More than a dozen chapters including content on vaccines, cultural diversity, climate change, depopulation and other topics deemed controversial by conservative Cypress-Fairbanks ISD trustees will be removed from textbooks in the state's third largest school system for the 2024-2025 school year.

Trusteed voted 6-1 late Monday to omit the material, after an hourslong discussion about a $138 million budget deficit that is forcing the district to eliminate 600 positions, including 42 curriculum coaches, dozens of librarians and 278 teaching positions.

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Board member Natalie Blasingame recommended cutting the chapters after reviewing the textbooks as part of her role on the district's Academics, Safety, Vision and Planning committee. The district has discretion over instructional materials and the state curriculum, called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, does not list the specific topics, she said.

The classes that will be impacted include biology, environmental science, earth systems, education and health science.

In November, the right-leaning State Board of Education voted to approve only five of 12 science textbooks, rejecting some books that had more aggressive messaging about climate change, the Texas Tribune reported.

Texas eighth-graders will be required to start learning about climate change next year as part of the state's revamped science curriculum. One of the textbooks approved, Savvas Learning Company Texas' "Miller and Levine Experience," will have portions of two chapters omitted by Cy-Fair.

Cy-Fair ISD officials did not respond to questions about what each of the 13 omitted chapters would have included, but some textbooks have their tables of contents online, which provided an overview of the content removed. 

Blasingame said Monday that what she wanted to omit in environmental sciences was “a lot around depopulation and also a perspective that humans are bad.” 

Trustee Todd LeCompte swiftly seconded her. 

“I can't support anything teaching our kids about depopulation,” he said. 

In the biology textbook, Savvas Learning Company Texas' "Miller and Levine Experience," a section about COVID in a chapter about vaccines goes into “much more detail” than required by TEKS, Blasingame said. 

Cy-Fair leaders said they “had already tagged the chapter on vaccines” since they are not covered on STAAR End-of-Course exams. 

One section begins with the question “‘Why do I need a flu shot every year?’” according to the Texas Education Agency’s Texas Resource Review report. Another section asks students to explore the impact humans have on their environment and land use. 

In the health science course that uses Cengage Learning Inc.'s "DHO Health Science," chapters 8 and 10, covering human growth and development and cultural diversity, respectively were omitted, based on the online table of contents. 

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In the Principles of Education and Training course, using the Goodheart-Willcox Company "Teaching" textbook, four chapters — schools and society, understanding and teaching diverse learners, technology for instruction and the challenges of teaching — have been omitted, based on that book’s online table of contents. 

Trustee Julie Hinaman, the lone trustee to vote against the changes, noted that the full versions of the textbooks were approved by the State Board of Education. She questioned how the district will edit textbooks and develop new curriculum with less staff.

“We are literally in the process of reducing our curriculum and instruction staff. At the same time, we're recommending that they do additional work,” Hinaman said. 

Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Linda Macias said that any chapters omitted that provide state-mandated curriculum will need to be supplemented with alternative textbook content, so that the district is not out of compliance with TEKS. 

“We’re going to struggle because we have lost a lot of staff at the district office," Macias told the board Monday. 

But Macias confirmed that the district does have other resources at its disposal to base curriculum on, which may include purchasing additional resources and leaning on campus staff to help with the creation process.

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She said curriculum may be delivered to staff “two weeks at a time” given the timing of these omissions, so teachers would have two weeks to prepare lesson plans based on curriculum as it is handed to them by the administration. 

State Rep. Jon Rosenthal, who represents Cy-Fair and spoke at the meeting Monday regarding the budget, said he was gravely concerned about the board's actions and is trying to verify with the TEA that trustees had the legal right to make these changes. 

"That the attempt to remove part of a science-based curriculum is both misguided and short-sighted, and I will be doing anything that I can do to make sure that that decision is reversed," he said.

Emily Witt, communications director for the Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit fighting against censorship to increase equity across the state, said the changes made by the board were an attack on democracy, adding that they also highlight the importance of voting in local school board elections. 

Some of the trustees argued in the board meeting that the chapters and learning exercises covered "controversial" topics, but Witt argued that information about climate change and depopulation are facts, not controversy. 

"We're seeing that the radical right's attack on on facts and accurate information is really permeating like every single part of our daily lives as Americans and especially in the education system," Witt said. "Scientists are very clear about the facts around vaccines and climate change, and I think that we should trust scientists who have been trained to speak on these topics."

Some parents in a community Facebook page were frustrated by the actions taken by the board late Monday night. 

“The rest of the board just voted to cut chapters out of textbooks they don’t like even (though they’ve) been approved by the state. Even after they cut curriculum coaches. so they just made educator’s lives harder because they don’t like the very real idea of depopulation,” wrote commenter Katelyn Elizabeth.

Witt said the decision made by Cy-Fair ISD's board sets students up to fail. 

"We are failing kids after living through a global pandemic to not teach them information about vaccines. Personal biases against the depopulation and vaccines and climate change don't change the facts," she said. 

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