{"id":12567,"date":"2025-06-25T04:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T04:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/12567\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T04:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T04:20:08","slug":"governor-abbott-signs-bill-setting-new-controls-for-school-library-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/12567\/","title":{"rendered":"Governor Abbott signs bill setting new controls for school library books"},"content":{"rendered":"

AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Governor Abbott signed a bill into law Friday that restructures how school districts are allowed to purchase or keep books for their libraries, vesting power instead with school boards or an advisory committee.<\/p>\n

Senate Bill 13<\/a> was one of the 1,155 bills signed into law across this year’s legislative session, including many just ahead of this past weekend’s deadline.<\/p>\n

It’s concerning for Austin I.S.D. Parent Kevin Jackson, who says he’s always encouraged his two daughters to read.<\/p>\n

“It’s like a journey, it’s like an adventure reading a book,” Jackson said. “They just get to see, you know, different perspectives of what’s going on in American history and world history, and just different viewpoints.”<\/p>\n

Now, both in high school, he calls Senate Bill 13 an attack on his right as a parent to monitor what his daughters are reading.<\/p>\n

“I’ll ask my daughters, like, okay, you’re interested in this book. And we can, like, talk about it and everything like that.” Jackson said.<\/p>\n

ALSO| New Texas law banning phones in schools spark mixed reactions from Central Texas parents<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on Friday, S.B. 13 gives school boards the final say on what books are allowed in the libraries instead of their librarians.<\/p>\n

Senator Angela Paxton authored the bill. She was unavailable for comment, but on the floor in March, she called this bill another way to protect community values and young children.<\/p>\n

“No child should pick up a book in their school library of all places and see sexually explicit, harmful material within its pages,” Paxton said. “Their young brains cannot unsee what they’ve seen.”<\/p>\n

The law also gives the Board a mechanism to review parent complaints. Laney Hawes with the Texas Freedom to Read Project says the logistical nightmare aside…<\/p>\n

“There are school districts in the state of Texas that are buying tens and tens of thousands of books a year, right?” Hawes said. “So no, we can’t reasonably expect a group of five or six people to review all of those books. It’s not possible.”<\/p>\n

She says librarians should be making these decisions. Not political actors.<\/p>\n

“Librarians have master’s degrees, right? And librarians are very specifically under a code of ethics where they don’t make curatorial decisions based on what they like or don’t like.” Hawes said. “We find that line to be devastating and terrifying, right? That a small group of people will decide what local community values look like.”<\/p>\n

Jackson is concerned the law will do more harm than good.<\/p>\n

“I hope this doesn’t prevent, you know, students, especially like in middle school and high school, to prevent them from reading books that they wouldn’t normally be able to,” Jackson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Governor Abbott signed a bill into law Friday that restructures how school districts are allowed…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[13184,13188,1022,13189,171,3153,13190,13187,13186,13185,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-12567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-abbott","9":"tag-book-censorship","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-community-values","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-governor","14":"tag-librarians","15":"tag-parental-rights","16":"tag-school-libraries","17":"tag-senate-bill-13","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114742088528207112","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}