Katy Independent School District has remained silent on the reasons 14 additional books were removed from shelves and how the district’s book review policy is being implemented, despite a public pledge of transparency on book banning.
Of the seven Katy ISD board members, only Rebecca Fox would discuss her opinion on the move, saying the new policy may need to be revisited if exhaustive book reviews continue.
In August and September, an internal committee found 14 books, including titles by Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle and Judy Blume, to be inappropriate for children for reasons the district would not make public. In June, the board had directed $93,000 in new books ordered for campuses to be put in storage until they could be reviewed.
Prior to enacting the new policy, Katy ISD removed four books in 2022, eight in 2021 and four in the first seven months of 2023.
This year the district expanded the terms under which a book could be pulled for review, adding “nudity” in the definition of inappropriate material. For the first time, six elementary school books have been removed.
The book “No, David!” — winner of the Caldecott Honor Book and several other national awards — is one of them.
The cartoon David takes every opportunity to misbehave but is always reminded that his parents love him anyway, according to the book’s publisher, Scholastic Inc. At one point in the story, a David jumps out of the tub and and is pictured running off without clothes on.
Drew Daywalt’s “The Day the Crayons Quit” was one of 44 books flagged for review in August that was later retained. An illustration depicts a beige crayon that has lost its wrapper, becoming “naked.”
Fox, who voted in favor of the book review policy, said it’s an example of how implementation has deviated from the policy’s intent.
“Nudity was added to the policy, but a book about a crayon with a wrapper is not nudity. That’s not what was intended by the policy,” she said. “If this continues, we may have to revisit the definitions of the policy.”
You think? I know that the “imagine if a Democrat/liberal had said/done this thing” trope is hoary, but this is one time where you really should try to imagine it. Fox News might literally melt down. And in this case, it wouldn’t actually be that hard to see why. I mean, what kind of depraved pervert finds something sexual in an unwrapped crayon? Yes, common sense ultimately prevailed for that book, but why was that even a question?
Anyway. This is where deep-seated homophobia takes you. Katy ISD needs to dump its at large districts and elect some decent human beings to its Board. Until they do, this is what they’re gonna get.
If you are wondering where all this stupid shit is coming from, it is coming from the latest Heritage Foundation ultra right wing manifesto, ‘Project 2025’. An excerpt-
“On LGBTQ+ rights, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, sets the tone with his introduction.
Complaining that in Biden’s America “children suffer the toxic normalisation of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries”, Roberts writes: “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualisation of children … is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to first amendment protection.””
The strategy of the attack on LGBTQ+ people is to connect them somehow with pornography and children. The likely reason that Katy ISD didn’t say why they banned the books is that the Heritage bs doesn’t make any sense and they were unwilling to commit it to writing.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/project-2025-policy-manifesto-lgbtq-rights
The Quad’s power will not last very long. Mark my words.