap-classes-college-board/?itid=lk_inline_manual_8" target=_blank>could withdraw</a> state support for AP programs, which has caused some Florida parents to consider moving their children out of state.

‘Unfathomable’: Florida parents, students blast DeSantis idea to nix APs

Covey had worked in finance before taking a job as a full-time substitute math teacher at Mandarin Middle School in October, he told The Post. He was working without a teaching certificate, but said he had asked the district for a temporary permit so he could eventually teach full time.

As part of the state’s Literacy Week last month, Covey said a book fair was supposed to be in school libraries to help promote reading. But when he got home, his kids asked him whether he saw what happened.

“They said, ‘They removed all of the books,’” Covey recalled.

After his fifth-grade son told him what happened at his elementary school, Covey told The Post that his “mind was blown.”

When he returned to work at the middle school, Covey saw the empty bookshelves and started filming a 17-second video.

“I wanted to show the reality of what the library looked like,” he told The Post. “This is a real thing.”

Weeks after millions of people viewed the video of the empty bookshelves on social media, DeSantis dismissed the video and suggested that people like Covey were “politically motivated.”

“Anytime you hear about something that seems so outlandish, just understand they’re manufacturing that to try to create a narrative,” DeSantis said Tuesday.

But Covey, who says DeSantis’s remarks “absolutely” played a role in his firing, argued that taking books away from classrooms and libraries is “beyond politics.”

“This is about my kids’ education being interrupted,” he said.

Freedom to Read, a Florida advocacy group that fights against book challenges, wrote in a statement Saturday that Covey’s firing will cause other teachers to feel too afraid to speak up when they see something untoward happening in their districts.

Teachers “are the only people that can accurately inform parents of what is happening in the classroom,” the three leaders of Florida Freedom to Read wrote. “If teachers are scared they could lose their job for sharing information that concerns them, what hope do we have as parents for full transparency?”

Kate Ruane, a director at the free-speech nonprofit organization PEN America, said in an interview that Duval’s termination of Covey may have violated the teacher’s First Amendment rights.

“What the district has done is clearly an attempt to chill the speech of public school teachers,” Ruane said.

Covey admitted that it was “not in my list of goals this week to announce that I was fired,” saying he mostly tweets about the National Football League’s Jacksonville Jaguars. Covey, who said he had not received termination documents or his final paycheck as of Saturday, guessed he would not return to teaching amid what’s unfolding in Florida.

“My kids are being used as pawns in a political game,” he told The Post. “I’m just hoping my kids’ reality is not a blueprint for something that can happen across the nation.”

Timothy Bella was a staff writer and editor for the General Assignment team, focusing on national news. His work has appeared in outlets such as Esquire, the Atlantic, New York magazine and the Undefeated.

Timothy Bella

Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting (part of a team)

2020 National First-Place Award for News Reporting from the Education Writers Association

2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service (part of a team)

Harvard University, BA

Hannah Natanson is a Washington Post reporter covering national K-12 education.