Fort Bend ISD trustee David Hamilton is calling for the district to abolish formal review committees that assess whether a book should stay on campus shelves. Instead, he wants to give Superintendent Dr. Marc Smith the sole authority to make that decision.
However, outside of fellow trustee Sonya Jones, who shares Hamilton’s feeling that there’s no time to waste in getting certain books — especially those that “stimulate sexual desire” — out of schools, the proposal failed to garner support. The board solidly voted it down 5-2 earlier this week.
Most trustees want to maintain the district’s current selection and review process for library books and instructional materials, which took roughly a year to develop. This policy keeps choices in the hands of more than one person—and, more importantly, the librarians and library administrators.
They did vote to bring the proposed changes to a workshop meeting, but the matter is not expected to return to the board for a vote until the summer.
According to a district employee who requested anonymity, Hamilton’s efforts to eliminate formal reconsideration committees came after a botched attempt to remove a title informally.
“[Hamilton] wanted to remove one book at the high school level,” the employee said. “Every librarian who had that book on their campus had to read it, and they met with their district coordinator and discussed it as if they were a reconsideration committee. But it wasn’t an official committee.”
“The book [dealt] with sex trafficking, and Houston is the capital of it. The librarians decided that the book needed to stay because the students could benefit from it,” the employee added. “That’s why he’s upset now. I really believe that’s what set him off with this whole rewriting of the policy. He thought he could email the superintendent, and that would be enough to get a book removed.”
The employee said only one of the seven librarians opposed keeping the book on district shelves and that the librarian had never worked at the high school level.
“I do not think a single workshop will get us where we would like to be in reflection of the policy you have in draft before you,” Trustee Angie Hanan said. “I vehemently reject this draft of EF Local and remain steadfast in my support for current versions. In my opinion, there are many deeply concerning additions and deletions in this draft.”
Hanan added that she wanted her fellow trustees to know she took no part in authoring the changes and had no knowledge that they were being drafted.
According to Hanan, who is a member of the board policy committee, during the March committee meeting, Hamilton expressed to FBISD staff attorney Coby Wilbanks that he wanted the superintendent to have authority to pull materials.
She reminded Hamilton that they had discussed this last year, and the committee decided that having a reconsideration committee was the more favorable alternative.
Hanan said the policy represented a “concerning lapse in board protocol” and a “blatant disregard and respect of the board committee framework.”
“My thing is librarians know what they’re supposed to be doing, and with that, it’s a matter of if they miss something, y’all just have to tell them,” Trustee Dr. Shirley Rose-Gilliam said. “All we have to do is have a discussion.”
“Mrs. Hanan, I 100 percent support you, everything that you said,” Rose-Gilliam added. “I 100 percent support our librarians. I want us to get with our librarians before we sit down and decide what we want. Can we please hear from them?
Shannon Woods, a middle school librarian who spoke during public comment, described librarians as the “silent backbones” of the district’s campuses. Woods added that librarians were already doing the work to ensure that only age-appropriate titles were on shelves, having recently completed a graphic novel audit for this reason.
“We, librarians, take our students’ safety seriously,” Woods said. “The majority of us had input on the current EF selection policy, and we support it and have been working as hard as we can to make sure it is put in place.”
Tammy Marino, a parent in the district, added that one librarian had to read 8,000 graphic novels as part of the audit in a matter of weeks.
“Imagine if our superintendent had to do that for not one library but all,” Marino said.
Superintendent Smith said that he did not support the move toward one individual, himself, having sole authority to make decisions regarding texts in classrooms or library shelves.
“The less collaborative we are, the greater the challenge becomes,” Smith said.
Allyson Morris, also a district parent who opposes Hamilton’s actions, with no small amount of sarcasm, suggested that if trustees no longer believe the reconsideration committee members are “sufficient” because they are “wicked, woke pedophiles,” the district should change who participates, not do away with them altogether. Morris asked the district to apologize for allowing such vitriol toward librarians and put them on the committees.
According to EF Local, these five- to seven-member review committees consist of a district administrator, at least one instructional staff member, and other library, campus-level or district-level staff members.
In an interview with the Houston Press, Hamilton said those against the proposed policy incorrectly framed it as though the changes the board made last year by implementing these committees were pro-librarian and those proposed were anti-librarian.
“I think that’s exactly backward,” he added. “These policy changes restore librarians’ power and trust so that they can act as educational experts when it comes to making reconsideration and removal decisions.”
Hamilton argued that current policy inhibits district librarians’ ability to remove titles they deem inappropriate because they are told that they have to wait until a formal review is filed. He added that this leaves titles that feature egregious subjects available in libraries for the time being.
He doubled down, saying that the public also misinterpreted the proposed redirection of power to the superintendent. At the board meeting, Hamilton said the term superintendent could be interchangeable with “district” or “administration” having the authority.
According to Hamilton, this could include the chief academic officer, Dr. Kimberly Lawson, or the Executive Director of Teaching and Learning, Melissa Hubbard. They would have a conversation and then “collaborate” with the campus librarian or librarians.
“I’m glad that they are going to have librarians there [at the workshop] because librarians were frustrated, sitting in the back [of the board meeting], and listening to everybody talk about them and talk about their jobs,” the district employee said. “And they couldn’t say anything.”
“[Hamilton] can’t say that [he’s] taking away librarian’s authority to make certain decisions to empower them. That doesn’t make sense. I don’t know who he thinks he’s talking to,” the staff member said. “I don’t think there’s any misunderstanding. I think he made it pretty clear. He is taking decisions away from librarians that the state says librarians are allowed to make and handing those over to someone else because he didn’t like the decisions they made.”
The district employee pointed to Hamilton’s behavior on X a day after the board meeting. Hamilton called out Hanan and Rose-Gilliam, referring to Hanan as the “primary reason egregious content” remained on library shelves. He added that Rose-Gilliam worked against efforts to remove such materials from the district.
Part of the policy revisions brought before the board also included guidelines for determining what titles were “educationally suitable” and what titles were not. Texts deemed “obscene,” “pervasively vulgar” or contained “harmful materials” would be considered inappropriate.
Materials that advocated or promoted racial, ethnic, sex-based, or religious stereotypes and unlawful criminal activity or illegal drug usage would not be permitted on shelves. Nor would books that depicted or described sexual acts or simulations of such acts, including explicit or non explicit written depictions, descriptions or illustrations of sexual acts, be deemed appropriate for the elementary level.
Hamilton and Jones claimed the suggested changes were part of an effort to align the district’s policy with House Bill 900 and the Texas State Library and Archives Commission standards.
However, community members, librarians and trustees alike called this into question. They claimed that the district was already following the guidelines outlined by the library commission in January and questioned whether or not alterations to the policy were needed.
Some indicated that the subject matter used to define what was “educationally suitable,” such as not including stereotypes or drug-related content in the proposed policy, went beyond HB900 and the library commission’s reach.
“They completely gutted the state standards and took everything out. They removed reference to the Board of Education v. Pico decision,” the district employee said. “They removed references to students’ First Amendment rights. They removed the reconsideration process, and that’s in state standards. I wonder if the lawyers were even looking at those standards when they rewrote this policy.”
Wilbanks said some provisions of HB 900 were not currently followed by the district but added that the deadline to abide by these was January 2025. He also said that guidelines published by the Texas Association of School Boards would assist with applying the law.
Despite legal counsel clarifying there was no sense of urgency, Hamilton asserted the district “had instruction” from the Texas Education Agency to comply with these standards immediately.
Part of HB900, which would establish a vendor-rating system that would require vendors to rate library materials as sexually explicit or sexually relevant content, is currently tied up in court after a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.
The district employee described this week’s vote as a “small win,” which was surprising but relieving. However, the staff member expressed concern about where the line would be drawn.
“It’s not over yet. I don’t know how long until it’s over.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
