I suppose it’s useful to be reminded, as we slog our way through another Year Of Mike Miles, that the suburban school districts around us have their own unique set of dysfunctions.
The Katy ISD board of trustees passed a measure Monday that adds books on gender fluidity to the list of banned book topics in the district.
Five of the seven board members voted to approve the changes to the book banning policy. Rebecca Fox and Dawn Champagne, who spoke out against the measure, abstained from voting.
Board president Victor Perez and trustees Amy Thieme, Morgan Calhoun, Lance Redmon and Mary Ellen Cuzela all voted in favor of the ban.
The measure, according to district documents, mandates the removal of all books in elementary and junior high libraries that “contain material adopting, supporting or promoting gender fluidity.” Parents would have to opt-in for high school students to access the literature.
Gender fluidity, according to Perez, is the “view that gender is a social construct that espouses the view that a person can be any gender or no gender, i.e. non-binary, espouses a view that an individual’s biological sex should be changed to match a gender different from that person’s biological sex, hormone therapy or other medical treatments or procedures to temporarily or permanently alter a person’s body so that it matches a gender different from that person’s biological sex.”
The gender fluidity ban is an extension of the book ban passed in August of 2023, whereby the board of trustees banned all books containing “sexually explicit material.”
Champagne said she didn’t support the policy. She thinks it’s a potential violation of Texas law and could open the district to lawsuits, given that Perez’s definition is too general and sweeping.
For example, she said, A.A. Milne’s beloved character Winnie the Pooh is technically genderless. “The character has a male voice and we think of him as male, but its name is ‘Winnie,’ which is usually a girl’s name,” she said. “You can’t tell what he is.”
[…]
Amanda Rose, president and founder of Katy Pride and a Katy ISD parent, noted that the new ban would prevent their child from reading books about families like theirs.
“To know that my child may not be able to see their family structure represented in a public school library is gut-wrenching,” Rose said. “Imagine having to tell your child, someone that loves deeply, that books about families like theirs are not welcome in their school library: the place that should be accepting to everyone.”
Katy ISD is a multi–time offender in this category, so none of this is a surprise, however much of a disgrace and disappointment it is. In this case, it’s like Katy ISD saw what they were doing in Fort Bend and took it as a challenge.
I mean, once again, we know what the problem is and what the solution is. Three of the five trustees that voted for this mess were elected last year with the help of the Harris County GOP. The rest of us need to make this a priority. The Press
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