State Board of Education Rejects Most Proposed Health Textbooks That Included Information on Sex Education Topics

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas State Board of Education voted today to adopt new health textbooks from just one publisher after critics attacked all of the textbooks for content — even in optional units — that addressed topics related to sex education. Digital textbooks for elementary and middle school offered by three other publishers failed to win approval.

Rocio Fierro Pérez, political coordinator for Texas Freedom Network responded with the following:

“This week offered yet more evidence that politics continues to trump education and teaching the truth in Texas schools, even when it comes to the health and lives of our kids. The votes this week make clear that the Texas State Board of Education remains very much in the textbook censorship business. It’s frustrating to see the health and education of millions of Texas students continue to be held hostage to the politics of ignorance and exclusion.”

Background Following the board’s preliminary rejection Tuesday of all middle school and high school textbooks submitted for health classes in Texas, publishers on Wednesday offered a variety of changes in an effort… Read More

Transgender Awareness Week takes place this week, Nov. 13-19. It is a week to uplift the trans community and their voices, and it’s a prelude to Transgender Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20.

This year’s Trans Awareness Week comes at a difficult time in Texas that has highlighted the urgent need to raise awareness.

Since 2017, the Texas Legislature has shamelessly stigmatized transgender people by prioritizing discriminatory proposals solely targeted at the trans community, including the infamous so-called “bathroom bill.” Those past efforts thankfully failed. But unfortunately, legislators this year were successful in passing a law that will ban trans youth from participating in school sports.

There are various reasons why those bills have been proposed at the Capitol — including just plain politics — and one of them is a lack of general awareness of what transgender really means.

So for this year’s Trans Awareness Week, we would like to introduce you to a few trans voices in Texas. Hear from them about the challenges they face and what they hope for in the future.

 

 

 

Ash Hall (They/Them)

What are the biggest issues facing the trans community today? The trans community, especially in places… Read More

By Marti Bier (they/them) TFN Director of Programs This past Sunday, a fire was set outside the sanctuary doors of my synagogue in Austin. Throughout the state this year, and particularly in the last few months, we have a seen a disturbing rise in antisemitic attacks. As a Jew and a Texan, I’m writing today on behalf of Texas Freedom Network to publicly denounce antisemitism and the acts of hate we’re seeing with increasing regularity in communities around Texas. Read More

A special session of the Texas Legislature got underway on July 8. Why Gov. Abbott felt the need to call for a special session has a lot to do with what did and didn’t happen during the regular session that ended in May.

Even though the state faced critical issues like fixing the power grid that failed during February’s winter storm, the Republican-led legislature instead focused a lot of its time on:

Voter suppression legislation Banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth and barring transgender kids from school sports Making abortion care even more difficult, or practically impossible, to obtain Censoring history in our classrooms

Despite those challenges, the Texas Freedom Network and our partners could point to some important victories. Below is TFN’s report on the regular session, what legislation passed and what didn’t, and how it will impact the 30-day special session.

TFN – 2021 Lege Report by txfredomnetwork on Scribd… Read More

Texas gained two new seats given new Census information. Find Texas Rising Action's statement below:…… Read More