{Guest Blog Post by Rachael Welsh} In May of this year, several newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer, published a list of books to read over the summer. While this would normally be an eventful article, a list of books for vacations and poolside reading, there was a problem with this list: ten of the fifteen books weren’t real. 

No - this is not the latest satirical headline at The Onion. This is reality for the 49,000+ students who attend Lamar Consolidated ISD schools.

A public information request filed by Texas Freedom to Read Project confirmed that LCISD removed over 700 books from classrooms and school libraries at the start of the 2025-2026 school year.

(This is a guest post written by librarian, Kalyn Gensic. This post was originally written and shared by Kalyn on her personal Facebook page, and is shared with permission, here.)

It is three o’clock in the morning, and I can’t sleep because my mind is replaying the no good, horrible, very bad week I had at work. It wasn’t bad because of the students (they were funny and inquisitive and were happy to talk about all the books with me). It wasn’t my co-workers (Cooper has the best staff - bar none). It wasn’t my district (still proud to be part of AISD). It was because this week, a law made over the summer in the Texas Senate had real, tangible effects on my day-to-day job. My guess is most people don’t know about SB 13, but I think it is something Texans need to be aware of, so I’m going to tell you about it.

Something no representative on either side of the political aisle seems to understand about Senate Bill 13 is that it’s not “House Bill 900 is not working” as the book banners like to claim. It’s that the 40 or so book banners who are driving their movement for the whole state refuse to take “no” for an answer.

The Texas House Committee on Public Education will consider SB 13 on Tuesday, May 6 at 8am. We are running out of time to stop this bill- that threatens to destroy Texas public school libraries- from becoming law. If you are a Texas parent, retired or current school librarian, or supporter of public school libraries of any kind, and you have been saving yourself to testify on ONE bill this session- please join the parents behind Texas Freedom to Read Project, in Austin, on Tuesday and speak up against SB 13.