After months of heated meetings, protests and campaign flyers, the Cy-Fair ISD board has reversed course. In a 4-3 vote Monday, trustees restored 13 chapters across five state-adopted textbooks that the board had stripped in May 2024. The contested sections cover biology, environmental science, health science and parts of an education text on teaching diverse learners. The move comes after textbook censorship became a defining issue in last November’s school board election.
Board Backs Off 2024 Deletions
Board President Julie Hinaman placed the reinstatement on Monday’s agenda after meeting with Superintendent Douglas Killian and assistant superintendent Tanya Goree, and the three agreed that the original chapters should return to classrooms, according to the Houston Chronicle. Trustees also signed off on a district policy directing staff to "ensure that materials meet community standards and present a fair and balanced perspective," and administrators told the board that restoring the chapters should not require buying new books. Trustees Justin Ray and Todd LeCompte opposed the move and voted against reinstatement, the Chronicle reported.
Why the Chapters Vanished in the First Place
The controversy started in May 2024, when a conservative-leaning board majority voted to cut 13 chapters that referenced vaccines, climate science, depopulation and cultural diversity, a step that drew sharp criticism from educators and scientists, the Texas Tribune reported. Local reporting and teacher accounts said the board’s edits scrambled lesson planning, since the state-approved textbooks had been mapped to the TEKS, and curriculum staff rushed to assemble substitute materials to plug the gaps, KPRC/Click2Houston found.
Cheering, Skepticism After the Vote
Advocates who pushed to bring back the content did not hold back their relief. As the Houston Chronicle reported, Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, called the reversal "a victory for the students in Cy-Fair’s public schools." Board members who voted no argued that the district should move more slowly and use a more formal review process before reintroducing the stripped material.
What Changes Inside Classrooms
District officials say teachers will be able to draw from both the newly restored chapters and the district-created replacement materials as they plan lessons for the 2026-27 school year, and that the change should not trigger any new textbook purchases, KPRC/Click2Houston reported. Teachers and advocates, however, say the real test will be whether campuses deliver consistent, standards-aligned instruction now that both sets of materials are in play.
Local Power Struggle With Statewide Ripples
The vote marks the first major rollback by the board’s new majority and underscores how local school boards have become flashpoints in Texas for fights over curriculum and culture, a trend Houston Public Media has tracked. Education advocates say what happened in Cy-Fair is likely to echo across the state as other districts face similar pressure over what students read and learn in class.
