The bill, drafted by Sen. Angela Paxton, the wife of Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton, would require school boards to oversee the addition of new books to public school libraries. The bill also allows parents to petition to create an advisory council that would oversee the approval and removal of books. By law, Texas librarians already have a 30-day approval process for new books, but literacy advocates worry the new bill could extend the approval process by months.
“This bill is a regulatory maze,” said Laney Hawes, a cofounder of the Texas Freedom To Read Project. “It is a regulatory nightmare. There are dozens of steps with broad subjective terms and quite a number of timelines required from different steps in the process.”
Hawes explains that the standard 30-day waiting period is not likely to coincide with monthly school board meetings. If district parents successfully petition for an advisory council, the bill only requires them to convene twice a year, extending the approval period significantly. Once the books are finally approved, it takes another 45 days for a library order to be fulfilled and in the hands of an eager reader. Hawes says school librarians are filling out book order forms as fast as they possibly can before the bill, if signed by the governor, would become law on Sept. 1.
“We just really wish people realized what this is actually going to do, and that is, it's going to bring book buying in districts to a teeny, tiny, very slow trickle, if not a screeching halt,” she said.
Hawes argues that this bill will thin library stocks faster than they can be replenished and discourages readers in a state that is already grappling with decreasing literacy scores.
“The thing that helps true literacy is excitement about reading,” she said. “The excitement comes when you walk into a library with the magic of all of the choices before you. A lot of people don't realize we're going to be losing books faster than we gain them.”
Parental Controls On Libraries
A particularly concerning aspect of the bill for Democratic lawmakers debating it on the House floor was the sweeping redefinition of “harmful material” within school libraries. A particularly vague portion of the bill would allow parents to challenge books that oppose “local community values,” opening the floor for a myriad of complaints across a broad spectrum.Rep. James Talarico, a former public school educator representing the Austin area, pointed out to the House that several titles, including the Bible and Shakespeare's works, could easily be found to violate “local community values.”
“If your answer to ‘could Romeo and Juliet be banned,’ is anything other than ‘of course not,’ then that is a serious problem,” Talarico said on the House floor.
Hawes says her district has already removed several books at the elementary and middle school levels, including a story about parents with children out of wedlock, a reality for many students in most school districts. But the expansion provided by SB 13 could now result in the removal of any book deemed unfit.
Another complaint about the bill is that its application is not varied for different reader levels, instead placing the same stipulations on every library at every school. Hawes says no one is advocating for sexually explicit materials in any school library, but that students deserve literature that is relevant to their experiences.
“It's very, very clear that, based on the bill, this is not just about sexually explicit material,” said Hawes. “Because if it were, then that's the only thing that would be in the bill, but it's not… We want to point out that it's already against the law to have materials in schools that are legally defined as harmful to minors. No one wants truly obscene materials in schools, but they're also refusing to acknowledge that 18-year-olds are different from 5-year-olds.”
At a higher level, the bill could seriously threaten an already weakened list of classic literature that is continuously whittled by ongoing book bans. The state already has the third-longest list of banned books, but novels like “The Catcher in the Rye” and “The Scarlett Letter,” which have been formative staples as high school required readings, could easily be removed.
She says the blanket nature of the bill and politicization of literature is ultimately a detriment to young readers.
“It's a regulatory chaotic nightmare that's going to break our school libraries,” she said. “It's impractical. That's what happens when the bills you pass are political statements rather than truly serving our communities.”
The Burden On Librarians
School libraries are often first on a district’s hit list, with high overhead costs, limited state budgeting and the continued controversies surrounding library contents, they’re typically one of the first departments cut. In 2023, Houston ISD eliminated all librarian positions and converted several campus libraries into “team centers.”The bill does not aim to eliminate libraries, but Carolyn Foote, a retired school librarian who spent 40 years working in Austin-area schools, says further restrictions and the removal of library autonomy will only push future librarians away from the industry that is already withstanding a shortage.
“I've spoken to library students, and it is so discouraging to them and scary to enter the field when it's a field under this much pressure,” said Foote. “We need people in the field. It's a time in our field where technology use is so important in helping kids become information literate and become wise users of technology. If we don't have qualified people helping lead that in our schools, it's a big disadvantage to kids.”
Beyond serving a crucial role in encouraging literacy and providing students the opportunity to expand their knowledge, libraries, according to Hawes and Foote, also serve as a safe space.
“Libraries have worked very hard to be safe spaces that represent the different voices of different kinds of students in our school who have different interests,” said Foote. “It's not just about getting teens to read, it is not just about academic reading. It's about finding books they feel passionately about that speak to their own lives, that open doors to other people's lives. That is key, and having a librarian who knows the students and who also creates that kind of environment so that students feel engaged and welcomed and at home somewhere in the school is so important.”
