So much for parental rights.
The most telling line of Dan Patrick’s press conference on “dirty, filthy books” at the Capitol this week came not from the Lieutenant Governor but from his guest, leading Texas book-banner Bonnie Wallace. Patrick invited Wallace to talk about Lubbock ISD, where that night, the school board was considering overturning a parent-led committee’s decision to retain dozens of challenged books.1
“Tonight Lubbock has a special called school board meeting,” she told the gathered reporters. “My group there has challenged 150 books. Lubbock has removed ten.”2
“My group there,” she said.
My group.
Bonnie isn’t from Lubbock; she’s from Llano, five hours away. And she doesn’t have a kid in Lubbock ISD (or Llano ISD, or anywhere in Texas). But the decisions she and Lieutenant Dan were yapping about were made by Lubbock parents. On Wednesday, Wallace and Patrick demanded, from Austin, that school administrators overturn those parents’ choices about their kids’ reading material.
Patrick used the press conference to argue for stricter enforcement of current anti-book laws, saying that in the next legislative session, he wants to pass a law that will dock a district’s TEA rating a full letter grade if it retains any books he finds objectionable, and he pointed to a 2000-title database Bonnie maintains as a guide for ensuring districts follow the law to his satisfaction.3 This is a huge potential penalty, and the press conference definitely got people’s attention. Patrick is struggling in his race against Vikki Goodwin, so it’s understandable that he’s flailing for views.4
The problem? The decisions that have Bonnie Wallace and Dan all steamed up were made by district leaders following the guidance of committees of district parents.
SLACs aren’t working the way the book banners intended.
Some background: In the wake of 2025’s Senate Bill 13, Lubbock ISD adopted a School Library Advisory Council to make decisions about library books. School Library Advisory Councils, or SLACs, were a centerpiece of SB13, which was framed as a “parental rights” bill. The idea was that these committees would provide parents oversight over the content of their kids’ libraries; to that end, the law says that, while librarians and teachers can sit on SLACs, they can’t be voting members. Decisions are made entirely by parents, then passed on to the school boards elected by the community. “We have a mechanism in these advisory councils,” said Angela Paxton, the bill’s author, “so that the local communities can make sure that these school libraries are what they want for their children in their community.”
Lubbock ISD followed both the letter and the (expressed) spirit of SB13. They formed a committee to put parents in charge of what books can be allowed in their libraries; when books were challenged, those parents carefully considered the challenges, and made thoughtful decisions based on the law and their community values. Notably, those challenges did not come from parents of district students, but instead from “community members” who, as Wallace revealed on Wednesday, had backing from activists based hundreds of miles away.
That’s the pattern in Texas. On Patrick’s podcast, Wallace also singled out Abilene ISD, Arlington ISD, and San Marcos Consolidated ISD. In all of those districts, books were challenged by activists–not district parents–and then retained after votes by parents. In Arlington, 31 of the 32 votes to retain books were unanimous. In San Marcos, all 65 of them were.5
This has been one of the clearest patterns in the data collected by Texas Freedom to Read Project over the past year: While Patrick claims that “90% of parents and grandparents would not want their children seeing any of these books,” in reality, when parents are given the chance to carefully consider challenged books, they usually retain them.6
Districts are removing books, but not because of parent concerns.
That doesn’t mean books aren’t being removed in Texas right now–our data shows that they are, in numbers far larger than ever before. I want to be absolutely clear about that: We’re seeing a CRAZY number of book removals across the state.7
But the twist is that those removals are spurred not by parents but by school and district administrations acting in fear of these out-of-district activists and their political allies—like Bonnie and Dan. Districts are doing “internal reviews” and “audits”; they’re using AI and absurd age restrictions; they’re removing books like Lonesome Dove and The House on Mango Street and The Brothers Karamazov. And the removals are happening without parental input, often without parental knowledge, and sometimes over parental protests. We reported on this process as it played out in New Braunfels ISD, which removed thousands of books from its school libraries after being targeted by Libs of TikTok, Moms for Liberty, and State Representative Carrie Isaac. But we’ve seen the same thing all around Texas.
And, at the same time, we’ve seen Texas public school parents stand up and demand an end to the insanity.
In his press conference, Patrick invoked the specter of evil, activist educators, slipping dirty books onto school library shelves because they want to “disrupt our families.”8 Teachers, librarians, and school administrators have become handy political punching bags for Republicans.
But Patrick’s real beef is with Texas parents. That’s a problem for him, and for the book-banning movement.9
Despite the attempted intimidation from Patrick and Wallace, Lubbock ISD’s board voted to uphold parents’ recommendations to retain the challenged books, though they did restrict some to the high school level.
I can’t vouch for Bonnie’s numbers. Lubbock’s website shows that the SLAC heard 36 formal challenges to books last year, while several challenged books were already no longer in the district. The committee voted to retain 33 of them, though many were restricted to the high school level. Texas Freedom to Read Project’s public information requests to the district have not turned up any additional challenges, though it’s possible “Bonnie’s group” challenged more books since our requests were filed, or before the period included in our requests.
Bonnie’s list of books is truly ridiculous. It includes classics like The Picture of Dorian Gray, Flowers for Algernon, Native Son, Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, plus tons of books that are clearly on there not for their “sexual content” but because they include messages with which Bonnie disagrees: LGBTQ-themed books, like And Tango Makes Three, books about racism, like Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, and books about how to fight censorious busybodies like Bonnie, such as Banned Together and Banned Book Club.
Not all SLACs have taken their task seriously. Some have been pretty goofy. But the majority have been great.
If this is surprising to you, especially given Dan Patrick’s assertion that the challenged books would shock anyone who knows about them, consider that those books have been wildly misrepresented by the book banners. In fact, one of the great things about Patrick’s press conference is that he and Bonnie encouraged reporters to check out the books they were describing. Reporters have been doing just that, and providing the context that those two left out. Check out this story from Katie Serrano at the Texas Courier, for example, and this one from Chron.com about Let’s Talk About It, the book Patrick said he refused to show to female senators (sexist motherfucker). I’ve also written about Boy Toy, another book Bonnie and Dan featured.
I’ll be writing more about the sheer number of books removed from Texas schools post-SB13 soon.
Yes, he really said this.
Both Patrick and Bonnie tried to argue that “no books are banned in America.” If you’re thinking of objecting to my calling them book banners, miss me with that nonsense.
So I guess parents’ rights only matter if they are in lockstep with this ass. Typical
I'm so glad you're writing this.