Cy-Fair ISD’s focus on libraries followed flood of book challenges by two trustees’ inner circles – Houston Public Media

Cy-Fair ISD

Books and libraries have been a focus of the Cy-Fair ISD board since politically conservative members won a majority last November.

For two of those trustees or those with close ties to them, they were a concern well before last year’s school board election.

Records obtained from the Houston-area district show that of the 58 book reconsideration requests submitted during the 2022-23 school year, a total of 52 were made by new board member Todd LeCompte, his wife Patti LeCompte, his campaign treasurer Monica Dean and Bethany Scanlon, the wife of trustee Lucas Scanlon, who already was on the board at the time. A total of six books were challenged during the previous three school years combined, and no reconsideration requests have been received since March 2023, according to a district representative.

Still, trustees for the third-largest district in Texas have since voted to eliminate about half of the district’s librarians as part of budget cuts, which have resulted in campus libraries being open only part of the time this year. They also implemented a policy in which proposed library materials must be posted online for a 30-day period of public review before they are purchased, along with removing 13 chapters from a series of state-approved science textbooks that touch on topics such as climate change and vaccines.

“When you do an analysis to make a decision as a board member or as a superintendent or as a leadership team to change a policy, I think you need to look at what drove that change,” said Duncan Klussmann, a former Houston-area school superintendent who now is an assistant clinical professor of education at the University of Houston. “And if 58 requests came in, mainly from four people, is that really an issue for the whole community?”

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The LeComptes, the Scanlons, Dean and the district’s media relations staff either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

Book challenges at Texas schools have ramped up in recent years. A 2022 analysis by PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free speech, found that administrators in 22 school districts in the state banned a total of 801 books between July 2021 and June 2022 – more than any other state in the U.S. – according to the Texas Tribune.

Documents obtained from Cy-Fair ISD through an open records request show the district, which serves about 118,000 students northwest of Houston, began processing library book challenges during the 2019-20 school year.

All the book challenges made by the LeComptes, Dean and Bethany Scanlon are permitted by Cy-Fair ISD policy, which allows reconsideration requests to be submitted by any district resident, district employee, parent of a student in the district or a district student who is age 18 or older.

Cy-Fair ISD

Bethany Scanlon accounted for 34 of the book challenges during the 2022-23 school year, records show. Dean filed 15 reconsideration requests, while the LeComptes combined to challenge three books.

Todd LeCompte, who had not yet been elected when he challenged the inclusion of “Flamer” in the Bridgeland High School library in December 2022, serves on the district’s library materials committee that was created in 2023, according to his biography on the Cy-Fair ISD website.

“I think it’s clear that in some districts, we’ve had board members run very much on a single issue of what’s in libraries or what’s in instructional materials. That’s been their sole focus,” Klussmann said. “I think that’s pretty evident that that’s been the trend in a couple districts over the last 3 or 4 years. I’d say Cy-Fair ISD is one of them.”

The school-specific challenges submitted by the LeComptes, Bethany Scanlon and Dean focused on a total of nine books, all of which include subject matter about race, gender identity or sexuality. Along with “Flamer,” other titles they challenged include “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “Antiracist Baby,” “The Bluest Eye” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

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None of the books they challenged was removed from a school library, according to determinations made by campus-level review committees, which deemed them age-appropriate and educationally suitable, records show.

Cy-Fair ISD is shifting this year from campus review committees to a district-level committee for reviewing challenged books, a district spokesperson said.

As school districts have largely shifted to online ordering for library materials, Klussmann said there are “library books that end up in libraries that probably should not have been in those libraries.” But he also said formal review policies like the one in Cy-Fair ISD have “in many cases worked very well” in ensuring collections are appropriate for students.

“The board members have to be careful that they’re not playing to a small minority of individuals who are loud,” Klussmann said. “They need to have a sense for the whole public and making sure that they’re making decisions that the public in general would support.”