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Middle school and high school students in the New Braunfels Independent School District will be able to access their school libraries again starting Monday, October 27.
The New Braunfels ISD board of trustees unanimously voted Thursday night to reopen the libraries, 10 days after the board voted to close them in order to conduct a review of the libraries’ materials for “compliance with Senate Bill 13.”
Senate Bill 13 became law six weeks ago on September 1 and does not require districts to close their libraries or conduct a review of every book in their current collection.
When asked why they were closing their libraries, and why they were doing it now, district officials provided a statement from the board of trustees that said it was “a precautionary and responsible step.”
“This measure ensures that we are fully compliant with state law regarding indecent, profane, or harmful content,” the board’s statement said. “We certainly do not intend to limit access permanently but want to uphold our duty to provide a safe and appropriate learning environment while we carefully evaluate our collections. Once the review is complete, we look forward to restoring full access to materials that meet the legal and educational criteria.”
SB 13 does mention “harmful,” “indecent,” and “profane” material, but only to define them and list them as references for a district’s policies on acquiring new books and responding to book challenges.
However, after more than an hour of public comments and more than two hours discussing the “legal issues related” to the matter in closed session, trustees reversed course Thursday and voted to reopen the libraries while the district’s review of the more than 195,000 books in the collection continues.
More than 40 people signed up to speak during the specially called board meeting Thursday, many of them parents and students who implored trustees to reopen the libraries.
Amelia Becker, an eighth-grade student at Oak Run Middle School, said locking away their books took away student trust.
"Closing libraries has made a negative impact on both the teachers and students in our school," she said. "There may be some kids in our school whose only access to books is through the school library."
Jed Walker told trustees that a school library gives students a refuge and sense of community, and they had harmed students by closing them.
“I wish you had experienced the anguish in my daughter's face the other night when she told us the library is going to close,” Walker said. “The district's motto right up here is ‘engage, empower, learn.’ And yet this is disengaging. This is disempowering, and this is suppressing learning. It's an over extension of the law. It ignores parental and student input.”
In a statement posted on the district’s website Friday, NBISD officials said they had completed a “preliminary review” of the books, enabling them to reopen the secondary school libraries.
“The Board appreciates the thoughtful feedback from the community and we understand how important our school libraries are to our students’ learning and success,” said Eric Bergquist, NBISD Board President in the statement. “We’re grateful to have completed this preliminary step quickly so our secondary libraries can reopen while we continue our due diligence to meet the requirements of SB 13.”
It’s unclear exactly how the district conducted its initial review, or who made the decision of which books to pull from library shelves.
District spokesperson Michelle Harwood referenced a “review committee” in an emailed response to a series of questions sent by TPR, including a question about who was involved in making the decision about what books to pull.
In the statement, district officials said they are “using a combination of internal review tools and third-party vendor resources” to flag books for the “NBISD Policy and Compliance Coordinator and a district review team” to decide if they violate SB 13.
So far, the district has identified 81 books for review and pulled them from library shelves while they conduct the review. Books on the initial list include A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Forever by Judy Blume, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
“A list of titles that are under review will be made available to the public on the Library Materials Under Review page so the community remains informed. Community members will have the opportunity to appeal the removal of any book they believe complies with SB 13 and should remain available in our school libraries through the grievance process,” district officials said in the statement.
Retired high school librarian Carolyn Foote with the advocacy group Texas FReadom Fighters said many of the books on the list are familiar to her from commonly challenged books, including classics, books that reference sexual assault, and books with LGBTQ+ characters.
She said she was concerned the district’s unnamed review tools could include artificial intelligence.
“If these books were challenged somewhere three or four years ago, because lot of these been on the list for lists for a while, then it's pulling up stuff about that. It's not pulling up like the text of the entire book, because they're copyrighted,” Foote said. “If you're matching them against previously censored books, that's not really the methodology you want to use.”
Still, she said she was happy to know the libraries are reopening.
“I was really heartened and overjoyed about that for the students, because it's the middle of the school year,” Foote said.
But, she pointed out, no other Texas school district has closed their libraries to comply with SB 13.
“When legislators aren't very precise with the language, or even when they are, districts just overreact out of fear of consequences or fear of outside actors coming in and pressuring them,” Foote said.
