2022 EDUCATION EDITION
Texans’ attitudes TOWARD PUBLIC EDUCATION The Charles Butt Foundation conducted a poll throughout 2022 to survey attitudes toward public education by asking Texans who they trust to make decisions that support students.
What is HB 3906? House Bill 3906 was passed in 2019 and gives guidelines for redesigning the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness beginning in the 2022-23 academic year.
request. Students still have access to the book while it is under review unless the book is under review for violation of the district’s pol- icy of “protection from inappro- priate materials.” In that case, the book would only be made available to students with written parental permission. Upon receiving a request, the new policy states the district library spe- cialist will appoint a review com- mittee made up of one librarian and at least one teacher who is familiar with the material’s content. When a decision is made, the book will either return to the library shelves or be removed, according to the policy. Parents are unable to restrict what other students check out, but they may request a book be withheld from their own children, and the student will not be allowed to check out that book, district o cials said. Over the last year, some parents have raised concerns at school board meetings about the content in some CISD library that they said violate a Texas law pertaining to distribution of harmful material to a minor. CISD parent Carolyn Nini spoke about the topic at the Aug. 2 CISD board of trustees meeting. “The moral upbringing of our chil- dren is the responsibility of the par- ents, not the government nor the school system,” Nini said. “I stand before you no longer requesting that the books be removed but demand- ing that all sexually deviant books and teaching materials immediately be removed from all CISD schools.” CISD librarian Amber Sullivan said she believes board meetings over the last year have been an “open attack on librarians.” Sullivan said she works with over 3,400 students
1 STAAR must be administered to all students online by 2022-23.
$12.2M spent for
Who do Texans trust to make decisions supporting students?
Chromebooks and enhanced internet connectivity since 2019 in CISD
2 Students with reasonable accommodations may take the tests o ine.
Teachers
3 No more that 75% of points can be multiple- choice questions.
71%
SOURCES: TEXAS LEGISLATURE, CONROE ISD COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
Local school board
4 New question types must re ect classroom test questions.
42%
District administrators
types through campus common for- mative assessments,” said Hedith Sauceda-Upshaw, assistant superin- tendent for teaching and learning. “We will continue assisting teachers with how to further integrate online assessment tools into their daily instruction to prepare for this year’s online testing.” The majority of CISD campuses piloted online assessment adminis- trations in the 2021-22 school year in preparation for the full future transition, Sauceda-Upshaw said. Additionally, the district has spent $12.2 million in combined local funds, state instructional materials allotment funds and federal funds such as the Elementary and Second- ary School Emergency Relief Fund preparing for the shift since the pas- sage of HB 3906 in 2019, including Chromebooks and enhanced connec- tivity at campuses. “While hardware and connectivity infrastructure can be used to support
other instructional programming, the primary reason for these expen- ditures was to put our students in position to successfully take STAAR online,” Sauceda-Upshaw said. New library policies In addition to adapting to state requirements, CISD is working to implement new policies for instruc- tional materials and library books this year based on new library stan- dards from the TEA, according to district o cials. The board unani- mously adopted its new policy Aug. 2 to go into e ect immediately. The new policy splits the previous instructional resources policy into two—one for instructional materials and one for library materials—allow- ing for separate processes for the review of library materials and class- room instructional materials. According to the new policy, the formal review process for library materials begins with a written
41%
State legislators
24%
SOURCE: CHARLES BUTT FOUNDATION COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
every day and has seen the positive e ect books can have on helping stu- dents cope with di culties. “You need to give our high school students a little more credit,” she said. “They deal every single year with having to mourn classmates that die in car accidents, from drug use and from suicide, but you want to remove books that help them pro- cess these things because you deem them too obscene?”
For more information, visit communityimpact.com .
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THE WOODLANDS EDITION • AUGUST 2022
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