Ashley Buckner dressed up last Halloween as a “campaign trail,” donning a ballot box headband, yard signs and an orange T-shirt featuring the names of three Cypress-Fairbanks ISD trustee candidates she believed would reverse “harmful” policies adopted by the previous board.
The progressive slate that Buckner supported — Kendra Camarena, Lesley Guilmart, and Cleveland Lane Jr. — won big and flipped the board from a conservative majority that was pursuing book bans and textbook censorship to one that proposed teacher pay raises and re-hiring librarians at every campus.
The removed textbook chapters — which covered climate change, vaccines and cultural diversity and were axed in May 2024 — were restored almost immediately after last year’s election. That didn’t cost the district anything, though.
But there’s been little talk about whether the positions of 50 librarians, who lost their jobs in May 2024 in an effort to close a $138 million budget deficit, will be added back into a future budget. Buckner says the campus library at Moore Elementary, where she once attended and where her children are now enrolled, is often closed because there’s no one there to work in it.
The remaining 42 CFISD librarians who kept their jobs now alternate among all the district libraries, and when there’s not a librarian on site, the books can’t be accessed and the kids can’t even go inside.
“Especially in Title I schools, the library was a place where children who were unhoused or experiencing bullying, or students who were celebrating holidays where they would fast, could go and get away for a minute,” Buckner says. “They can’t do that now.”
Cy-Fair ISD is asking residents to approve a $1.63 billion bond and a 12-cent Voter Approved Tax Rate Election in November. The word “librarians” isn’t mentioned in any of the propositions.
However, Buckner says there’s a chance that the VATRE, which, if approved, would generate $102 million per year, could fund library positions if that’s how the trustees choose to spend the money. She’s also convinced that if the tax hike doesn’t pass, the 33,000 students who temporarily lost school bus service as a cost-cutting measure in 2025 will once again be forced to figure out alternate transportation.
In a text message to the Houston Press on Wednesday morning, Guilmart said she doesn’t believe restoring librarians will be an option unless more revenue is generated from the VATRE. She noted that she was commenting “on behalf of myself, not the school district or the board.”
“CFISD has already made $94 million in cuts over the last several years, including school librarian positions,” she said. “Politicians in Austin have been underfunding public schools for a long time, and CFISD is one of many districts facing painful cuts to programs and services our students and families rely on. If the VATRE passes, I will fight to restore as many librarian positions as possible.”
Camarena and Lane did not respond to requests for comment.
Buckner said that until a school board meeting on Monday night, at which Guilmart and Camarena criticized book bans and highlighted the importance of librarians, she would have said campaign promises had been broken. Now she says she has hope they’ll do the right thing, but acknowledges their hands are tied by a lack of public school funding from the state.
Buckner is not only supporting the ballot measures, she also created a website called Yes on All Five to break down the bond propositions in simple terms and let residents know that voting for the propositions will cost them $126 per year, and not a dime if they’re over 65.
“When you look at the makeup of Cy-Fair ISD, I think it’s 68 percent economically disadvantaged and it’s also very diverse,” Buckner told the Press of the district’s 114,000 students. “There are a lot of kids who really need the foundational support of literacy. It drives all other things.”
Buckner, a consultant, and her husband moved from Houston Heights to Cy-Fair ISD in 2017 before their children were born. It’s the district where they were both educated and where they believed their children would receive a “world-class education.”
“I know that we made the right choice because the educators in the district are wonderful,” she says. “But there’s a small number of people who are working to dismantle it.”
The decline in literacy nationwide was evident to Buckner when she was watching the TV dating show Love Island recently.
“It was hard to watch how these 22-to-25-year-olds couldn’t pronounce words and didn’t understand critical reasoning and social skills,” she says. “These are things they could have gained by just being literate. This is what happens when you don’t have books and librarians as the foundation of education.”
VATRE and Bond Propositions
Proposition A (VATRE) would cover teacher and staff compensation, campus safety personnel, instructional materials, programs and transportation. This is where librarians could potentially be funded, Buckner says, although the board hasn’t publicly discussed a specific breakdown of how the dollars would be spent if it’s approved.
Proposition B (building bond, $1.3 billion) would fund essential facility renovations, modernize technology and cybersecurity frameworks and allow for the acquisition of new school buses with three-point seat belts required by the state.
Proposition C (technology bond, $256 million) would replace or update instructional technology devices and classroom displays.
Proposition D (athletic bond, $60.8 million) would pay for new artificial turf, resurfacing of competition tracks and updating stadium scoreboards.
Proposition E (swimming pools bond, $20.1 million) would fund the replacement of water filtration pumps and re-plastering of middle and high school pools
Voters don’t have to approve or deny the whole package; a separate vote is cast for each of the five propositions. Buckner says she understands why some people don’t want the district to spend millions on stadium scoreboards and swimming pools.
However, she says, “We’ve got to get these teachers paid and get these facilities updated. We wouldn’t live or work in a place that didn’t have safe electrical wiring or fire alarms. Why would we send our kids, who are our most precious asset, to those places?”
She says she’s concerned that the bond is in danger of failing because Cy-Fair ISD’s money woes have become politicized and a vocal minority of critics is saying that the board mismanaged funds. That’s not the case, she says. Districts across Texas are experiencing lower enrollment and therefore getting less money from the state.
“If you don’t have the money in your checking account, you can’t go buy a new AC unit, and if your boss didn’t pay you the money you were owed, you have a problem with the boss,” she says. “I get that we don’t have the money but I wish the board would fight harder.”
Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher program is funded by taxpayer dollars that could instead be going toward improving public schools, Buckner argues.
Much of the discussion about the bond, the VATRE and whether the district is maintaining the priorities it set early this year is taking place in the 7,400-member public Facebook group CFISD Parents for Librarians that Buckner founded in mid-2024.
The page was created in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the librarian layoffs. “It was a little naive,” Buckner says. “I don’t think we truly understood that what we were fighting against were all these statewide forces and this coordinated campaign of oppression of books and knowledge.”
Buckner says the effort to ban books statewide has now become more blatant, as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick recently unveiled his “dirty book” list of 2,200 titles, some of which are also, ironically, on the state’s required reading list. Patrick has said that he’ll introduce legislation in January to punish school districts by dropping them a letter grade in accountability ratings if they keep what he has deemed obscene books on the shelves.
Buckner and two other residents, Jen Chenette and Jarren Hostetler, addressed the board on Monday night to shed some light on the matter. No one spoke at the board meeting in opposition of the VATRE and bond.
Chenette said some of the critics who are spreading misinformation about Cy-Fair ISD don’t even live in the district.
“People don’t understand how many factors go into a budget for a district this size,” she said. “They don’t understand how bonds work. They don’t understand that we may lose bus transportation again and we most certainly won’t be getting a librarian back on every campus if these propositions don’t pass.”
“They don’t understand how much damage Greg Abbott has done to public education, especially with his voucher spectacle,” she continued. We have Dan Patrick banning books I’m sure he’s never even read. But it’s election season. They have to fire up their base with faux outrage, like claiming that schools are transitioning students behind their parents’ backs.”
“The rot starts at the top at the federal level, then we have it at the state level, and it trickles down and hurts all of us as well as society as a whole. We are running out of time to turn things around for this country and for public education. Who we vote for and what we vote for matters.”
Buckner, at the September 14 school board meeting, held up a copy of Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and said, “I don’t know why we are restricting access to books when we already have fewer librarians. I am concerned that these kinds of policies enable people like Dan Patrick — who is asking that this book, which is required reading by the state, be banned — to take away money from our school districts if we have this in our libraries.”
“I want librarians back on every single campus,” she added. “I understand that we do not have funding from the state. I want you to please fight to get our libraries back and to get books back into the kids’ hands. Stop punishing the kids.”
Hostetler said the criticism about how funds have been spent in the past often tends to be “more of a political smear campaign than a factual discussion about what’s best for our community.
“This district has been transparent about the financial challenges it faces,” he said. “It also continues to demonstrate commitment to taxpayers by providing homeowners with the full 20 percent local homestead exemption while continuing to do more for students despite receiving less funding per student than neighboring districts.”
He pointed out that the students don’t care about taxes and politics. “Years from now, they won’t remember which political party won the argument in Austin,” he said. “They’ll remember what it felt like to go to school here, though. If you vote no for the VATRE and the bond, the memories will be of the teacher who left, the program that disappeared, the overcrowded classroom, the closed library, the bus route that was taken away and the two-mile walk home in 100-degree weather carrying a heavy backpack, crossing major four-lane thoroughfares.”
Camarena shared that she’s currently reading The Martian by Andy Weir and noted that while it’s on Patrick’s banned book list, there’s also a youth version that is permitted in public school libraries. The science fiction novel tells the story of an astronaut stranded on Mars trying to survive by using chemistry and physics.
“I really want us to think about how important it is to help kids have access to books that are going to help them become the next engineer or the next scientist,” Camarena said. “Our librarians and our library services constantly are doing the heavy lifting to make sure we have the right books in our classrooms and our libraries.”
Guilmart held up Night by Elie Wiesel — also on the banned list — and noted that the “small but powerful book” is one that students across the country have read for years.
“It’s the memoir of a Holocaust survivor, professor, and Nobel Peace Prize winner who wished to be remembered simply as a teacher,” Guilmart said. “It tells the story of a child who witnessed and suffered horrors so appalling that people the world over have said ‘never again.’ And because humanity has struggled to live up to that conviction, it remains as important as ever to keep reading books like Night.”
Guilmart stressed how students become critical thinkers when they have access to “gripping, engaging, relevant reading material.”
“I am so thankful for our teachers, librarians, paraprofessionals, and volunteers who work to ensure that students have access to great books, especially now when the freedom to read is under attack and politicians seek to ban essential texts like Night,” she said. “We need to stand strong, insist on adequate funding for and local control over our public schools, and protect students’ right to read great books. As always, I urge the community: learn as much as you can about who and what are on the ballot this November, and please vote smart.”
School board positions are unpaid and nonpartisan, and trustees are permitted to advocate for a bond, but they’ve all thus far been cautious about doing so from the boardroom.
Buckner said after Monday’s meeting that the “powerful statements” from Guilmart and Camarena showed support of librarians. “I believe they will get it done if we have the money, but we need the money. We need to get these bonds passed,” she said.
Cy-Fair’s Opt-In Policy
As if the librarian cuts weren’t enough, Buckner says she’s extremely frustrated and disappointed by CFISD’s “opt-in” policy on reading material, which is more stringent than what’s required by the state.
According to the Cy-Fair ISD policy adopted in August 2025, students are automatically allowed to borrow books classified by grade level but their parents have to “opt in” for access to more reading material.
For example, pre-K through fifth-graders can borrow juvenile books but not those categorized as “young adult.” Sixth-graders have access to juvenile books but their parents must opt them in if they want to read books in the young adult or adult collections.
Seventh- through 12th-graders can access juvenile and young adult collections by default but not the adult books. The opt-in designation allows access to every book in a particular collection. Once opting in to the adult collection, a parent can’t say they’ll allow their child to read The Great Gatsby but not Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. They have to permit access to the whole collection of books or none at all.
The Texas Freedom to Read Project says Cy-Fair’s policy is driving censorship and is a relic of the district’s “former far-right, anti-public education PAC-backed board majority.” The nonprofit, whose cofounders live in Katy, Keller and Austin, obtained public records showing about 10 percent of students opted into the full reading collection for their grade level.
“The abysmally low opt-in rates are not likely a result of a lack of trust in Cy-Fair ISD libraries, or librarians, or a desire by CFISD parents to limit their children’s access to library books, but rather a reflection of the challenges we see anytime opt-in is the default, instead of opt-out,” states a Freedom to Read blog published last month. “We spoke to some highly engaged parents in CFISD who had no idea the extent to which students’ library access is currently limited.”
Cy-Fair trustees could have loosened the restrictions of the opt-in policy in January once the new board members took office, but they didn’t.
Buckner says it’s possible that the board hasn’t revisited its opt-in policy because they’ve been busy with adopting a budget, getting the November ballot set and back-to-school activities.
“I think it would go a lot better with the voters if they’d removed some of these restrictive policies and prioritized librarians,” she says. “I think maybe they could put it on the October agenda. I’d like to see them all reaffirm their commitment to librarians and take this culture war out of it.”
“I hope this board will commit to having our librarians’ backs, having our backs and making sure this district provides the world-class education that I received. There are long-term ramifications if these measures don’t pass. If we have to close schools, we will no longer be a destination district. People will stop moving here and spending their money here.”
