House Bill 900 goes into effect Sept. 1 and will prevent education vendors from selling potentially harmful or obscene materials to school districts.
Additionally, booksellers will be required to develop a rating system and submit an annual list to the Texas Education Agency of any books that are found to be sexually explicit. District officials must then review books on that list to decide whether to keep the material.
In response to this part of the law, multiple booksellers sued the state to block that portion of the statue from becoming law, according to a statement from the American Booksellers Association, claiming the law violates the constitutional rights of booksellers.
Current situation
The board briefly discussed potential policy changes based on recommendations from the library committee during the Aug. 7 board meeting. However, a consensus could not be reached.
In the Aug. 4 board work session, Trustees Scott Henry and Lucas Scanlon stated support for additional district library policy changes.
However, Trustees Tom Jackson, Julie Hinaman and Debbie Blackshear supported following the new law and not trying to go beyond state regulations in favor of “community standards” as a benchmark for district policy.
As the board was unable to agree to adopt the library committee's recommendations as presented Aug. 4, the district will begin the 2023-24 school year without changing district policy.
The details
The district’s library committee is made up of parents, librarians, students, board appointees, campus counselors, teachers, curriculum coordinators, administrators and community leaders. Members have studied the impact of the new law over the last few months and recommended the following edits to the district’s library policy:
- Formal reconsideration to review materials deemed inappropriate should be centralized at the district level.
- District-level review of formal reconsideration requests should include representation from campuses where the books are located as well as parent representatives.
- Appeals of formal reconsiderations should be managed at the board level and not be subjected to review again for at least five years as recommended by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
- They recommend changes to the district’s local collection development standards to include a required review of titles in young adult and adult categories.
- Informal reconsideration of materials should include the complainant, the librarian and a campus administrator to provide the opportunity for the concerns to be explained and addressed.
- The timeline for completing formal reconsideration of materials should be revised to be based on school days versus calendar days.
