SBOE proposes oversight of books
Keri Heath
Austin American-Statesman USA TODAY NETWORK
The State Board of Education has approved a list of legislative suggestions for Texas lawmakers, which includes a proposal to grant the board the power to rate the appropriateness of school library books – and could also render moot parts of a state law that has been embroiled in litigation for more than a year.
The proposal would give the elected education board significant power over determining what’s appropriate for public school libraries and would mirror legislation that has been filed by Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, who in 2023 wrote the Reader Act, a law that placed the burden of rating books on vendors and has been on hold over litigation.
A process of rating books that children are reading in schools is best fit for the state board, said board member Tom Maynard, R-Florence. “This board knows how to vet materials,” Maynard said. “We can create a transparent process to do this work. This is work that really needs to be done.”
The board’s proposal aligns with House Bill 183, which Patterson filed ahead of the upcoming legislative session. The bill would let parents of public school children petition the state board to review any book in a school library for age appropriateness or sexually explicit material.
If passed, HB 183 would largely rewrite a section of the 2023 Reader Act that has been under litigation since July 2023. Patterson’s 2023 Reader Act requires book vendors that sell to school libraries to rate their material for either sexual relevance or sexual explicitness.
Book vendors – including Austin’s BookPeople – and library associations sued the state over the law, insisting it was overly burdensome to businesses.
The book vendors also claimed the law imposed speech on the businesses since the Texas Education Agency could overrule the ratings the businesses assigned to books.
The section of the Reader Act dealing with ratings has been temporarily blocked by an appeals court.
Patterson’s office didn’t reply to an American-Statesman request for comment.
Since 2020, book challenges and debates about which materials are appropriate for school libraries have skyrocketed across the country, including in Texas, which in some cases has led to dramatic disputes at local school
Rebecca Bell-Metereau Board member, D-San Marcos
boards and prompted districts to completely rewrite their library material review processes.
PEN America, a nonprofit focused on free expression, reported more than 10,000 instances of books banned in schools from July 2023 to June 2024, up from about 3,300 instances over the same period in the 2022-23 academic year.
Texas had the thirdmost instances of banned books at 538, though the report notes many of those bans came from a few districts, such as Fort Worth, where more than 100 books were pulled for review last summer after the Reader Act was implemented, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Other states with high numbers of book bans, such as Florida and Iowa, have passed laws similar to Texas’ Reader Act.
During the Texas state board’s discussion last month, member Marisa Perez-Diaz, DSan Antonio, worried about adopting a legislative goal that is related to legislation that is in litigation.
Member Rebecca Bell-Metereau, D-San Marcos, worried that the task of wading through every possible book review request that could come before the state board from across Texas could be insurmountable.
“This would be a herculean task to read and rate all of these books,” Bell-Metereau said. “That just seems insane to me.”
Maynard also suggested local school boards would welcome the state board taking decisions about the appropriateness of library books out of their hands.
“They don’t like having protesters in front of their building,” Maynard said. “For us, it’s business as usual.”
The book rating suggestion for lawmakers from the state board was one of several proposals on a list approved by the 15-member board during its regular November meeting.
The board typically adopts a set of legislative priorities, like a wish list, ahead of the state’s biennial legislative sessions.
The 2025 legislative session will begin Jan. 14.
