A substitute teacher in Florida was fired after a school district determined that he had misrepresented the availability of books at a public school library in order to smear Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Brian Covey posted video of some empty school bookshelves from Mandarin Middle School to social media where it garnered millions of views from people aghast at DeSantis’ policy on controversial books.
The policy was put in place to protect children from books with inappropriate themes involving sexual and gender identity pushed by LGBTQ activists.
Covey spoke to WFGA-TV about what he did.
“That’s exactly what people were saying weren’t happening, so I just wanted to share into the abyss of social media what was the reality that I could see with my own two eyes,” said Covey.
An WFGA reporter later asked the governor to respond to accusations related to the video, and he shot down the story as fake news.
“Actually, you know, that video, that was a fake narrative,” said DeSantis. “That was not true.”
After the governor made the comments, Covey was fired.
Duval County Public Schools issued a statement about Covey’s dismissal.
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 cell phone policies of his employer. Therefore, ESS determined these policy violations made it necessary to part ways with this individual.
Tracy Pierce, a spokesman for Duval County Public Schools, explained how Covey’s video was a misrepresentation of the facts.
“It may be jarring to see empty bookshelves, people can apply their own judgement, but it’s a false accusation given the fact, that more than half of the books, probably two thirds or more, are completely available to kids,” he explained.
WFGA reported that fiction shelves were empty at the school library but the non-fiction shelves were full of books.
When Covey was confronted about the basis of his dismissal he claimed that the other books that were left uncovered were blocked by objects so that children could not reach them.
“They say it’s a misrepresentation but on the other side of the library they literally had tables, white boards, tvs, everything stacked in front of the other books,” said Covey.
“That’s storage to me. When you have empty shelves all over the library and you have books stacked in front of each other, that’s storage,” he added.
Liberal activists claim the sex-themed books are necessary to avoid suppression of feelings of gender and sexual identify confusion among children. Critics counter that parents should have the right to determine what their children are exposed to in public schools.
Here’s a local news report about the incident:
Substitute Duval teacher behind viral video showing empty bookshelves in middle school library firedwww.youtube.com
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