Control was back on the agenda during the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District’s board meeting Monday night, as trustees approved changes that opponents argued would make it more difficult for any library books to be placed on shelves.
Of these revisions, Lesley Guilmart, president of Cypress Families for Public Schools — a nonpartisan organization for public school advocates— is most concerned about the requirement that all titles up for purchasing consideration be posted online 30 days before they are acquired.
“The board could conceivably intervene, the superintendent or any community member, it seems. I don’t know if they will restrict it — they haven’t restricted it in the past,” Guilmart said. “It opens up the opportunity to prevent the books from even making it to the campus in the first place.”
Guilmart noted that a former district librarian she had spoken with told her that this addition to the policy would likely create “red tape” and could cause a library to not receive its first shipment of books for the school year until winter break.
“[That] is a ridiculously long time to wait to get your new books,” Guilmart added. “So, it feels like not only are they creating an opportunity to intervene, but also they’re gumming up the work to make it harder to get books generally.”
Guilmart’s worries were all but confirmed in another update to the policy, which gives the board the “oversight and ultimate responsibility” to review, include or reconsider library materials.
Challenges about who should have authority over the library material selection process started in June when revisions to the district’s library materials policy were first proposed. During a workshop meeting last week, the board revisited these changes. Hinaman — the usual “no” vote among the conservative majority body — thanked her fellow board members for considering several of her recommendations.
Initially, a draft of the updated policy included what Hinaman referred to as the “five-day sneak peek,” or the ability for the trustees to see the list of potential new titles five days before they are published online.
Hinaman took issue with her fellow trustees “pre-screening” these lists before the public could have a say or could view the titles on them. This clause was left out of the final policy rewrite that passed on Monday night.
Parents and community members who opposed the changes took issue with the limited transparency regarding the revisions. Hinaman had listed several suggestions during the workshop meeting that she said were accepted and included in the updated policy.
However, Guilmart noted that according to the online draft, only a couple edits were made.
“It’s almost incumbent on them to be extra transparent, extra careful and extra conscientious because trust is so low, and yet that doesn’t seem to be happening,” Guilmart said. “Things just keep getting more and more vague.”
Additional revisions to the policy from June’s draft included: parental permission for students to read fiction books labeled “adult” and requiring individuals who wanted to remove a book to pursue an informal reconsideration before filing a formal reconsideration.
David Mahon, one of the public speakers who attended Monday night, called for transparency in how the board planned to implement the policy changes.
“It’s not the board’s job to operate the day-to-day business of the school district. There is also a longstanding tradition of deferring to experts, but despite that, the board is going to do as it wishes,” Mahon. “So, if you are going to do this, how are you going to do it? Will there be a published rubric, a checklist or a standardized protocol?
“What level of subjectivity is going to be introduced in this process? Will this be published on the district website?” he added. “Several members of the board of trustees have mentioned transparency in their campaigns. Let’s have it.”
Hinaman requested that the board vote to approve the revisions separately from the other agenda items. Other than her suggestion, the policy changes were not discussed. The updated version passed on a 6-1 vote, with Hinaman being the sole dissenter.
The passage of the edits to the district’s library materials policy took place roughly two months after trustees declined to reinstate over a dozen chapters of five science and health textbooks, which most voted to remove from the curriculum.
During Monday night’s meeting, Hinaman discussed the difficulties in establishing replacement teaching material for these chapters. She said that instructors had developed supplemental instructional material for five of the 13 chapters axed from lesson plans.
These sections were removed because they covered what some deemed controversial topics, including vaccines, climate change and cultural diversity, among others.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
