EXCLUSIVE: How the parents of Florida's Indian River School District are fighting to get porn out of schools

The August 28 Indian River School Board meeting was unusually packed.

Over 50 members of the Vero Beach Florida community sat waiting for their turn to stand before the five members who make up the Indian River School Board: Chairperson Dr. Peggy Jones (District 3), Vice Chairperson Teri L. Barenborg (District 4), Gene A. Posca, M.D. (District 1), Jacqueline Rosario (District 2) and Brian M. Barefoot (District 5). Also present was the school superintendent and a lawyer for the school board.

In recent times, attendance at school board meetings across the country has spiked, as mothers, fathers, grandparents, and clinically trained child advocates have voiced outrage, desperation, and frustration at the inaction local officials and school board members have displayed in response to school libraries stocking their shelves with pornographic material.

To be clear, regardless of whether these school boards take the matters under review or engage in some drawn-out process to determine whether the books should be removed, the books are indeed pornographic, and providing pornography to a child is a crime.

The Indian River School Board had 51 people waiting to speak. Most came prepared with excerpts from books currently in school libraries available to children as young as ten.

The excerpts all used horrifically graphic language to depict scenes of children engaged in sex in the greatest detail: children being raped, prostituting themselves to adults, forced into incestuous encounters, learning how to masturbate, and narrating sexual fantasies about engaging in sexual acts with transgender classmates. Some books gave instructions on how to engage in gay sex. Others assured middle school readers that girls can be boys and vice versa. Graphic novels depicted naked men and advised the best way to "give a handy."

Almost every book presented had been previously challenged, meaning that parents had already been through this, they'd already stood before this board and read stomach-turning excerpts expecting that the books would be reviewed and removed. Instead, the books remained. So here they were again, reading the same excerpts, being told the board would take the books under review.

Speakers used their allotted 3 minutes to beg for action to be taken, mothers and fathers' voices cracked as they read their statements, hands trembling with rage.

At its core, this issue is one that has been spreading across the country with unprecedented frequency in issues concerning children: parental rights and the alarming rate at which parents are finding themselves hobbled by progressive agendas, liberal legislation, and socialist ideology that places the state in the role of the parent. 

A heavy security presence lined the perimeter of the Indian River School Board Meeting. The armed officers blankly scanned the crowd, standing ready to act on the orders of board chair Peggy Jones, who warned the school parents at the onset that if they spoke out of order or read excerpts that were deemed inappropriate or obscene, the officers would act. 

This produced a conundrum of sorts: in order to demonstrate the pornagraphic nature of the books lining the schools' shelves, the parents had to actually read the words aloud. But as the meeting progressed, the chair of the meeting continuously interrupted the parents to issue warnings and remind them that "children could be watching."

The twisted logic of "You can't read these obscene excerpts because children might be watching" highlighted what parents all over the country have been coming together to address: according to the chair, the excerpts were not appropriate to be read aloud in a school board meeting full of adults in case children were watching. However, the entire reason the meeting was called in the first place was because the school libraries were providing children with the exact books from which the excerpts were being read. 

An hour and twenty minutes into the almost six-hour board meeting, it was difficult not to feel that no matter how graphic or sexually violent the children's library books were, things were not changing. At no point did any board member express concern or horror at the idea that a child in their district, a child under their care, could be exposed to pornography. Pornography has been proven to be harmful to adults—but to the developing mind of a child? The list of themes documented in the books ranged from rape to bestiality to incest. 

Regardless of the category of sexual deviance these authors chose to write about in a style of detail that surpassed any visual representation that could be acted out in front of a camera, one thematic thread connected all the books: extreme sexualization of children.

School board members at this meeting as well as across the country seemed to understand what these books were depicting and that by allowing the books to stay in school libraries they were in fact supplying the material to children—encouraging them to consume it.

And yet, with each desperate parent's three minute address to the board, the members remained unphased, holding to the notion that they themselves could and would do nothing; that there was simply a process to be followed, and no amount of emotion or pleading would change anything.   

Then a thing happened. 

A woman approached the podium to address the board. She began to read an excerpt from Fallout by Ellen Hopkins, an author whose books have sparked outrage for their excessive depictions of drug and alcohol use by children as well as graphic descriptions of physical and sexual abuse of children. Marketed for young adults, Fallout was on the library shelves of middle schools when the mother began reading a particularly graphic description of a young girl losing her virginity in a painful and traumatic scene.

Less than a minute into her allotted time, Peggy Jones stopped her and announced, "I'm issuing a content warning in case any children are watching." Once again, the twisted logic confounds, as the book itself is available to middle schoolers.

And then came a woman's voice: "Just shut it down!"

It was unclear who exclaimed this, only that she was clearly exasperated.

Peggy Jones immediately cleared up any confusion about the owner of the voice as she turned her head to the far side of the board member's seating and barked "Ms. Rosario, I'm running this meeting, not you! Do not interrupt me!"

Jackie Rosario, a bright-eyed school board member who won her second term with the backing of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit organization, and Governor Ron DeSantis for her strong stance on parental rights, her criticism of critical race theory and her Christian views, remained calm in the face of the older school board chair yelling at her, but stayed true to her tell-it-like-it-is demeanor when she replied.

"What you're doing is trying to censor citizens," Rosario said.

The attendees of the meeting erupted in applause.

Chairperson Jones, yelling into her mic, shot back, "No, I am not! Order! Be quiet! We will all make a decision at the end of this. We have a process!  Looking at this, how long has that book been on the shelf? When was it ordered?"

Jackie Rosario then responded with something that put things into perspective:

"You know how long it's been there; you voted for it to be put back on the shelf last year!"

Rosario has been fighting this war long enough to remember exactly what has taken place over the years: which books had been challenged, where they'd been ordered from, which board members voted on review and what the outcome was.

Jones again yelled at Rosario, "Do not interrupt me," but Rosario is not one to back down, especially when parental rights and protection of children are at stake.

"No one's interrupting you; if you're talking to me, I'm going to talk back to you," she shot back at the board chair.

When Jackie Rosario called out Peggy Jones to "just shut it down," this was a strategic move on Rosario's part.

In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1069, which guaranteed that parents "shall have the right to read passages from any material that is subject to an objection."

If the school board denies the right to read passages due to content that is "pornographic" or "harmful to minors," the school district shall discontinue use of the material. 

When Rosario objected to the constant obscenity warnings issued by the board chair while allowing the excerpts to continue being read, she was directly invoking the law as laid out in HB 1069. 

Had the board chair stopped the readings, or "shut them down," the book would legally have to be removed from all shelves within five days. 

And Rosario, who has been using her seat to fight for parental rights and to get pornography out of school libraries for years, wanted the book gone.

Speaking to The Post Millennial, Rosario voiced the frustration that can come with her seat on the school board. In November 2021, she put an item on the agenda for a full review of the libraries and an audit of how and when they got their books. By February 2022, out of the 156 books flagged for review by the superintendent, only five had been taken off the shelves. The other 151 remained.

Rosario was the only board member who voted to remove the books read at Monday's meeting back when they first voted on the issue in 2022. She also claimed that board members chose to ignore laws (Fl. St. 847 and 1006.28) on pornographic, obscene, or sexually explicit content by making the books available in school libraries. 

"The difference now is that HB 1069 has allowed parents to read explicit books at board meetings. And if they get shut down, then the book is immediately removed. This is a good thing," she added. "It is the litmus test for acceptable, age-appropriate, and standards-driven library books. If you can't read them at a board meeting, then you can't have them in our schools. All that is needed now is for a 'passage' to be read, and the book can be removed immediately. The superintendent and board members refused to acknowledge the gross content made available to kids until now. Finally, they don't have a choice. It's about time the truth be made known. Explicit, sexually graphic, pornographic, and obscene material does not belong in any school." 

Rosario, a practicing Christian who homeschools her son, is no pushover and has an extremely full life. Describing her position on the board, she said, "I'm like a salmon. Usually a downvote trying to swim upstream and trying to get others to swim with me." She chuckled.

Then she mused about her experience with legislation on the books in schools: "It's just so simple, y'know? All you needed to do was the right thing."

Despite her battles in the trenches, Rosario is optimistic. More Americans are opening their eyes and demanding that their government officials do their jobs—the jobs which are paid for by citizen tax dollars—these people work for us, not vice versa. And parents should not have to beg them to allow them to make decisions about how to raise their own children.

Rosario is humble about her work and attributes a great deal of confidence and optimism to Moms for Liberty as well as the actions that DeSantis has taken to rescue the rights of parents to protect their children. 

Describing how she views the challenges she faces as a Christian conservative woman in politics fighting, often alone, against the liberal agendas and Marxist ideology that are fast encroaching in all sectors of society Rosario looks to her faith:

"If this is where God wants me to be, if this is what God wants me to do, then I'll do it. No question."

The new Florida law did force the Indian River School Board to remove a number of books after the board stopped parents from reading sexually explicit passages during the board meeting, but for Rosario, the only acceptable percentage of pornographic books to be removed from schools is 100 percent.

She is quick to point out that the parental rights group Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit organization, spearheaded the efforts at Monday's meeting.

According to their website, Moms for Liberty is dedicated to "fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating, and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government."

Over 30 parents, grandparents, and community members showed up to the meeting and were successful in getting many books removed, according to Jennifer Pippin, chairman of the Indian River County Chapter of Moms for Liberty.

The Indian River School District issued a statement that the board "listened to the community and unanimously voted to take bold and swift action to remove the books containing the excerpts that were read aloud and issued a content warning or stopped during public comment at our Business Meeting."

"Our Board Chairman, Dr. Peggy Jones upheld the individuals first amendment rights while at the same time providing warnings regarding content," the statement said.

The statement said school districts are currently awaiting the dissemination of the list from the department of education with materials that were removed or discontinued as a result of an objection during the 2022-2023 school year.

Pippin noted that the statement "failed to mention" that many of the books were allowed on the shelves after previous challenges. She shared a document of 30 books with explicit content that were still on shelves in the district prior to the meeting.

"The goal is to get these out of the hands of children," Pippin said.

Many other books with explicit content were currently on the shelves at schools in the district, such as "Tilt" by Ellen Hopkins, "Homegoing" by Yaa Gyasi, "Collateral" by Ellen Hopkins, "The Assassin's Blade" by Sarah J Maas. The district website lists the location of each book and the status, which is marked "in."

Moms of Liberty is planning to challenge more books in the coming months.

The August 28th Indian River School Board Meeting lasted just shy of six hours.

Just as the last speaker was about to present her statement, Pastor John K. Amanchukwu addressed the board, asking why his name was skipped over. The board chair claimed it must have been an oversight, and Pastor Amanchukwu was given his three minutes to speak.

A clip of his time addressing the board quickly went viral, as he began with a statement lambasting Planned Parenthood and its founder, Margaret Sanger, before moving on to the issue of pornographic materials being provided to children in school libraries. He started to read an excerpt from the book "13 Reasons Why" by Jay Asher. The book focuses on young teenagers and includes three rapes and a suicide. 

15 seconds into his time, Peggy Jones demanded the pastor to stop. But he did not stop reading. As the chair of the board yelled, Pastor Amanchukwu calmly continued until his microphone audio was cut, and even then his words could be heard. Finally, Jones ordered officers to physically escort him out of the building.

As he left, surrounded by armed officers, the chair of the school board continued yelling—at the pastor and the crowd of parents. But her voice was drowned out by the cheering of a packed room of parents grateful for the actions of the pastor who would not be quiet and who continued speaking up for parents, for children and for Good.

In July, Leon County Schools announced that they removed five books containing sexually explicit material after members of Leon's Moms for Liberty chapter made the request.

Moms for Liberty also made headlines in June for holding a national summit in Philadelphia with big names including DeSantis, former President Donald Trump, and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

During his speech, Trump praised the group's efforts to "rescue our country from the sinister forces who hate it."

"You have proven beyond all doubt that there is no earthly force more powerful than the love of a mother for her children. That's true," Trump said.

"In school board races, PTA meetings, and town halls across the nation, you have taught the radical left Marxists and communists a lesson they will never forget. Don't mess with America's moms," Trump continued.

Watch the full video of the Indian River School Board Meeting.