How to Break the Library
Katy ISD will prohibit librarians from purchasing any books which they have not read in their entirety, and will publish campus names along with titles on a public dashboard.
Today Katy ISD, a large suburban school district west of Houston, informed staff librarians they can no longer request to purchase books they have not read in their entirety. Katy ISD also informed staff librarians the district will begin publishing the name of the campuses next to the title of the book on the purchase order dashboard.
We are real parents of real Texas public school students, fighting book bans in our state.
Sign & share our petition: https://www.txftrp.org/petition
Katy ISD librarians will no longer be allowed to rely solely on professional literary reviews to curate their purchase order requests.
It doesn’t take a genius to understand you cannot read a book in its entirety that doesn’t already exist in your catalog. At least not without dipping into your own money to buy it.
And publishing the campus from which a request originates, will result in self censorship & poses actual threats to the safety of librarians, who have been harassed and labeled "pedophiles" & "groomers" by now sitting board members & community members for the past 3 years. What reasonable human who values their safety, and their job, wouldn't think twice about adding an LGBTQ+ or BIPOC title to their purchase order, considering the current hostile climate towards librarians, educators and BIPOC & LGBT people in our community and our stat?
Anecdotally we are hearing that these mandates are coming down as a result of pressure from the Katy ISD board, despite push back from administrators who have expressed serious concern about the logistical and safety issues these procedural changes pose.
Katy ISD librarians have been told these changes are effective immediately.
Librarians are allocated money to buy books on a rotating basis. How are they supposed to suddenly carve out hundreds of hours to find and read books, and also do the rest of their jobs- like educating their students!?
This is essentially a purchase freeze. This is how PAC backed extremist majority school boards break and dismantle libraries, and public education, from the inside.
If you’re a Katy ISD student, parent, staff member, or community member, (or things like this are happening in your Texas public school district, too) make your concerns heard.
- Contact the school board.
- Speak at a board meeting (the next regular Katy ISD board meeting is 2/26).
- And for the love of all that is good VOTE in your school board election, on or before May 4.
