JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — At a press conference in Jacksonville Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called a viral video showing empty shelves in a Duval County school a "fake narrative."
The video was taken by Brian Covey, a father who is also a substitute teacher. He took the video at Mandarin Middle School after he heard about empty shelves from his children.
First Coast News spoke with Covey after the video garnered over 5,000,000 views in the beginning of February.
"[I] decided to share that because it blew my mind that type of drastic action was needed," Covey said.
When First Coast News asked about the governor about reports of empty shelves in Duval County public schools, DeSantis specifically referenced the video, calling it a "fake narrative."
"That was not true," he said. "This is trying to create some narrative as if that they hadn't even put the books out yet to begin with. So there's no need for all of that stuff. What they're trying to do is they're trying to act like somehow, you know, we don't want books."
He also said that those who share "narratives" that teachers can face felony charges for violating state book laws "understand nothing that we've done since I've been governor."
However, we verified in January that teachers in the state of Florida could be committing a third-degree felony by having books and literature about certain topics in their classroom.
In a video released to parents, Duval County Public Schools said it will be reviewing books to make sure they fall in line with state law that went into effect last July.
It includes vetting books for pornography, a teacher in violation could be charged with a third-degree felony.
It also includes instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in grades kindergarten through three. As well as discrimination in such a way that, "an individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
But instead of books being plucked off the shelves, they were swept completely clean.
"They made it sound like this is something that they have been planning for all year and this was just the next step in the process," Covey said. "It was a July first deadline the pieces didn't make sense to me as a parent cause obviously if this was a temporary and this was something that the schools had a handle on, I assumed they would give us a deadline that books are being reviewed immediately."
DCPS says it will send an approved list to teachers while remaining books are under review.