Ron DeSantis spent years fighting to get pornographic books out of Florida schools.
Hillsborough County spent those same years ignoring him.
Now the commissioner Ron DeSantis just installed is done sending letters – and he's coming for their money.
The District That Defied Everyone
Commissioner Dr. Henry Mack sent a seven-page memorandum to every school superintendent and charter school leader in the state this week.
The message was blunt.
"A process that depends on a parent discovering explicit material, reading it in a public meeting, and then forcing a district response is not only severely flawed; it is administrative neglect masquerading as either ignorance or ineptitude," Mack wrote.
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The memo named Hillsborough County – and for good reason.
State officials spent all of 2025 trying to get the seventh-largest school district in the country to remove Call Me by Your Name and Jack of Hearts (And Other Parts) from high school libraries.
Commissioner Manny Díaz sent a letter.
Attorney General James Uthmeier followed with a legal threat.
Superintendent Van Ayres got summoned to the State Board of Education in Miami to explain himself in person.
Then the district announced it had pulled 389,073 books from circulation since 2022 – and asked for credit.
When Mack took office in July 2026, the same titles were still on Hillsborough's shelves.
Joined now by a third: Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Wings and Ruin, flagged in the new statewide memo.
Parents were still the ones discovering the content.
Reading passages aloud at public board meetings – passages the Florida Attorney General's office had already documented and called "patently pornographic" – while the administrators who put those books there sat at the dais and looked surprised.
Florida Just Put Every District on a 90-Day Clock
Mack's memorandum doesn't ask.
It mandates.
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Every district must complete a full collection audit, freeze unvetted book donations, and cross-reference the state's discontinued titles list – all within 90 days.
Each district is also required to establish a Library Materials Integrity Panel that includes parents, not just administrators.
Fail to comply and the Department of Education opens a formal probable-cause investigation.
That investigation can trigger corrective action orders from the State Board of Education – or the state simply cutting off funds.
Not discretionary grants.
Not lottery distributions.
All of it.
"Protecting the innocence of Florida's children is among the most serious responsibilities entrusted to public school leadership," Mack said. "Make no mistake, the Department will hold districts, and the superintendents who lead them, accountable for failing to protect students from inappropriate content and material."
The Florida Department of Education echoed the memo on social media, posting that "SEXUALLY EXPLICIT and INAPPROPRIATE content has NO PLACE in Florida schools" and declaring: "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH."
This is what enforcement actually looks like – because letters clearly don't work.
Ayres sat before the State Board a year ago and walked out promising new training protocols, revised selection policies, and annual media specialist reviews.
The books stayed.
Mack is deploying the one lever bureaucracies cannot ignore: their budget.
Under Florida Statute 1006.28, school boards carry direct legal responsibility for every instructional and library material available to minors.
That law has been on the books for years.
What's new is a commissioner who treats it like it means something.
Administrators who spent years routing parent complaints through review committees and public-comment periods are now on a clock.
Ninety days.
Then the state starts pulling money.
Sources:
- Florida Voice News, "'Enough Is Enough': Florida Education Department Threatens State Funding Cuts Over Explicit School Library Books," FL Voice News, September 24, 2026.
- ABC Action News, "Letter: FDOE Alleges Pornographic Books in Hillsborough County High Schools," ABC Action News, 2025.
- Tampa Bay Times, "More Books Pulled from Hillsborough Classrooms After State Pressure," Tampa Bay Times, May 2025.
- Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, Letter to Hillsborough County School Board, Office of the Attorney General, May 15, 2025.
- WUFT, "Henry Mack Approved as Florida's Next Education Commissioner," WUFT, July 22, 2026.
