Questions: Education & Career

Florida school district rejects dictionary donations amid new book law

Florida school district rejects kid-friendly dictionaries because they might be harmful

Florida's Sarasota County School District has banned school libraries from buying or accepting donations of any book until January 2023 — and this includes dictionaries. When a rotary club in Venice, FL tried to donate hundreds of dictionaries before the 2022-23 school year — a tradition they have followed for more than a decade — their dangersome gift was turned away.

This is thanks to the Gov. DeSantis-signed bill that requires every book that enters a school to be vetted by "media specialists," all of which haven't even been hired yet, according to the Herald-Tribune. Gar Reese, a member of the rotary club — which has donated $4,000 kid-friendly dictionaries to Florida schools over the last 15 years — says if public schools don't want the books, they will either hang on to them until next year, or just give them to private schools instead.

Are teachers leaving the classroom en masse?

With schools reopening across dozens of states this month, some education leaders are ringing the alarm: There aren’t enough teachers to fill open positions right now.

In Texas, teachers are deserting the classroom at high rates, with Houston alone reporting nearly 1,000 vacancies in early August. In Maryland, more than 5,500 teachers reportedly left the profession in 2022, leaving Baltimore with an estimated 600 to 700 vacancies going into the fall.

Department of Education officials in Pennsylvania are calling that state’s shortage a “crisis,” and experts there say the state will need “thousands” of new teachers by 2025.

‘Never seen it this bad’: America faces catastrophic teacher shortage